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Researching Absences and Silences in Higher Education Professor Louise Morley

Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research (CHEER). Researching Absences and Silences in Higher Education Professor Louise Morley University of Sussex, UK sussex.ac.uk/cheer. Desiccation, Distributive Justice and Dystopia. Hypermodernisation and Archaism. Nostalgia Frenzy Inertia.

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Researching Absences and Silences in Higher Education Professor Louise Morley

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  1. Centre for Higher Education and Equity Research (CHEER) Researching Absences and Silences in Higher Education Professor Louise Morley University of Sussex, UK sussex.ac.uk/cheer

  2. Desiccation, Distributive Justice and Dystopia

  3. Hypermodernisation and Archaism • Nostalgia • Frenzy • Inertia

  4. Whose Transformational Imaginary? • Neo-liberalism/ austerity rather than academic imaginaries or social movements? • Who/what is currently informing policy? (Ball and Exley, 2009)

  5. Do These Discourses Excite and Delight You? • Excellence • Knowledge Economy • Innovation and Enterprise • Knowledge Transfer • Teaching And Learning • Widening Participation • Lifelong Learning • Employability • Globalisation • Internationalisation • Civic Engagement • Digitisation • Economic Impact • Quality Assurance • League Tables

  6. The University of the Future • Is the present the future that was imagined in the past? • Did left/ counter hegemonic advocates predict the scale of neo-liberal driven change? • Did traditionalists predict the industrialisation and massification of higher education? • Is the university of the future the university of the past?

  7. From Knowledge Economy to Knowledge Recession? • Neo-liberalism cast public sector as profligate, sluggish, self-serving, and archaic (1980s). • Transfer/ migration values, power and authority across public/private. • Private sector crashes (2008/9)/ state rescues. • Private sector recovers (2010) / public sector crashes. • Risk and debt now carried by public sector. • Austerity and affective ecologies. • New cast of grotesques. (See Gamble, 2009)

  8. Whose Crisis? Current recession: • embedded in and re-producing political and democratic crises. • crisis of capitalism? • financial crisis reinforcing capitalism/ social and organisational hierarchies?

  9. UK Policy Futures in Turbulent Times: From Expansion to Contraction Denham (2008) • Expansion of technology • Innovation • Research-based wealth creation. Mandelson (2009) • Social justice (poorer students) • Diversity of models of learning • Funding for high level skills • University/business partnerships • Review of postgraduate provision • Strengthening research capacity • Excellence in teaching • Universities/ Communities • Transnational Education • Willetts/ Cable (2010) • Diverse HE provision • Private HE • Excellence and rigour • University autonomy • STEM • Fees/ Graduate Tax • Reduction in HE funding/ places.

  10. Futurology • Are current policy discourses: • Limiting or generating creative thinking about the future of universities? • Commensurate with aspirations/ desires of students/ staff? • Reducing universities to delivery agencies for government-decreed outcomes?(Young, 2004) • What new vocabularies can be marshalled to consider the morphology of the university of the future?

  11. The Edgeless University(Bradwell, 2009) • Open Access Publishing • Flexible learning outside the university • Social media • Progressive Austerity (Reeves, 2009) • Strategic technological investment • New providers • Collaborative research/ open research communities • Universities as partners, not sole providers of learning, research • Engaging stakeholders in course design • New forms of accreditation.

  12. Dystopic Futures and Cultures of Closure • Callousness of prestige • Decline in academic freedom • Employees permanently temporary • Job training, not education • Teacherless classrooms • Increased political, cultural and economic assault • Corporatisation/ academic-capitalist values • Countercultures and opposition crushed. (Bousquet, 2008)

  13. Absences and Silences • Intersectionality of Social Identities (Morley et al, 2010) • Aesthetics/ Spatial Justice/ Learning Landscapes (Lambert, 2010; Neary, 2010) • Affective Domain (Hey, 2009) • Environment and Sustainability (Sterling, 2004) • Micropolitics(Morley, 1999) • Global North/ South Power Geometries (Robinson, 2009)

  14. Difference, Desire and Disqualification

  15. Desiring Higher Education • Aligning personal aspirations with needs of economy (Appadurai, 2003; Morley et al. 2010; Walkerdine, 2003). Globally: 1960 - 13 million 2005 - 137.8 million UK: 1966 - 44,500 2006 - 4,000,000 • Numbers of UK applicants +23% on last year.

  16. Toxic Correlations/ Access and Social Identities • 7.3% students reported a disability • 18.8% first-degree students were black and minority ethnic (ECU, 2009) • Issues with BME achievement and distribution (Richardson, 2008). • 4% of UK poorer young people enter higher education (David et al, 2009; Hills Report, 2009). • 5% of this group enter UK’s top 7 universities (HESA, 2010).

