Assessment Policy and “Pockets of Freedom” in a Neoliberal University: A Foucauldian Perspective

Raaper, Rille

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-95834-7_8

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…While telling this story, at the same time, John is also doubting himself ("maybe it is my imagination") and doubting what makes a good application ("where I have had the completely right people"). This insecurity about assessment criteria is maintaining a level of uncertainty for individuals, being both responsible for addressing these criteria but also dependent, when not knowing exactly what those criteria are (Ball, 2013;Raaper, 2019). In other words, impact is by John articulated as not only an outcome of research but also as a technology for managing researchers reshaping the power relations between researchers and the new players on the scene, that is the external funding bodies (Foucault, 1982;Dean, 1999).…”

Section: Reshaping Of Power Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Within their research space, the researchers navigate and resist the impact agenda typically through minimal compliance, resignation, rejection or through re-inscribing it, moving it towards other meanings that make more sense in relation to their research work and academic values, using words like importance or contribution instead. These examples of subtle discursive micro resistance towards the impact agenda display room for maneuvering and possibilities of doing and being differently, the impact agenda being an unstable and interactional process (Raaper, 2019). However, these resistance practices also make visible how Foucauldian power relations and subjectivities are being reshaped between researchers and the new players on the scene in the form of external funding bodies.…”

Section: Impact As Skills Development Within Doctoral Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this paper, we wish to display some of these resistance practices enacted by academics living with the impact agenda. Foucault’s notion of resistance can help us demonstrate individuals’ struggles against discursive hierarchies, their experimentations with how the social reality could be different (Foucault, 1982), and it can help us trace the many different meanings and variations of impact in all its volatility showing how the embedding of a political technology is not a linear process but “involves regulating relationships in complex systems” (Raaper, 2019, p. 156), or, with reference to Foucault, showing how in power relations there is also the possibility of resistance.…”

Section: Academic Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

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Living with the impact agenda – humanities academics negotiating and resisting the impact agenda as researchers and doctoral supervisors

Skov,

Bengtsen

2024

SGPE

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Purpose In Denmark, there has been, over decades, an intensified political focus on how humanities research and doctoral education contribute to society. In this vein, the notion of impact has become a central part of the academic language, often associated with terms like use, effects and outputs, stemming from neoliberal ideologies. The purpose of this paper is to explore how humanities academics are living with the impact agenda, as both experienced researchers and as doctoral supervisors educating the next generation of researchers in this post-pandemic era. Specifically, the authors are interested in the supervisor-researcher relationship, that is, the relationship between how the supervisors navigate the impact agenda as researchers and then the way they tell their doctoral students to do likewise. Design/methodology/approach The authors have studied how the impact agenda is accommodated by humanities academics through a series of qualitative interviews with humanities researchers and humanities PhD supervisors, encompassing questions of how they are living with the expectation of impact and how it is embedded in their university and departmental context. Findings The study shows that there is no link between how the supervisors navigate the impact agenda in relation to their own research work and then the way they tell their doctoral students to approach it. Within the space of their own research, the supervisors engage in resistance practices towards the impact agenda in terms of minimal compliance, rejection or resignation, whereas in the space of supervision, the impact agenda is re-inscribed to embody other understandings. The supervisors want to protect their students from this agenda, especially in the knowledge that many of them are not going to stay in academia due to limited researcher career possibilities. Furthermore, the paper reveals a new understanding of the impact agenda as having a relational quality, and in two ways. One is through a positional struggle, the reshaping of power relations, between universities (or academics) and society (or the state and the market); the other is as a phenomenon very much lived among academics themselves, including between supervisors and their doctoral students within the institutional context. Originality/value This study opens up the impact agenda, showing what it means to be a humanities academic living with the effects of the impact agenda and trying to navigate this. The study is mapping and tracking out the many different meanings and variations of impact in all its volatility for academics concerned about it. In current, post-pandemic times, when manifold expectations are directed towards research and doctoral education, it is important to know more about how these expectations affect and are dealt with by those who are expected to commit to them.

