Everything’s ethics: Practitioner inquiry and university culture

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Holligan ◽  
Ibrahim Sirkeci

British universities are experiencing a climate of fiscal austerity including severe budget cuts coupled with intensifying competition for markets have seen the emergence of audit culture which afflicts the public sector in general. This entails the risk to the integrity of university culture disappearing. This paper seeks to explore the interconnections between developing trends in universities which cause processes likely to undermine the objectivity and independence of research. We question that universities’ alignment with the capitalist business sector and the dominant market economy culture. Despite arguably positive aspects, there is a danger that universities may be dominated by hegemonic sectional interest rather than narratives of openness and democratically oriented critique. We also argue that audit culture embedded in reputation management, quality control and ranking hierarchies may necessarily promote deception while diminishing a collegiate culture of trust and pursuit of truth which is replaced by destructive impersonal accountability procedures. Such transitions inevitably contain insidious implications for the nature of the academy and undermine the values of academic-intellectual life.


2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rawia Hayik

Conflicts between different religious groups occasionally arise in my Christian and Muslim Israeli-Arab EFL students’ school and area. In an attempt to increase students’ knowledge of and respect for other faiths in the region, I conducted practitioner inquiry research in my religiously diverse Middle-Eastern classroom. Grounded in critical literacy, I used a book set of religion-based literature alongside critical literacy engagements to effect some change in students’ tolerance towards other faiths. This article describes my journey of exploring students’ reader responses to religion-based texts and issues.


2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 147 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katerina Kedraka ◽  
Georgia Rotidi

The aim of this paper is to highlight University Pedagogy as a field that focuses on academics’ teaching role in Greek higher education. EU has recognized the need of improvement of the teaching skills of academics and urges the member states to recognize them as an important element of their professional profile. Only recently academics in Greece have launched the debate on innovative teaching and learning methods and practices. A Symposium that took place in 2016 and a significant empirical research are presented, because they are considered to mark the beginning of an emerging university culture, which incorporates the concern on teaching and learning excellence within higher education approaches in our country. The results of these initiatives indicate that critical self-reflection on teaching can lead to the transformation and to the adoption of alternative teaching practices, since the critically reflective process is a crucial point for the enhancement of an academic’s pedagogical, curricular and instructional knowledge.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Caitlin Hindle ◽  
Vikki Boliver ◽  
Ann Maclarnon ◽  
Cheryl McEwan ◽  
Bob Simpson ◽  
...  

Targets set by the UK Office for Students require highly academically selective UK universities to enrol a greater percentage of students identified as least likely to participate in higher education. Such students are typically at a disadvantage in terms of levels of academic preparedness and economic, cultural and social capital. Drawing on eighteen interviews with first-generation students at Durham University, we identify five sites of pressure: developing a sense of belonging within the terms of an elite university culture, engagement in student social activities, financial worries, concerns about academic progress, and self-transformation. Based on these insights, we argue that support for first-generation scholars will require that universities recognise and redress elitist cultures that discourage applications from prospective first-generation scholars and prevent those who do enrol from having the best educational and all-round experience.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 118-127
Author(s):  
Maria Kaguhangire-Barifaijo ◽  
◽  
James Nkata ◽  
Elizabeth Lwanga ◽  
◽  
...  

This article proposes an ‘institution ethnography inquiry’ to establish dominant university culture to unravel hidden censures which have led to a divisive, deceptive and uncivil culture that has disrupted the normative flow of common sense. An integrative synthesis and review summaries were adopted to guide the discussion. To discern the type of culture that exists in these universities, two objectives were adopted; (i) analyze emerging university culture and its implications, and (ii) assess the significance of an institutional ethnography inquiry in extricating emerging university culture. Attributes of governance, leadership and personal traits were found to be fundamental pointers to both existing and emerging university culture. As a requisite for the adoption of this inquiry, four (4) theories were identified, reviewed and synthesized. All the theories revealed that the proposed inquiry had potential benefits to expose new-fangled and unique culture that blemished the academia, as well as the intricacies that surround institutional politics, that have infiltrated academia. Hence, an ethnography inquiry should be embraced and promoted as a mode of inquiry for its latency to unravel dysfunctional culture and tackle such contentious topics. Nonetheless, ethnographers must undergo intensive training in ethnography subtleties to gain superior competencies. Keywords: Academia, university culture, institution ethnography inquiry.


Author(s):  
Genevieve Marie Johnson ◽  
Audrey Cooke

Ecological theory conceptualized the student as surrounded by a series of environmental systems and the processes of learning as interaction between the student (i.e., bioecology) and the systems (i.e., microsystem, exosystem and macrosystem). This chapter synthesizes the literature and proposes an ecological model of student interaction in online learning environments. Specifically, learner-learner, learner-instructor and learner-content interactions occur in the microsystem and are mediated by the interface subsystem. Student microsystemic interactions influence and are influenced by the instructional design exosystem. The macrosystem reflects the indirect influence of university culture on all aspects of the microsystem, exosystem and interface subsystem. The chronosystem captures the effect of time on the student and on all ecological systems (e.g., students mature and university culture evolves)


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