scholarly journals Telling Students it’s O.K. to Fail, but Showing Them it Isn’t: Dissonant Paradigms of Failure in Higher Education

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Paul Feigenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Communal Experience ◽  
Fear And Anxiety ◽  
Zero Sum

Educators increasingly extol failure as a necessary component of learning and growth. However, students frequently experience failure as a source of fear and anxiety that impedes risk-taking and experimentation. This essay examines the dissonance between these generative and stigmatized paradigms of failure, and it offers ideas for better negotiating this dissonance. After conceptualizing the two paradigms, I examine various factors that reinforce failure’s stigmatization. I emphasize precarious meritocracy, a neoliberal ethos driven by hypercompetitive individualism that makes success a zero-sum game, and that causes especially significant harms on students who are already socially stigmatized. Efforts to ameliorate paradigm dissonance tend to focus on changing student dispositions or lowering the stakes of failure. I instead propose wise interventions that include analyzing the systemic roots of stigmatized failure and making failure a more communal experience. I then briefly address the systemic transformations necessary to cultivate generative failure more broadly.

scholarly journals Telling Students it’s O.K. to Fail, but Showing Them it Isn’t: Dissonant Paradigms of Failure in Higher Education

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-26
Author(s):  
Paul Feigenbaum
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Communal Experience ◽  
Fear And Anxiety ◽  
Zero Sum

Educators increasingly extol failure as a necessary component of learning and growth. However, students frequently experience failure as a source of fear and anxiety that impedes risk-taking and experimentation. This essay examines the dissonance between these generative and stigmatized paradigms of failure, and it offers ideas for better negotiating this dissonance. After conceptualizing the two paradigms, I examine various factors that reinforce failure’s stigmatization. I emphasize precarious meritocracy, a neoliberal ethos driven by hypercompetitive individualism that makes success a zero-sum game, and that causes especially significant harms on students who are already socially stigmatized. Efforts to ameliorate paradigm dissonance tend to focus on changing student dispositions or lowering the stakes of failure. I instead propose wise interventions that include analyzing the systemic roots of stigmatized failure and making failure a more communal experience. I then briefly address the systemic transformations necessary to cultivate generative failure more broadly.

scholarly journals Rankings Season is Here

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Altbach
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Research Productivity ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Zero Sum ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Over Time

The major international rankings of higher education have appeared in recent months. The ranking is an inevitable result of the massification and commercialization of higher education worldwide. Ranking presumes a zero-sum game, but in reality, improvement is taking place everywhere. The current rankings are largely measured by research productivity, and they are advantageous for major English-speaking countries. Each ranking use different measures, and also changes over time. The user must be aware of the uses and problems of rankings.

The contradictions of policy and practice: creativity in higher education

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain MacLaren
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Management Practices ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Workplace Stress ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
Collaborative Exploration ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Creativity And Innovation

Whilst much of the rhetoric of current educational policy champions creativity and innovation, structural reforms and new management practices in higher education run counter to the known conditions under which creativity flourishes. As a review of recent literature suggests, surveillance, performativity, the end of tenure and rising levels of workplace stress are all closing off the space for real creative endeavour, characterised as it is by risk-taking, collaborative exploration and autonomy. Innovation, as conceived in this policy context (i.e., that of the UK and Ireland), is narrow in scope and leaves little room for critical re-examination of the nature of education itself or radical reconceptions of curriculum, raising the question as to whether such are more likely to arise extra mural , from new forms of organisation.

scholarly journals Reflecting on and Articulating Teaching Experiences: Academics Learning to Teach in Practice

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 139
Author(s):  
Mette Sandoff ◽  
Kerstin Nilsson ◽  
Britt-Marie Apelgren ◽  
Sylva Frisk ◽  
Shirley Booth
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Business Administration ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Teaching Experiences ◽  
Teaching Knowledge ◽  
Teaching Principles ◽  
Interpretative Analysis ◽  
Short Courses

Higher education teaching demands theoretical and practical knowledge. It goes without saying, a strong knowledge of one’s subject is essential. But while teaching principles are generally gleaned from short courses, it is one’s own teaching that offer the main ground for gaining practical teaching knowledge. To examine this claim we have conducted an interview-study in which Swedish business administration academics have described where they learned something about their teaching. An interpretative analysis led to six different lessons learned, ranging from the personal, through the pedagogical, to the interpersonal. We claim there are three necessary opportunities to turn the experience into an occasion for learning: reflection over experience, the opportunity to articulate one’s experience, and a forum for sharing; particularly experiences connected with risk-taking. We conclude that academics need opportunities to reflect on and articulate their learning experiences related to the practices of teaching, and to share and discuss them with colleagues. 

scholarly journals ‘One Size Fits All’ – A Default Policy that is Serving No One Well

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (S1) ◽  
pp. S28-S43
Author(s):  
Alison Wolf
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Mobility ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
Supply Side ◽  
Educational Expansion ◽  
Dominant Model ◽  
Academic Education ◽  
Zero Sum

This article will analyse the rather uniform ways in which developed countries, and notably those of Europe, have moved from systems in which tiny numbers of young people attended university to systems of mass and still expanding higher education. Although there are some surface differences between countries in organisation and levels of participation, these have actually decreased in recent decades, and convergence is continuing. This convergence reflects a general move towards a dominant model of tertiary education which gives priority and prestige to academic certification. The economic and policy drivers have been very similar. In the first instance, a changing labour market and growing middle class expanded demand for tertiary provision. Governments then became convinced that expanding higher education was an effective supply-side policy to promote growth and productivity, and an effective way to promote social mobility and equality; and so educational expansion and spending were privileged. However, in recent years, there has been a growing mismatch between the labour market and tertiary provision, which it is very hard to correct, partly because of politicians’ beliefs but also because the ‘signalling’ function of academic education has become paramount, and families quite rationally pursue high-prestige (but zero-sum) options for their children. Although there may be some degree of self-correction in the system, this is by no means assured and governments need to consider, actively, how to promote attractive alternatives to university study.

