Linguistic hegemony in global recognition: English-mediated internationalisation at Indonesian higher education institutions

To increase global recognition and quality education, universities in Indonesia establish English-mediated International University Programs (IUPs). Within different capacities and resources, however, internationalisation sometimes preserves inequalities among Indonesian higher education institutions (IHEIs). This study investigates how the practice of English-mediated internationalisation may not only support global recognition and quality education but also perpetuate linguistic hegemony. Framed by Canagarajah’s (1999b) Linguistic Imperialism (LI) and Pennycook’s (2017) critical perspective of English as an international language, government document analysis and semi-structured interviews with lecturers and students reveal different international programs, ranging from deliberation to initial emergence. Most IUPs are deliberately designed to cater for international students by providing high-standard infrastructure, international curriculum and quality human resources in order to increase international admissions and partnerships which are essential for international recognition. Despite these attempts, several have not been successful in attracting international enrolments and recognition. In contrast, other programs are not deliberate but are initially emerging to become international and attract overseas students. The study also discusses some emerging linguistic hegemony between English and maintenance of national language in the internationalisation of the Indonesian tertiary sector.

Frog and Toad at the Academy: Gareth B. Matthews on how children’s literature goes philosophical

Gareth B. Matthews (1929–2011) inaugurated the study of philosophy in children’s literature by simultaneously arguing (1) that philosophy is essentially an encounter with certain kinds of perplexities, (2) that genuine philosophical perplexities are readily found in many children’s stories, and (3) that many children are capable of appreciating and enjoying them. He wrote 58 reviews of philosophical children’s stories and co-authored a series of teacher guides for using such stories. Following Matthews’ example, others have produced resources recommending children’s stories as stimuli for intergenerational philosophical dialog. In our research, we study and systematize the different ways that Matthews understood children’s stories to go philosophical. Here, we introduce five of those ways: philosophical story irony, philosophical story fancy, thought experiment, philosophical fable, and philosophical story realism. For each of these ways, we define a set of literary elements and describe the kind of philosophical perplexity they invite, illustrating with examples from children’s literature reviewed and discussed by Matthews. We intend our article to shed new light on Matthews’ scholarship, to guide (ourselves and others) in locating some of the elements in children’s stories that occasion different types of philosophical perplexity, and to spark new conversations among philosophers and educators about this promising field.

Confronting horror, embracing fantasy: A conversation about Lovecraft Country and radical imagination in higher education

Higher education is at a pivotal point of reflection due to the forces of neoliberalism, anti-Blackness, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. In the past, higher education has overlooked the university’s far future, opting to focus on readily conspicuous change. Along with this disregarded conversation, these crises present higher education faculty, administrators, and staff an opportunity to critically re-think the future of higher education given what we know now and what we do not. In this dialogic essay between a higher education policy doctoral student and a tenured media and communications professor, the authors peer into the hit HBO series Lovecraft Country and its underlying themes of horror, fantasy, and historical reality to extract vital lessons for higher education. The authors further participate in conversations about utilizing world and storymaking tactics to help higher education envision the university of the future—a future that is radical and boundless.

A possible review by the European ministry of education in 2050—by a reluctant manager of Europe’s path towards educational dependency

Murat Adam is head of policy and curriculum for the European ministry of education. Political pressure is rising. Media channels across the European federation are labeling the continent as the most recent member of the education periphery. In Mr Adam’s world, curricular authority transpires from the big 3, the North American Union (NAU), China, and Russia. Credibility and endorsement are educational currencies—institutional capital as Bourdieu once defined it, reigns. Mr Adam’s battle is already lost, member states of the European federation have lost their educational means of production, but he cannot afford to admit that. European teachers’ credentials increasingly force graduates into care taking jobs at digital day cares. These are a response to US teachers’ and practitioners’ revolts of the late 20s, linked to perceived multisensory impoverishment of digitally schooled children. Just like in South Asia, Africa, and South America, digital day cares merely provide the digital and social framework and setup K-12 students to listen to internationally accredited professionals teach from China, Russia, and the NAU. Day and night shifts are common. He knows that the European federation lost the contest, by the time it decided not to invest into its own internet infrastructure. The educational first world’s curricular authority would not have been possible without the three nations’ proprietary server architecture, which commodified bandwidth and connectivity. The internet of the past is nothing more than a front for the three de-facto mutually exclusive digital ecosystems, provided by China, the NAU, and Russia.

The postdigital turn: Philosophy, education, research

This article develops a post-determinist and a post-instrumentalist understanding of education and educational research through the lens of postdigital theory. We begin with historicizing current postdigital research by showing its intellectual ancestry and recognizing its rapidly changing nature. We move on to current state of the art, which we present in three wide themes. The first theme is the great convergence of various lower-level techno-scientific convergences, such as analogue–digital, physics–biology, and biology–information, which results in new epistemologies, ontologies and practices. The second theme is some consequences of the great convergence for education and pedagogy, which result in new postdigital ecopedagogies. The third theme is postdigital research, which is reconfigured by the great convergence towards a closer collaboration between traditional scientific fields and disciplines. We briefly outline four such reconfigurations (multidisciplinary, interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, and antidisciplinarity) and their implications. The article concludes with a brief list of directions for future work in the field.

Equity in high school computer science: Beyond access

Little is known about the extent to which expansions of K-12 computer science (CS) have been equitable for students of different racial backgrounds and gender identities. Using longitudinal course-level data from all high schools in California between the 2003–2004 and 2018–2019 school years we find that 79% of high school students in California, including majorities of all racial groups, are enrolled in schools that offer CS, up from 45% in 2003. However, while male and female students are equally likely to attend schools that offer CS courses, CS courses represent a much smaller share of course enrollments for female students than for male students. Non-Asian students enroll in relatively few CS courses, and this is particularly true for Black, Hispanic, and Native American students. Race gaps in CS participation are to a substantial degree explicable in terms of access gaps, but gender gaps in CS participation are not. Different groups of students have access to CS teachers with similar observable qualifications, but CS teachers remain predominantly white and male. Consequently, white and male CS students are much more likely than other students to have same-race or same-gender instructors. Our findings and the implications we draw for practice will be of interest to administrators and policymakers who, over and above needing to ensure equitable access to CS courses for students, need to attend carefully to equity-related course participation and staffing considerations.

‘Cognitive enhancers’: A qualitative exploration of university students’ experiences with prescription medicines for academic purposes

Qualitative work with students who use prescription medicines for academic purposes is limited. Thus, a more nuanced understanding of tertiary students’ experiences is urgently needed. Our study – which draws on five semi-structured interviews with New Zealand university students, complemented with information from local newspapers, blog entries and discussion forums – reveals students’ motivations and perceived effects, their risk perceptions and provides insights into the circumstances enabling the engagement with prescription medicines for academic purposes. Students were influenced by peers and social norms; and ideas about identity, morality and fairness also played a role for engaging with cognitive enhancers. Students used high levels of stress and workload to justify their use but took individual responsibility for their practices. By taking responsibility in this way, rather than considering it as a product of their environment, they buy into the neoliberal university discourse. Unexpectedly, some participants were already receiving medically justified psychopharmacological treatment but extended and supplemented this with nonmedical use. Others considered their use as being for academic emergencies, and that their low level of use helped manage risks. Overall, students viewed pharmacological cognitive enhancement for improving academic performance as cautious, safe, and morally acceptable. We argue in this paper that a local understanding of students’ motivations, justifications and perceptions of pharmacological cognitive enhancement is required, to tailor policies and support systems better to their needs and behaviours.