Group items tagged

Creating desirable academic departments for individuals' well-being and quality scholarship is an important effort as well as a novel idea. The focus of this reflective article is twofold: (a) We present a social capital theory of social justice covenants as a product and process of community building, and (b) we share the multiple lived experiences of three scholars within the context of our department's covenant ideology and practice. We explore how faculty can promote community and civility by not only developing but also enacting an internally generated covenant while operating within a larger institutional context that produces tension. As related to our purposes, we examined the relevant literature on social capital, capacity building, workplace environments, and organizational covenants to frame our discussion of community-driven action in education. We include an extended application of a covenant that guides our departmental faculty's social outlook, interpersonal behavior, scholarly work, and communal activism. Although our focus is on change-oriented, grassroots activity within higher education, the public schooling context is considered.

Globalizing Education Policy. Fazal Rizvi and Bob Lingard. New York: Routledge, 2010. 228 pp. $45.95 (paper); and Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom. David Harvey. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 352 pp. $27.50 (cloth). The authors of the texts reviewed here situate current education and social policies within the rise of the neoliberal state and describe how Friedman's free market capitalism became the dominant view of society not only in the United States, but also throughout much of the globe. Rizvi and Lingard explain how neoliberalism became the dominant "social imaginary which is, as Taylor (2007) defines, the way in which large groups of people "imagine their social existence-how they fit together with others and how things go on between them and their fellows, the expectations that are normally met and the deeper normative notions and images that underlie these expectations" (19). The concept of social imaginary is useful in placing how people think about the world within the context of culture, economic, and political events. Social imaginary differs from social theory in that it is held by large groups of people, and often communicated in stories and anecdotes. However, although it may be less theoretical, it is no less powerful because it shapes how people think of the role of government and the "nature and scope of political authority" (Rizvi and Lingard 2010, 13). It reminds us that how people view the world is largely contested not theoretically, but at the level of lived experience. Consequently, scholars and members of the educational community must explicitly engage in problematizing our social imaginaries.

"The authors explore the challenges inherent in traversing the multiple boundaries between sociology and social work, and the academy and the community, by examining a service learning course on hunger and homelessness taught by two sociology professors and two social workers on the staff of a community service organization. The authors draw on instructional team meetings and correspondence, observation of class sessions, and formal and informal course evaluations to analyze three "moments": the planning process, a pivotal class session, and students' final presentations. They found that both their teaching and students' learning were enriched by disciplinary differences in knowledge claims, the design and utility of qualitative research, and the process of drawing conclusions from, and making arguments using, qualitative data. The authors conclude that experiential learning has value beyond providing students hands-on experiences. It can also provide a laboratory in which students and instructors can explore the similarities and differences between sociology, social work, and other disciplines."

This paper explores some of the unresolved tensions in higher education systems and the contradiction between widening participation and the consolidation of social position. It shows how concepts of capital derived from Bourdieu, Coleman and Putnam provide a powerful basis for critique, but risk a deficit view of students from less privileged backgrounds. These students are more likely to attend lower-status institutions and engage with an externally focused curriculum. The paper argues for greater attention to agency, and community and familial capital, in conceptualising the resilience of those from less privileged backgrounds. While the recognition of 'voice' is important, a curriculum that acknowledges the context independence of knowledge is essential if these students are not to be further disadvantaged.

"The nano initiative in the US and elsewhere encourages and promotes various forms of multi-stakeholder activities, such as industrial collaborations. Forming part of the discourse of expectations around emerging technologies, collaboration is an important resource holding together different practices of knowledge production. In the conversations between policy and science, collaboration becomes a measurable entity and a measure in itself, figuring in the evaluations of the performance of individual faculty and research centres; however, the policy metaphor of 'collaboration' stands for a variety of different forms and shapes of interactions between university and industry. From a discourse analysis perspective, 'folk theories' of nano collaboration help to explore the dynamics of the university/industry boundary in the scientific organisational discourse as in a recent series of interactions with scientists, university officials and technology transfer officers in a number of US universities. What does the introduction of the new entity (nano) mean for scientists, and for university practices of technology transfer and commercialisation, in terms of trying to accommodate individual 'nano' cases into university regulations and procedures? How are these practices and experiences discussed in terms of collaboration? Assessments of value of collaboration ranged between polarised views, raising questions about occasions, audiences and communities of assessors invoked in the construction of acceptable accounts of nano collaboration. Metaphors and analogies were used to mobilise specific meanings in the discourses of the innovative potential of emerging fields. As such, assessments of the potential of terms pertinent to the emerging discourses, such as collaboration, would be better based on the assumption of shared meanings, not fixed and given, but actively achieved."

This study aims to understand Korean students' motivations for studying in US graduate schools. For this purpose, I conducted in-depth interviews with 50 Korean graduate students who were enrolled in a research-centered US university at the time of the interview. In these interviews, I sought to understand how their motivations are connected not only with their family, school, and occupational backgrounds, but also with the stratification of global higher education. Theoretically, this paper attempts to combine the concept of global positional competition with Pierre Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital in the field of global education. By critically examining a push-pull model of transnational higher education choice-making, this study situates Korean students' aspirations in the contexts of global power and the hierarchy of knowledge-degree production and consumption. After analyzing the students' qualitative interviews, I classify their motivations for earning US degrees within four categories: enhancing their class positions and enlarging their job opportunities; pursuing learning in the global center of learning; escaping the undemocratic system and culture in Korean universities; and fulfilling desires to become cosmopolitan elites armed with English communication skills and connections within the global professional network. Based on this analysis, I argue that Korean students pursue advanced degrees in the United States in order to succeed in the global positional competition within Korea as well as in the global job marketplace. As they pursue advanced US degrees, Korean students internalize US hegemony as it reproduces the global hierarchy of higher education, but at the same time Korean students see US higher education as a means of liberation that resolves some of the inner contradictions of Korean higher education, including gender discrimination, a degree caste system, and an authoritarian learning culture. Therefore, this study links Korean students'

