Whither Higher Education Research As A Sub-discipline? Perspectives Of Newer Researchers On Careers, Shaping Higher Educational Policy And Research Communities.

Author(s):

Rosemary Deem(presenting / submitting)Lynn McAlpine Paul Ashwin

Conference:

ECER 2014

Network:

22. Research in Higher Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

22 SES 09 C, Academic Work and Professional Development

Paper Session

Time:

2014-09-04

11:00-12:30

Room:

B022 Anfiteatro

Chair:

Mari Karm

Contribution

The paper draws on a recent qualitative study of newer researchers across Europe and beyond, all working in the sub-field of higher education, which was aimed at examining the academic and employment backgrounds of these newer researchers, their current research topics, their expectations and experiences as regards shaping higher education policy and their understanding of their future as academics or other kinds of professionals working on higher education matters. What is forming the academic identities of these beginning researchers (Henkel 2000; Musselin and Becquet 2005), why are they doing the research they are and where do they hope that will it take them? These were all particularly interesting research questions for us in undertaking this project, partly propelled by a desire to know how newer researchers should and could be supported in their personal development as well as by curiosity about just who becomes a higher education researcher. We had a particular interest when conducting our study in whether working on higher education as well as within it, on any topic, meant that HE researchers are particularly aware of the wider policy implications and context of their work. We already know that published higher education research, though drawing on the methods of the social sciences, tends not to be very theoretical in orientation (Tight 2004; Tight 2012 ), so perhaps as a counter to that, it is often very applied, either aimed at practitioners or policy makers? In this regard, we have used work by Ball et al on school teachers as policy actors or subjects (Ball et al. 2011b; Ball et al. 2011) to help us examine the policy knowledge, actual or future policy interventions and policy-related concerns of our own interviewees. The research also enabled some elements of the development of the sub-discipline of higher education to be explored. It is still a relatively new but complex and growing field (Clegg 2012 ; McFarlane and Grant 2012 ), with many internal divisions (and has participants with very varied subject roots) and a large number of doctoral students, possibly partly fuelled by massification of higher education, the effects of the Bologna process on higher education systems, quality assurance practices and curricula and the growing significance of teaching and learning within these changes, particularly in countries which are signatories to Bologna and in the EU in particular (European Commission High Level Group on the Modernisation of Higher Education 2013). But this does not necessarily mean that higher education research has a secure disciplinary footprint within the academy. We were interested to see how many of our respondents had become newer researchers in well-funded large research centres of higher education. Furthermore, beginning researchers working in a newish subfield may have no sense of being located within a particular discipline or academic community, perhaps giving rise to what can be called a ‘weak’ field (Vauchez 2008) and definitely to what Bourdieu would term a contested field (Bourdieu 1986), since there are few signs of consensus in higher education research as a whole. So we were also interested in whether our respondents did or did not perceive themselves to be part of a sub-discipline or particular academic community.

Method

The research was carried out by the authors as part of work undertaken for a series of workshops funded by the Donald Bligh Fund via the UK Society for Research into Higher Education in 2011-13. We drew up a theoretical sample of 42 newer researchers, gathered through learned society email lists (including EERA Network 22) and website postings, personal or institutional contacts and recent graduates of doctoral programmes on higher education. We are aware that opportunity samples such as this have limitations when seeking to generalise from our findings (Mayring 2007) but it would have been difficult to construct such a broad sample in any other way. Most interviewees were based in Europe when we interviewed them, although not all were EU citizens. The concept of newer researcher was not strictly defined; we allowed our respondents to decide if they fitted this definition themselves. Some respondents were completely new to higher education and academic research; others had worked in higher education for years as teachers or administrators but had only recently entered the research arena. We conducted the semi-structured qualitative interviews mostly by Skype or telephone. Respondents were assured of confidentiality and anonymity and signed a consent form allowing them to withdraw from the process at any stage. Ethical approval was sought and given by the University of Oxford. Interviews were digitally recorded except where anyone was uncomfortable with this. The interviews typically took between 30 minutes and one hour. The resulting recordings were listened to several times and summary notes taken, with verbatim notes used for key aspects of each interview. Our interview data were analysed by searching for recurring themes, comparing and contrasting biographies, experiences, motivations and perceptions. Our initial ideas about these were interrogated across the team of researchers. In our analysis we examined the kinds of academic networking and social scientific capital that our respondents were acquiring, their research topics and motivations for being involved in research, any views that they had about recent HE policy and any plans to use their work in shaping the policies of European or other higher education systems and institutions, as well as their future career intentions.

