The Routledge International Handbook of Higher Education

Malcolm Tight, Ka Ho Mok, Jeroen Huisman, Christopher Morphew, Malcolm Tight, Ka Ho Mok, Jeroen Huisman, Christopher Morphew

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN:
  9781138576995
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134082001
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This volume is a detailed and up-to-date reference work providing an authoritative overview of the main issues in higher education around the world today. Consisting of newly commissioned chapters and impressive journal articles, it surveys the state of the discipline and includes the examination and discussion of emerging, controversial and cutting edge areas.

IX
Knowledge

This, the final section of the handbook, contains four chapters on the theme of knowledge. Under this general heading, the chapters address the nature of academic research, the consequences of disciplinarity, the impact of changing forms of knowledge, and the continuing significance of the liberal ideal to our understanding of the nature of the university.

Arguably, this theme gets to the heart of what higher education and, in particular, the long-lasting but continually adapting institution we know as the university are all about. A consideration of knowledge raises fundamental questions about what we know, how we know it, and what we then do with it.

These are questions which have engaged many of our foremost researchers over the years, as in Becher’s (1989; Becher and Trowler, 2001) work on disciplinary tribes and territories, Clark’s (1984, 1993) comparative studies of higher education, Gibbons et al.’s discussions about the changing nature of research (Gibbons et al., 1994; Nowotny et al., 2001), and Barnett’s (1990, 1997) contributions to the debate—which has continued virtually since universities were first established—on the “idea” of the university.

They are also questions which range over the artificial boundaries we have necessarily imposed upon the organisation of this handbook, coming up also, for example, in Krause’s chapter—discussing the links between the roles of research, teaching and service—in the section on academic work.

In the first of the four chapters in this section, Angela Brew examines the nature of academic research in contemporary society. After discussing the definition(s) and purposes of research, she considers a series of in-built conflicts or contradictions in its practice: between the different interests involved; between the imagination required to undertake meaningful research and others’ desire to control it; and in the values held by researchers, their employers and funders. Underlying her argument is the recognition that academic research is embedded within society, no longer something carried out, if it ever was, in an “ivory tower”.

Ruth Neumann considers disciplinarity in parallel to knowledge. Starting again with some definitions, she reviews the development of disciplinary forms through history and their current proliferation, with the rise of trans- and inter-disciplinary concerns. She notes the impact of these developments on the structuring of knowledge and the internal organisation of universities. And she considers how the different characteristics of disciplines affect research and teaching.

Merle Jacob takes as his topic the redefinition of the role of higher education and research, focusing on recent experience in Western European countries. His concern is with how changes in the ways that higher education and research are organised and funded impact upon the production, dissemination and value accorded to knowledge. With the funding and evaluation of teaching and research now increasingly separated, universities, which have long valued the interaction between the two activities, face new challenges as they seek to define their future missions.

Finally, Tony Harland discusses the university, neoliberal reform and the liberal educational ideal, noting the tensions between the last two of these terms. He reviews the neoliberal challenge to the older liberal ideas embodied in the university, and their effects on organisation, culture and knowledge. The continuing existence of the liberal ideal, however, suggests much about its essential value and importance.

References

Barnett, R. (1990). The Idea of Higher Education. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Barnett, R. (1997). Higher Education: a critical business. Buckingham: Open University Press.

Becher, T. (1989). Academic Tribes and Territories: intellectual enquiry and the cultures of disciplines. Milton Keynes: Open University Press.

Becher, T. and Trowler, P. (2001). Academic Tribes and Territories: intellectual enquiry and the culture of disciplines. Buckingham: Open University Press, 2nd edn.

Clark, B. (ed.) (1984). Perspectives on Higher Education: eight disciplinary and comparative views. Berkeley, CA, University of California Press.

Clark, B. (ed.) (1993). The Research Foundations of Graduate Education: Germany, Britain, France, United States, Japan. Berkeley, CA, University of California Press.

Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Scott, P., Schwartzmann, S. and Trow, M. (1994). The New Production of Knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. London: Sage.

Nowotny, H., Scott, P. and Gibbons, M. (2001). Re-thinking Science: knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press.

34
Academic Research in Contemporary Society

Angela Brew

Considerations of research in contemporary society are inevitably tied to theories of that society and the academy as an institution within it. Yet research creates the very theories which explain society. So, paradoxically, research is positioned inside and outside theories of contemporary society. In order to understand the nature of research in society, we must first consider what academic research is and does. This is by no means straightforward. At every turn, contradictions confront us. This chapter explores these contradictions, first by examining the competing interests that academic research serves, and exploring the ways in which power is exercised within universities. It then goes on to examine how creativity and fiction are embedded in research policy and practice. Specifically, the chapter explores how research is sustained by the ways in which society, universities and individuals create fictions about themselves and their work. Conflicts in values are then explored. The chapter discusses the preservation of elitism within the academy alongside espousal of democratic values, and the way values of inclusivity are denied through power. Finally, the chapter shows what research could look like if person-centred values were dominant. It examines the role of reflexive awareness, and suggests that researchers face the risks of coping with the complexity and ambiguity of a contemporary globalised society by minimising their reflexive awareness and focusing on more immediate concerns.

So what is research? Nowotny et al. (2001) argue that the definition of research is affected by such things as the increasing number of contexts in which it is carried out, the proliferation of demands for knowledge in specific contexts, and the mix of practices, methods and beliefs which now constitute it. Within this context, they suggest that the rules of engagement are fuzzy and being made up as we go along: “There is a high degree of uncertainty, there is no clear-cut direction but many competing ideas, theories and methods, and no one is in overall charge” (p. 115). Not only are there so many more political, social, economic and individual factors having a say in how research should be organised and conducted, but greater contextualisation within society is affecting ideas about what constitutes “objective knowledge” and how the reliability of research knowledge is assessed. Nowotny et al. argue that powerful individuals, groups and institutions present ways through this ambivalence, but they cannot articulate its full complexity, nor can they present the best or even the most appropriate ways forward in many contexts. Indeed, they are part of the complexity and simply add to the ambiguity. This presents a paradox for this very chapter. Saying anything about research in contemporary society is inevitably going to fail to articulate the full extent of its complexity.

If we are to understand the nature of research in contemporary society, we must have some ideas about what we mean by contemporary society. This will depend on the theoretical perspective we adopt. Contemporary theories of higher education have tended to talk in terms of the responses of academics to neo-liberalism (Marginson, 2007; Marginson and Considine, 2000; Slaughter 1993). Such theories suggest that research pursues performative agendas, designed to meet the needs of governments who exercise increasing levels of surveillance over the academy.

Rather than being confined to one particular theoretical tradition, I prefer to take an eclectic approach, focusing on ideas that illuminate aspects of society in ways that enable the drawing out of what I like to call the “ironic turn” in theories of research. I use this term to cover the contradictions, paradoxes, and incongruities that emerge when we look closely at re...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Section I: Introduction
• Section II: Teaching and Learning
• Section III: Course Design
• Section IV: The Student Experience
• Section V: Quality
• Section VI: System Policy
• Section VII: Institutional Management
• Section VIII: Academic Work
• Section IX: Knowledge
• Index