Understanding Higher Education : Alternative Perspectives

• Record Nr.: UNINA9910552759603321
• Autore: Bowie Chrissie
• Pubbl/distr/stampa: Oxford : , : African Minds, , 2021; ©2021
• ISBN: 9781928502227; 1928502229
• Descrizione fisica: 1 online resource (182 pages)
• Altri autori (Persone): McKennaSioux
• Disciplina: 378
• Soggetti: Education, Higher; South Africa
• Lingua di pubblicazione: Inglese
• Formato: Materiale a stampa
• Livello bibliografico: Monografia
• Nota di contenuto: Cover -- Title page -- About the book -- Acknowledgements -- Copyright page -- Contents -- 1. Taking stock -- Global change and higher education -- The challenge for the Global South -- Why look at South Africa? -- What does this book aim to do? -- 2. Making sense of experiences and observations -- Doing research on teaching and learning -- The nature of reality -- Archer's Social Realism -- Archer's morphogenetic framework -- 3. Dominant discourses, policy challenges -- The global and the local -- The macro level -- The meso and micro levels -- Policy after apartheid -- Curriculum and the global economy -- Quality assurance -- Funding higher education -- Reorganising the system -- The Higher Education Qualifications Sub-Framework -- Conclusion -- 4. Denying context, misunderstanding students -- The power of the words we use -- Students as decontextualised individuals -- The misappropriation of theories on teaching and learning -- The 'language problem' and how it lets universities off the hook -- Reading and writing as ideological acts -- Fixing the problem of academic literacy -- Disadvantage as an explanation for failure -- The university as a neutral space -- Students as clients -- Students as social beings, the university as a social space -- Foregrounding students' epistemological access -- Conclusion -- 5. Reconceptualising curriculum, structuring access -- What is ; curriculum? -- The curriculum is conditioned by the structure of knowledge -- The curriculum provides access to powerful knowledge -- The curriculum is conditioned by social context -- The curriculum is conditioned by institutional histories -- Historical differentiation by race -- Private higher education -- The focus on programmes and modules -- Extended curricula -- Academic advising -- Conclusion -- 6. Resisting and complying. Academics responding to change.; Academics and agency -- The conditioning role of the discipline in academics' identity formation -- The history of the system and the conditioning of individuals -- New Public Management and managerialism -- Staffing in a global structure -- The emergence of compliance -- Ever-increasing demands on academic life -- Staff demographics -- Concluding thoughts -- 7. Evaluating change, looking forward -- Introduction -- The landscape at T4 -- A differentiated and developmental system -- A Covid Postscript -- References -- Back cover.
• Sommario/riassunto: Drawing on the South African case, this book looks at shifts in higher education around the world in the last two decades. In South Africa, calls for transformation have been heard in the university since the last days of apartheid. Similar claims for quality higher education to be made available to all have been made across the African continent. In spite of this, inequalities remain and many would argue that these have been exacerbated during the Covid pandemic. Understanding Higher Education responds to these calls by arguing for a social account of teaching and learning by contesting dominant understandings of students as 'decontextualised learners' premised on the idea that the university is a meritocracy. This book tackles the issue of teaching and learning by looking both within and beyond the classroom. It looks at how higher education policies emerged from the notion of the knowledge economy in the newly democratic South Africa, and how national qualification frameworks and other processes brought the country more closely into conversation with the global order. The effects of this on staffing and curriculum structures are considered alongside a proposition for alternative ways of understanding the role of higher education in society.