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Section: Reshaping Of Power Relationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Impact As Skills Development Within Doctoral Educationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Academic Resistancementioning

confidence: 99%

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Living with the impact agenda – humanities academics negotiating and resisting the impact agenda as researchers and doctoral supervisors

Skov,

Bengtsen

2024

SGPE

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“…The authors in this stunning new book are not unaware of the power of institutions labouring under the weight of a political economy that reduces academic work to market value. What, then, about the "pockets of freedom" (Raaper, 2019) in universities that can be exploited to do the work of resistance and generate alternatives to teaching, learning, assessment, and the making of curriculum?…”

Section: Forewordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Higher Education for Good

2023

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After decades of turbulence and acute crises in recent years, how can we build a better future for Higher Education? Thoughtfully edited by Laura Czerniewicz and Catherine Cronin, this rich and diverse collection by academics and professionals from across 17 countries and many disciplines offers a variety of answers to this question. It addresses the need to set new values for universities, trapped today in narratives dominated by financial incentives and performance indicators, and examines those “wicked” problems which need multiple solutions, resolutions, experiments, and imaginaries. This mix of new and well-established voices provides hopeful new ways of thinking about Higher Education across a range of contexts, and how to concretise initiatives to deal with local and global challenges. In an unusual and refreshing way, the contributors provide insights about resilience tactics and collective actions across different levels of higher education using an array of styles and formats including essays, poetry, and speculative fiction. With its interdisciplinary appeal, this book presents itself as a provocative and inspiring resource for universities, students, and scholars. Higher Education for Good courageously offers critique, hope, and purpose for the practice and the trajectory of Higher Education.

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“…The job of institutional policy is to articulate principles that govern practices and assure quality: to steer, regulate and standardise practicesin concert with other governance instruments including delegations of authority. In some cases, principles articulated in institutional policy are intentionally or unintentionally ambiguous (Raaper, 2019) or vague (Deygers and Malone, 2019). Broad, umbrella principles allow evaluative judgement, discretion, and hence variability in policy implementation and practice.…”

Section: On-line and Into Unchartered Territoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid, centralised decision-making in a higher education emergency

Freeman

Leihy²,

Teo

et al. 2021

QAE

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Purpose This study aims to explain the primacy that rapid, centralised decision-making gained in higher education institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a particular focus on Australian universities. Design/methodology/approach This paper draws on discussions regarding policy problems of an international, purpose-convened on-line policy network involving over 100 registrations from multiple countries. It analyses emerging institutional policy governance texts and documents shared between network participants, applies policy science literature regarding traditional institutional policy-making routines and rapid decision-making, and references media reportage from 2020. The paper traces how higher education institutions rapidly adjusted to pandemic conditions and largely on-line operations. Findings The study finds that higher education institutions responded to the COVID-19 crisis by operationalising emergency management plans and introducing rapid, centralised decision-making to transition to remote modes of operation, learning and research under state-imposed emergency conditions. It highlights the need to ensure robust governance models recognising the ascendance of emergency decision-making and small-p policies in such circumstances, notwithstanding longstanding traditions of extended collegial policy-making routines for big-P (institutional) Policy. The pandemic highlighted practice and policy problems subject to rapid reform and forced institutions to clarify the relationship between emergency planning and decision-making, quality and institutional policy. Practical implications In covering a range of institutional responses, the study advances the possibility of institutions planning better for unexpected, punctuated policy shifts during an emergency through the incorporation of rapid decision-making in traditionally collegial environments. At the same time, the paper cautions against the normalisation of such processes. The study also highlights key practices and policies that require urgent reconsideration in an emergency. The study is designed as a self-contained and freestanding narrative to inform responses to future emergencies by roundly addressing the particularities of the 2020 phase of the COVID-19 pandemic as it affected higher education. Originality/value There is only limited research on policy-making in higher education institutions. This research offers an original contribution on institutional policy-making during a prolonged emergency that deeply changed higher education institution’s governance, operations and outlook. Particularly significant is the synthesis of experiences from a wide range of sector personnel, documenting punctuated policy shifts in policy governance (meta-policy), institutional policy-making routines and quality assurance actions under great pressure. This paper is substantially developed from a paper given at the Association for Tertiary Education Management Institutional Policy Seminar, 26th October 2020.

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Assessment Policy and “Pockets of Freedom” in a Neoliberal University: A Foucauldian Perspective

Cited by 4 publications

References 26 publications

Living with the impact agenda – humanities academics negotiating and resisting the impact agenda as researchers and doctoral supervisors

Living with the impact agenda – humanities academics negotiating and resisting the impact agenda as researchers and doctoral supervisors

Higher Education for Good

Rapid, centralised decision-making in a higher education emergency

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