Abstracts – Session Two
12:20 – 1:20 – 6EN – 613
Chair: Morteza Sharifi
Temitope Adelekan: The Knowledge Tension in the New Zealand University
In this paper, I will discuss my on-going doctoral research which focuses on the examination of what I term the ‘knowledge dialectic’ – the contradiction between the humanistic and instrumental purposes of knowledge in the New Zealand University. The research examines the proposition that this historical tension, the oscillation between the value given to either theoretical or procedural forms of knowledge in the university and society more broadly, can be understood as an expression of the deeper ‘creative tension’ or dialectic between economic and humanistic functions of knowledge. I am using the term ‘creative tension’ because this tension has the potential to be a source of humanism for New Zealand universities. It is an on-going dialectic that comes from the very nature of knowledge itself, but the shift in this period has been particularly significant and involves global economic forces in a way not seen before. A social realist three steps methodological approach (theoretical conceptualisation, policy analysis, and empirical study) and a historical approach has been adopted to study the tension between the two forms of disciplinary knowledge in the New Zealand University to describe and explain a shift that I hypothesise has occurred between the value of these two types of knowledge over the last thirty years. Overall, the study may encourage re-thinking the relationship between the teaching of skills and competencies and disciplinary knowledge, as much of the literature argues that both forms of knowledge are vital to human beings in achieving their higher learning goals (Winch, 2017).
Joshua Sarpong: Research Autonomy and ‘Marketisation’ in Higher Education: A Case Study of Two New Zealand Universities
One of the core functions of the university is to search for and discover knowledge through research. To be able to do this thoroughly, the university must be as autonomous as possible, because autonomy is regarded as an important element in the research performance of academics. While empirical evidence about the benefits of research autonomy (RA) is mixed, a growing pool of research shows that there is limited RA (especially in some disciplines) in most universities. Although some scholars attribute this to the introduction of elements of the market into the higher education system, other scholars believe that marketisation/economic mission strengthens the autonomy of universities, if it is done well.
I draw on resource dependency theory to suggest that, despite pressures from the environment, universities can increase their independence through implementation of strategic measures. I introduce the concept of the entrepreneurial university as a key strategy New Zealand university can use to respond to external pressures without compromising their research autonomy. The concept allows universities to pursue marketisation/economic mission and, at the same time, maintain their core academic values. I use a case study design and draw on interviews and document analysis to generate the findings. I am interviewing about 34 staff in selected faculties and positions, from the University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology. I will analyse documents such as universities’ strategic plans and research policies. The study will clarify how best NZ universities can maintain their RA in the face of ‘marketisation’ in higher education.
Mohammad Taqi Amini: Contextual academic development through Bourdieusian practice theory
Higher Education is facing new challenges, including, but not limited to, a divers student body, internationalization, masification, and reduction in public funding. Academic development must reckon with these challenges to enable the new or next generation of academics to best manage the resulting changes. Yet academic development lacks a theory of how change happens in academic practice and how academic development can foster it, and, in particular, what is the role of context in that process. Practice theory can answer to that lack because it understands practices as uniquely shaped by their context—and contexts, and therefore practices, as offering opportunities for change.
Accordingly, we draw on Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus to understand academic development as a practice that is contextual, that is, alert to its individual, disciplinary, institutional and socio-cultural context. Habitus—including academic habitus—consists of durable but mutable and malleable dispositions that are the product of the individual and collective practices that operate in a particular context, or field. Academic habitus is shaped by change in the academic field; the role of academic development is to nurture the opportunities that this change offers for academic practice in a number of ways: through reshaping the academic field/context; modelling and contextualy rewarding academic practice that responds actively to change; and enabling academics to understand their academic habitus, and how it changes and can be changed.
Our research draws on case studies explored through biographical narrative interviews with academics undertaking postgraduate study in academic practice in a comprehensive research university in New Zealand. Drawing on structralis ontology and using habitus concept of Bourdieusian practice theory, the presentation will explore how and why the academic habitus of the participants changed as a result of their interaction with academic fields and what academic developers can learn from this process.