1. Higher Education and Alien Ecologies: Exploring the Dark Ontology of the University

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-40
Author(s):  
SØREN S.E. BENGTSEN ◽  
RONALD BARNETT

The meaning of Anthropocene rests on the idea that there is a specific rationale behind the university and higher education, which is in itself progressive, educational, and redeeming. Institutions for, and students and teachers within, higher education, are more or less directly linked to the structures and rational of their political surroundings and social and cultural environments. However, just as there is depth to ecologies in the natural environment, and just as there is strangeness and even alien forms hidden within those environments, so it is with universities and higher education. They harbor hidden aspects, and these presences call from the dark, with their deeper and more unknown voices, even alien ones that seem to reach into universities not only from a future but also from a present that we cannot easily see or even understand. In this essay, we shed light on these more alien strands of higher education reality; what we term an “ontological excess” of universities. This darker ontology helps us argue that the foundations of the university go much deeper, and is societally more tangled, than the immediate pillars of the Anthropocene.

2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 14-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulina Mihailova

The article investigates how university lecturers taking part in the compulsory teacher training at Stockholm University (SU) conceive of the effects of standardised and formalised training on their teaching. The study explores the emotions and responses evoked among academics when everyone is required to embrace the same pedagogic philosophy of constructive alignment (Biggs 2003), adopt the language of learning outcomes and assign the same standards to diverse academic practices. The article attempts to shed light on different conceptions of the quality of teaching and learning in higher education and the interplay between the lecturers' values of academic freedom, collegiality and disciplinary expertise and the university leadership's values of efficiency, accountability and measurability of performance. The article considers how these conceptions coexist and are negotiated within the university as an organisation.


Author(s):  
Johnson Ishengoma

Governments' cuts in research and development funding for public universities in Tanzania has compelled these institutions to establish and develop extensive partnerships and links with universities, and research centers in the North. The establishment of the North-South partnerships has also coincided with the dominance of external and heavy dependence on external donors for funding of research and development activities in the majority of Tanzania public universities. This article, using the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM), public university, seeks to shed light on whether or not partnerships make any significant contribution to the institution’s capacity building. The thesis of this paper is that although N-S partnerships are instrumental in institutional capacity building; they have not significantly contributed to the strengthening of higher education space at UDSM and apparently at other public universities in Tanzania because of inherent structural imbalances and inequalities embedded in the partnerships. .


2021 ◽  

The UCT Open Textbook Journeys monograph tells the stories of 11 academics at the University of Cape Town who embarked on open textbook development initiatives in order to provide their students with more accessible and locally relevant learning materials. Produced by the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) initiative, the monograph contributes towards a better understanding of open textbook production by providing details related to authors’ processes and their reflections on their work. The collection aims to provide rich anecdotal evidence about the factors driving open textbook activity and shed light on how to go about conceptualising and producing open textbooks, and to aid the articulation of emerging open textbook production models that advance social justice in higher education.


Author(s):  
Amy J. Binder ◽  
Kate Wood

This chapter asks who conservative students are by drawing on two sources. First are the surveys administered by the University of California at Los Angeles's Higher Education Research Institute to thousands of incoming college freshmen and graduating seniors during the 2000s. The second source is the data collected on different campuses, designed to shed light on the formative years of the students and alumni/ae in their families and their schools, their early experiences with conservatism, and how they acquired the politics bug. Using this information, the chapter examines the students' demographics, political identifications, precollege political styles, ideological orientations, religious affiliation, and social class background as well as their families' political backgrounds.


1995 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Fernández ◽  
Miguel A. Mateo ◽  
José Muñiz

The conditions are investigated in which Spanish university teachers carry out their teaching and research functions. 655 teachers from the University of Oviedo took part in this study by completing the Academic Setting Evaluation Questionnaire (ASEQ). Of the three dimensions assessed in the ASEQ, Satisfaction received the lowest ratings, Social Climate was rated higher, and Relations with students was rated the highest. These results are similar to those found in two studies carried out in the academic years 1986/87 and 1989/90. Their relevance for higher education is twofold because these data can be used as a complement of those obtained by means of students' opinions, and the crossing of both types of data can facilitate decision making in order to improve the quality of the work (teaching and research) of the university institutions.