Communication strategies and responses to change around issues of sexuality in Catholic higher education

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Levand
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Higher Education Institutions ◽  
Human Sexuality ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
Prevention Policy ◽  
Catholic Higher Education ◽  
Student Groups ◽  
Task Forces ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Fear And Anxiety

Sometimes, change around sexuality at Catholic higher education institutions exists in the shadow culture –the values and systems that drive a culture of an institution but that differ from those openly espoused. Past studies have often focused on the creation of LGBTQ student organizations at one or at most four institutions. The present study examines qualitative data from 31 employees at 17 different Catholic colleges and universities across the USA in which employees indicate how they navigated the process of effecting change around human sexuality at their Catholic institution. Interviews were transcribed and coded with a three-phase coding procedure that was then reviewed by an expert panel. Participants experienced both supportive and resistant reactions from colleagues. Issues of human sexuality were defined broadly to include not only student groups around orientation (i.e., LGBTQ student groups) but also sexual assault policy and prevention, policy around transgender student housing or restrooms, incorporating sexuality into the curriculum, same-sex employee benefits, etc. Reasons for resistance included fear, misunderstanding, mission incongruence, and perceived scandal. Methods of navigating change consisted of data gathering, increased visibility, taking a student focus, public conversations, trainings, one-to-one education, task forces, student protests, engaging with university heritage and mission, sensitivity to language used, and more discreet methods of effecting change. These data strengthen the literature by offering a detailed description of these methods, identifying the geopolitical atmosphere as relevant to the change process, noting some methods as ineffective, and clarifying communication that occurs in the shadow culture. Beyond Catholic higher education, readers may find these themes useful in effecting change at their own higher education institutions, including institutions with much fear and anxiety around sexuality.

Need for Achievement, Education, and Entrepreneurial Risk-Taking Behavior

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (8) ◽  
pp. 1311-1318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shouming Chen ◽  
Xuemei Su ◽  
Sibin Wu
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Education Research ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Higher Education Research ◽  
Need For Achievement ◽  
Nascent Entrepreneurs ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Risk Taking Behavior ◽  
Using Data

We examined which factors lead to entrepreneurial risk-taking behavior, using the 2 tests of entrepreneurial behavior theory (desirability and feasibility) to investigate how need for achievement and education interact to influence risk-taking propensity. Using data collected from 230 nascent entrepreneurs in a mid-western state in the USA, we tested 2 hypotheses and found empirical evidence to support the 2 tests theory. The results showed that entrepreneurs with high need for achievement and who had received higher education were more willing to take risks than were entrepreneurs with low need for achievement and who had not received higher education. Research implications and limitations are discussed.

scholarly journals Invited Essay: Educating for Democracy in Undemocratic Contexts: Avoiding the Zero-Sum Game of Campus Free Speech Versus Inclusion

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Shared Responsibility ◽  
Content Standards ◽  
Educational Goals ◽  
Democratic Principles ◽  
The Right ◽  
Zero Sum ◽  
Goals And Objectives ◽  
Academic Content

The debate over free speech and inclusion in higher education is not new, but it has reached new levels of vitriol and confusion as legislators and others beyond the academy argue for unfettered speech. Mandating speech rights on campuses undercuts decades of learning around diversity, inclusion, and equity in higher education and in public life by mainstreaming undemocratic forces in some factions in U.S. society that thrive on creating divisiveness and fear of “the other.” Those with an absolutist perspective take a zero-sum game approach by pitting the important American principles of freedom and individualism against the equally important principles of equity and community. Not only is this an unnecessary choice, but it infringes on academic freedom and the right of academics to decide how best to educate for the health and future of democracy. Academic content, standards, norms, and pedagogy should be based on educational goals and objectives. The solution lies in fostering discussion about democratic principles and practices as well as a sense of shared responsibility among members of a campus community for student learning and success.

scholarly journals Gender, risk-taking and entrepreneurial intentions: assessing the impact of higher education longitudinally

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eda Gurel ◽  
Melih Madanoglu ◽  
Levent Altinay
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Risk Taking ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Entrepreneurial Intention ◽  
Low Risk ◽  
Entrepreneurial Intentions ◽  
First Year ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Impact Of Higher Education ◽  
The Impact

PurposeThis longitudinal study assesses whether higher education has the same impact on the entrepreneurial intentions of women and men with regard to their propensity to risk-taking in particular.Design/methodology/approachA self-administrated survey instrument was used to collect data from students studying business and engineering at five selected universities in Turkey. The survey was carried out in two intervals: first year and fourth year of studies. A total of 215 student participated in both waves.FindingsThe findings indicate that the impact of education is stronger for women than for men as the relationship between gender and entrepreneurial intention is moderated by education and risk-taking propensity in that the entrepreneurial intention of women with high or low risk-taking propensity increases when they acquire higher education. In particular, the boost is more noticeable for women with low risk-taking propensity. On the contrary, the effect of education is negative for men with both high risk-taking propensity and low risk-taking propensity.Practical implicationsThis study has identified that the impact of education is different for women and men. Based on these findings, Turkey could offer gender-specific entrepreneurship education in higher education for individuals who could then exploit their entrepreneurial capacity and thus contribute to the social and economic well-being of the country.Originality/valueThis paper makes two distinct contributions. First, this is one of the few longitudinal studies in the literature which demonstrates the differences between females and males in terms of their entrepreneurial intention and shows how risk-taking and education influence entrepreneurial intention. Second, it offers new insights into entrepreneurship research from a developing-country but emerging-economy context.

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