This article aims to introduce corporate social responsibility (CSR) as an ideational concept that is being globally and regionally engineered by an epistemic community of elite stakeholders that include business, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations and government. The concept of CSR engineering seeks to address gaps in the literature that neglect the emergence of a highly integrated network of elite brokers committed to neoliberal ideology and the manufacturing of ethical corporate governance. Conclusions are drawn from 60 semi-structured interviews with key CSR stakeholders and well over 250 'off-the-record' conversations held at 60 industry-led conferences. The findings suggest that when powerbases within the elite networks are exposed, the Western nation-state is revealed as the most dominant stakeholder.

Since the late 1990s, the intersection of education and migration policies in Australia has shifted international students from transient consumers to potential citizens. This article analyses responses to the 'problem' of international students as consumers, workers, and migrants, particularly the conceptualization of their rights and protections, and the ways students have been positioned as both passive subjects and activist citizens. The article provides a theoretical review of academic, government, community, and media responses to international students in general and the consequences of the education-migration nexus in particular. It argues that discourses of human rights and consumer rights have become increasingly interconnected in these debates. This analysis adds to the emerging literature on changing conceptions of rights and citizenship in neoliberal contexts, and also illuminates the social and political consequences of the education-migration nexus in Australia. This will have resonance for countries who have implemented a raft of similar policies.

This contribution explores the transformation of higher education policy from the mere co-ordination of educational curricula by national governments to the embodiment of the Lisbon Agenda's 'governance architecture', together with its impact on national policies, institutions and actors. It does so by charting change in both policy outputs and policy outcomes in four different European countries - England, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy - and by relating these changes to the ideational and organizational aspects of the Lisbon Strategy. We suggest that Lisbon acted as a 'script' to be followed by national governments and other policy actors, enabling them to gradually adapt to Lisbon-induced ideational and organizational pressures, and to shape national organizational and communicative discourses that can overcome entrenched interests and transform the prevailing perception of higher education so deeply rooted in national cultural and policy traditions.

This contribution explores the transformation of higher education policy from the mere co-ordination of educational curricula by national governments to the embodiment of the Lisbon Agenda's 'governance architecture', together with its impact on national policies, institutions and actors. It does so by charting change in both policy outputs and policy outcomes in four different European countries - England, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy - and by relating these changes to the ideational and organizational aspects of the Lisbon Strategy. We suggest that Lisbon acted as a 'script' to be followed by national governments and other policy actors, enabling them to gradually adapt to Lisbon-induced ideational and organizational pressures, and to shape national organizational and communicative discourses that can overcome entrenched interests and transform the prevailing perception of higher education so deeply rooted in national cultural and policy traditions.

Based on the Community Innovation Survey, this paper suggests new indicators of innovation adoption. The magnitude of innovation adoption is assessed for 22 EU countries and different industries. The most striking feature is the correlation between the innovation activities and the adoption rate. Countries with strong R&D and human resources and high innovation output exhibit the highest adoption rates. This supports the idea that innovation adoption requires an absorption capability. In addition, the specificities of each country regarding the prevailing types of innovation and adoption (product or process, cooperation-based adoption or internal adoption) allow us to draw up a typology of the EU countries, for which a specific geographical pattern is observed.

"Public-private partnerships in education (ePPP) are acquiring increasing centrality in the agendas of international organizations and development agencies dealing with educational affairs. They are designed as an opportunity to correct inefficiencies in the public delivery of education and to mobilize new resources to increase the access to and cost-effectiveness of education in low-income contexts. This article explores the emergence of ePPP as a 'programmatic idea' and, in particular, the semiotic strategies by means of which this idea has been located in the global education agenda and promoted internationally among practice communities by a network of policy entrepreneurs. The analysis is supported by extensive fieldwork and by a new approach to the analysis of the framing and mobilization of new policy ideas, which incorporates literature on agenda setting, policy entrepreneurs, and policy frame analysis. The approach reveals the complex way in which policy ideas, political actors, institutions, and material factors interact to strategically put forward new policy alternatives in developing contexts."

"This paper reflects critically on challenges and opportunities associated with developing a theoretical framework for an interdisciplinary Framework Programme 6 research project funded by the European Commission in the area of digital ecosystems. The paper first provides a description of the interdisciplinary structure of the research agenda of the project and the areas of digital ecosystem research prioritised by each discipline. Second, it discusses the challenging questions of epistemology that arose in the context of theorising interdisciplinary research and provides a summary of how these were dealt with in order to outline a theoretical framework for digital ecosystems research by the end of the project. Finally, it discusses the lessons that can be extrapolated from the project experience, arguing that it is impossible to develop a unified interdisciplinary theoretical framework due to irreconcilable epistemological differences, yet it is possible and very worthwhile for those adhering to various disciplinary perspectives to collaborate towards the achievement of a practical joint endeavour. These lessons, which are considered valuable to the broader research community, are summarised in a model of the (im)possibility of interdisciplinarity."