1992 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-245
Author(s):  
Winton U. Solberg

For over two centuries, the College was the characteristic form of higher education in the United States, and the College was closely allied to the church in a predominantly Protestant land. The university became the characteristic form of American higher education starting in the late nineteenth Century, and universities long continued to reflect the nation's Protestant culture. By about 1900, however, Catholics and Jews began to enter universities in increasing numbers. What was the experience of Jewish students in these institutions, and how did authorities respond to their appearance? These questions will be addressed in this article by focusing on the Jewish presence at the University of Illinois in the early twentieth Century. Religion, like a red thread, is interwoven throughout the entire fabric of this story.


Author(s):  
Erda Wati Bakar

The Common European Framework of Reference for Language (CEFR) has become the standard used to describe and evaluate students’ command of a second or foreign language. It is an internationally acknowledged standard language proficiency framework which many countries have adopted such as China, Thailand, Japan and Taiwan. Malaysia Ministry of Education is aware and realise the need for the current English language curriculum to be validated as to reach the international standard as prescribed by the CEFR. The implementation of CEFR has begun at primary and secondary level since 2017 and now higher education institutions are urged to align their English Language Curriculum to CEFR as part of preparation in receiving students who have been taught using CEFR-aligned curriculum at schools by year 2022. This critical reflection article elucidates the meticulous processes that we have embarked on in re-aligning our English Language Curriculum to the standard and requirements of CEFR. The paper concludes with a remark that the alignment of the English curriculum at the university needs full support from the management in ensuring that all the stakeholders are fully prepared, informed and familiar with the framework.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 18
Author(s):  
Noorlaila Hj. Yunus ◽  
Siti Musalmah Ahmad Fuad

Work-Life Balance (WLB) is an important factor that the Human Resource Management of private higher education Institution (PHEI) should concern about in order to gain high Job Performance in theinstitution. If there are WLB practices implemented by the university, the Human Resource Department (HRD) must always get feedback from the employees to continuously improve the WLB policy. This will benefit not just the employees but the most important to the PHEI by having a good productivities and high job performance employees. The result shows that most of the employees in the university have good social support from their colleagues at work place, friends and their families. This support have given them inspiration and motivation in doing their job properly and finally they might achieved high job performance. Eventhough the result were positive about the social support the employees receives, the top management including the HRD need to revise their policy of WLBespecially other factors that can influenced the employees to optimized their efforts in doing their job.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 23-43
Author(s):  
Omi S. Salas-SantaCruz

In this article, the author explores the concept of terquedad or waywardness as a blueprint towards gender/queer justice in education. Using María Lugones’s (2003) theorizing resistance against multiple oppressions, the author presents Gloria Anzaldúa’s' writings in Borderlands/La Frontera (1987) and This Bridge Called My Back (1981/2015) as a project of storying the plurality of terquedad. In doing so, the author calls for a theory and praxis of terquedad as a framework to understand the embodied resistances queer and trans-Latinx/e students deploy as textual inconveniences to push back and resist the “institutional grammars” of U.S. universities (Crawford & Ostrom, 1995; Bonilla-Silva, 2012). Through a plática methodology (Fierros & Delgado Bernal, 2016), the author introduces Quiahuitl, a doctoral student engaging with a praxis of terquedad when confronted with institutional and sexual violence as she moves within and against the geographies and power structures of the university.


Author(s):  
Liubov Melnychuk

The author investigates and analyzes the state Chernivtsi National University during the Romanian period in Bukovina’s history. During that period in the field of education was held a radical change in the direction of intensive Romanization. In period of rigid occupation regime in the province, the government of Romania laid its hopes on the University. The Chernivtsi National University had become a hotbed of Romanization ideas, to ongoing training for church and state apparatus, to educate students in the spirit of devotion Romania. Keywords: Chernivtsi National University, Romania, Romanization, higher education, Bukovina


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