  17. Reproducing Power and Privilege? Graduates from elite universities control: • the media • politics • the civil service • the arts • the City • law • medicine • big business • the armed forces • think tanks(Monbiot, 2010)

  18. Closing the Gender Gap? • Global Gender Parity Index of 1.08 (UNESCO, 2009). • The number of male students globally quadrupled from 17.7 to 75.1 million between 1970-2007. • The number of female students rose sixfold from 10.8 to 77.4 million. • In UK, 57.1% of students and 42.6% of academic staff are women (2009).

  19. Feminisation Crisis Discourse or Misogyny Posing as Measurement? • A woman’s place is in the minority. • Reconstructs dominant group as victims. • Assumes that women’s success has come about by damaging males. (HEPI, 2009; Leathwood and Read, 2008). • Ignores gender in wider civil society. • UK ranked 15 the Global Gender Gap Index (13 in 2008)(World Economic Forum, 2009).

  20. Women in Power? • 19% of European Union professors are women (She Figures, 2009). • 13% UK Vice Chancellors are women (Deem, 2010; Sutton Trust, 2008). • 70% Commonwealth countries, all universities are led by men (Singh, 2008). • In 2007/08, the median Gender Pay Gap was 18.2%(ECU, 2010). • Gender equality = representational space?

  21. Gender Mainstreaming? • Sexual harassment(NUS, 2010); • Women and leadership(David, 1998; Hearn, 2009; Husu, 2009; Valian, 1999); • Gender insensitive pedagogy(Welch, 2006); • Women and Technology (Clegg, 2001); • Promotion, professional development and tenure(Acker, 2009; Knights and Richards, 2003); • Knowledge production and dissemination(Hughes, 2002); • Curricula and subject choices(Morley et al, 2006).

  22. Gender… • ignored when women suffer discrimination or under-representation. • amplified in crisis form when women start to be ‘over-represented’. • rarely intersected with other structures of inequality. • inequalities resistant to hypermodernisation forces? • disqualified from the Impact Agenda?

  23. Sociology of Absences

  24. Widening Participation in Higher Education in Ghana and Tanzania: Developing an Equity Scorecard Quantitative Equity Scorecards Measuring: • Gender, age, socio-economic status (SES) In Relation to: • Access, retention and achievement. In Relation to: • 4 Programmes of Study in each HEI. • 2 Public and 2 private HEIs. • Qualitative • 200 life history interviews with students from public and private universities (100 Ghana and 100 Tanzania); • 200 interviews with academic staff and policy makers in Ghana and Tanzania. (Morley, Leach and Lugg, 2008; Morley and Lussier, 2009) http://www.sussex.ac.uk/wphegt

  25. Women’s Enrolments Ghana • 1990: 22.5% (UNESCO, 1999a, 1999b). • 2005/6: 35% (UNESCO, 2006) Tanzania • 1991: 15.9% (UNESCO, 1999a, 1999b). • 2005/6: 31.2% (UNESCO, 2006)

  26. Access to Specific Programmes: Tanzania ESC 1: Access to B.Sc. Engineering according to Age, Gender and Socio-Economic Status at a Public University in Tanzania by Levels in 2007/2008 ESC 19: Access to B. Ed. Maths according to Age, Gender and Socio-Economic Status at a Private University in Tanzania by Levels in 2007/2008

  27. Access to Different Programmes: Ghana ESC 3: Access to Level 100 on Four Programmes at a Public University in Ghana according to Age, Gender and Socio-Economic Status ESC 4: Access to Level 100 on Four Programmes at a Private University in Ghana according to Age, Gender and Socio-Economic Status

  28. Messages from the Equity Scorecards: Access • Low SES + mature students under-represented in all subjects except Education. • Under-represented groups in disciplines with low exchange rate in the labour market. • Affirmative action programmes not increasing numbers of low SES women. • When structures of inequality are intersected, poor and older women disappear from majority of programmes. • When under-represented groups are there they tend to be men.

  29. Steep Social Gradients • Opportunity hording by privileged social groups? • Are we now educating ‘doctors' daughters rather than doctors' sons’?(Williams/ Eagleton 2008)

  30. Hyper-modernisation of: Liquified globalisation Entrepreneurial, corporate, commercialised universities Privileging of technology, STEM Turbo-charged consuming students. Archaism of: Male dominance of leadership Gender inequalities and feminisation fears Unequal participation rates for different social groups. ‘Now’ Universities Built on Yesterday’s Foundations

  31. The University of the Future Needs to... • Recover critical knowledge and be a think tank and policy driver. • Discover new conceptual grammars to include equalities, identities, affective and aesthetic domains. • Consider power/knowledge, as well as knowledge liquification and optimisation. • Contribute to wealth/ opportunity distribution as well as to wealth creation. • Apply the impact agenda to transferring evidence from equity research into action. • Disrupt social class and gender privileges by interrogating and accounting for the absences.

  32. CHEER ESRC Seminar Series: ‘Imagining the University of the Future’ (http://www.sussex.ac.uk/cheer/esrcseminars).

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