Expected Outcomes

We found varied routes into higher education research whilst the choice of topic was often practitioner-focused rather than theoretical. Many hankered after an academic or academic/administrative role, whilst some were already working in HEand had just changed discipline or role. A good number of respondents seemed to be developing an academic identity based on research outwith a firm subject location. Yet research on disciplines ( Becher and Trowler 2001; Trowler et al. 2012) suggests that it is the discipline itself that helps shape who academics think they are. The relative absence of a disciplinary community may mark out European HE researchers as different from their social science peers. A second theme was about whether HE researchers were aware of the wider policy implications of their work. Though a minority had already been engaged in shaping policy (e.g through student politics) as policy actors ( Ball et al. 2011b; Ball et al. 2011), the most common roles were policy translators, policy receivers and ‘future influencers’ (the latter a role that Ball et al did not find in schools). Respondents’ dual understanding of and location within higher education did not necessarily lead to more active policy roles or a relational/transnational notion of policy, though doctoral programmes with a taught element seemed to produce more policy actors than thesis-only programmes. Few were involved in shaping either European or national policy at the time of interview. Finally, given that most of our respondents had not emerged from large HE research centres, it was perhaps not surprising that whilst our sample self-identified as newer higher education researchers, most had no sense of belonging to a wider community, which does suggest that Vauchet’s (2008) notion of a ‘weak’ discipline to describe HE research in Europe may be a plausible one.

References

Abbott, A. (1988). The System of Professions, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ball, S., Maguire, M., Braun, A., and Hoskins, K. (2011b). "Policy actors: doing policy work in schools." Discourse, 32(4), 625-639. Ball, S., Maguire, M., Hoskins, K., and Braun, A. (2011). "Policy subjects and policy actors in schools: some necessary but insufficient analyses." Discourse, 32(4), 611-624. Becher, T., and Trowler, P. (2001). Academic tribes and territories : intellectual enquiry and the cultures of disciplines, Milton Keynes: Society for Research into Higher Education & Open University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1986). "The Forms of Capital", in J. G. Richardson, (ed.), Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. New York: Greenwood Press. Clegg, S. (2012 ). "Conceptualising higher education research and/or academic development as ‘fields’: a critical analysis." " Higher Education Research & Development 31(5): 667-678., 31(5), 667-678. European Commission High Level Group on the Modernisation of Higher Education. (2013). "Improving the quality of teaching and learning in Europe’s higher education institutions". City: Publications Office of the European Union: Luxembourg. Henkel, M. (2000). Academic Identities and Policy Change in Higher Education, London: Jessica Kingsley. Mayring, P. (2007). "On Generalization in Qualitatively Oriented Research ." Forum Qualitative Social Research 8(3, September, Art 26 ). McFarlane, B., and Grant, B. (2012 ). "The growth of higher education studies: from forerunners to pathtakers." Higher Education Research & Development 31(5), 621-624. Musselin, C., and Becquet, V. "Academic work and academic identities: a comparison of four disciplines." Presented at unpublished paper given to Consortium of Higher Education Researchers Conference, Jyväskyalå, Finland, Sept 1st-3rd. Tight, M. (2004). "Research into Higher Education - an a-theoretical community of practice?" Higher Education Research and Development, 23(4), 398-412. Tight, M. (2012 ). "Discipline And Theory In Higher Education." Research Papers in Education, IFirst, 1-18. Trowler, P., Saunders, M., and Bamber, V. (2012). "Tribes and territories in the 21st-century: Rethinking the significance of disciplines in higher education". City: Routledge: London. Vauchez, A. (2008). "The Force of a Weak Field: Law and Lawyers in the Government of the European Union (For a Renewed Research Agenda)." International Political Sociology, 2(2), 128–144.

Author Information

Rosemary Deem (presenting / submitting)

Royal Holloway, University of London

School of Management

Egham

Lynn McAlpine

Oxford University,United Kingdom

Paul Ashwin

Lancaster University, United Kingdom

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