‘Just get them over the line’: Neoliberalism and the execution of ‘excellence’

doi:10.37074/jalt.2024.7.1.25

Cited by 1 publication

(3 citation statements)

References 49 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Clearly, there is more to tell beyond my, Lewin's (2023) or Barcan's (2013Barcan's ( , 2017 scope about the phenomenon of 'the great resignation', specifically of educator agency, organisational policy and even curriculum content that need exploring with a view to resulting in positive change. The unlikelihood of positive change, at least in the present, is arguably because of the cockroach nature of the neoliberal reported here and elsewhere (Ball, 2015;Fleming, 2021;Andrew, 2020Andrew, , 2023Andrew, , 2024. Hence, possibilities for innovation are limited without change due to the all-pervading ideological palsy of neoliberalism (Hil, et al, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 60%

“…Few studies consider 'belonging' from a worker's perspective, the majority examining learner belonging as in the abovementioned special issue; or they afford the fostering of belonging, especially via designed collaborativism and evidence of instructor presence in online communities of practice, in both pre-COVID and COVID era settings (e.g. Andrew, 2024;Stafford, 2022). In a rare exception, Mulrooney and Kelly belonging can be an act of self-identification or identification by others, in a stable, contested or transient way.…”

Section: Troubling Belongingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…I have already written of how neoliberalist process has itself no room for care in assessment processes even in the post-COVID world (Andrew, 2024) and of how educators remaining after 'the great resignation' may be homo economicus clones, tow-the-line zombies or conscious-riven nervous wrecks (Andrew, 2023). It is also important to ask the question, 'Whatever happened to the exit interview?'…”

Section: Further Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The professor is out: The simple joys of not belonging

2024

JALT

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

As the 2020s march on into a post-COVID age, an increasing trend for academics to exit their current academic positions or to leave academia altogether can be observed internationally and locally. Consequently, a sizeable body of experts accessible to higher education but geographically beyond its ivory towers and psychologically outside its neoliberal grip has come to exist. These para-academics and public intellectuals continue to contribute to communities of teaching, learning, and researching but do so often without affiliation. This study explores the relational link between the archaic notion of affiliation and what it means to 'belong' to a university as staff. The study problematises belonging as an assimilative designator of an organisation's culture and suggests that belonging, as employed in teaching and learning discourse, as a trust-based mode of building community, is a different beast than that conceived by neoliberal universities. Using vignettes as narrative enquiry, the paper retells and curates six accounts of academics making transitions out of academic positions and finding fresh educational contexts for belonging. These emancipatory narratives move through spaces of trauma into authentic places of reclaimed identity, most notably as independent public intellectuals within a broader context of global citizenship. The narratives show us what life after being academically affiliated can look like when individuals exercise critical resilience to establish academic identities beyond the neoliberal university.

show abstract