Session Information
Session 3, Changing trends in higher education
Papers
Time:
2004-09-23
09:00-10:30
Room:
Chair:
Barbara Zamorski
Discussant:
Barbara Zamorski
Contribution
The organisational and social structures in the institutions of Higher Education in Sweden as well as in Europe as a whole are undergoing dramatic changes due to political commitments, more heterogeneous student cohorts and a shift from a focus on teaching to a focus on learning. In this paper the focus is on the change in relationship between students and between student-faculty when learning and student-centred activities are guiding principles for the organising of the work of students as well as faculty.Higher Education in Europe have a long tradition of shielding the academic freedom and the freedom of the academics from the bourgeois, as well as protecting the colleagueal fellowship and leadership. Since 1968 the demands for widening participation of students into Higher Education as well as globalization and a new public management have shaken the old structures. This is enacted in student attrition and retention patterns, in policymaking and funding, in the organising and management. In politics and organisational psychology the gap between "the grass roots" and politicians and management is well known. Resistance to change used to b e enacted in demonstrations and collective protesting but today, as a result of a more decentralised organisation, resistance is enacted in organisational relations. In Higher Education the most critical relation is recognised to be between teacher-student, but in this paper I will argue that the student-student relation is equally important in a learning environment where the teacher takes on the role of facilitator, tutor or assessor and where peers are expected to promote and support the learning process.For a couple of years I have been working with "reflection groups" in Higher Education, with the purpose to facilitate the entrance to the academic context for students from non-academic background and to facilitate co-operation and group based work in student centred and problem based learning contexts. Senior students have met groups of junior students on a regular basis during the first semester in a 4-5 year study program. I have supervised the senior students in their role as mentor of their group.In this paper I will discuss the issues below, raised in these supervising sessions, reflecting the changing relations in Higher Education.· Organisational conflicts and conflicts with authorities are avoided and enacted as inter-individual or inter-group conflicts· A strive for homogeneity reinforce status hierarchies and counteract critical thinking and divergent thinking and learning· The explicit power relations are constantly negotiated in various feed back relationsThere is a mutual collusion going on between teachers and students, as well ass between students and students, that can be interpreted as the enactment of their resistance towards the changing structures and the changing relations in Higher Education.
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