EU linguistic diversity and language domination in HE policy and practices: A critical approach with reference to Greece
Author(s):
Areti Vogopoulou (presenting / submitting)
Conference:
ECER 2017
Network:
23. Policy Studies and Politics of Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

23 SES 05 C, Dominant Discourses and Higher Education Reforms

Paper Session

Time:
2017-08-23
13:30-15:00
Room:
K4.17
Chair:
Peter Kelly

Contribution

Since the beginning of the 2000s   the Higher Education (H.E.) sector has been set on a new trajectory as it has become an essential ingredient in key EU priorities promoting competitiveness, sustainability and social cohesion. Within a context heavily regulated by supranational agents and through the deployment of governance technologies fostered by the prevalent ‘audit culture’ (Power,1994), national education systems make efforts to align their policies to Lisbon-induced imaginaries and organizational structures.

 In this context of broad global/regional dynamics which, as a growing body of literature suggests, aim at "pedagogising" institutions and local actors, the development of an international dimension (Knight, 2004; Altbach and Knight, 2007) and the enhancement of mobility are emphasized. They seem to be reconfigured as essential components in the institutions’ as well as the academics' efforts to raise their competitiveness globally, interconnect, and become part of the global market. A variety of rationales for enhancing mobility across Europe has been put forward by the European Commission and its commitment is restated  in statements such as “by 2020 at least 20% of all graduates from the European Higher Education Area should have spent a period of time studying or training abroad”.

A significant issue relevant to such processes is the language question. It is obvious that English has developed into the de facto linguistic code to mediate communication in our globalised world (Coupland, 2010). Efforts to deal with linguistic diversity in Europe and beyond have resulted in linguistic homogeneity through the widespread use of English. Scholars have pointed out that this tendency is a basic misconception of internationalisation (de Wit, 2011) or that it constitutes the “paradox of internationalisation” (Haberland, 2011). This phenomenon has far-reaching implications since language is essential for communication and meaning-making but most importantly  because “..it is at the heart of all forms of cultural production and identity making” (Robertson, 2016).

 In light of the above, this paper is centred on the shifts of knowledge and power relations which redraw boundaries reconstituting ‘legitimate’ knowledge in a 'reformed' HE space and the respective 'legitimate' academic practices.  The  aim is to trace how the nature of language–related knowledge as a competitive advantage for individuals and institutions is redefined at the local/institutional level in the context of internationalisation and mobility. More specifically, we investigate how power relations operate within processes of recontextualisation at local sites and how mid-level policy-makers, located in institutions, respond to dominant discourses on HE reforms that entail issues about language for education and language for participating in the global production and reproduction of knowledge.

Our theoretical framework is grounded in Foucault’s notions of discourse and governmentality (Foucault, 1991) and Bernstein’s theory on pedagogic discourse (Bernstein, 2000). We maintain that the “regimes of truth and knowledge”, produced by the dominant discourses of governance and higher education reform, are the means through which educational professionals govern themselves and others (Ball, 1994). In order to analyse the micro level of educational practices we draw from Bernstein's theory of the pedagogic device referring to the rules of distribution, recontextualisation and evaluation of knowledge in pedagogic contexts (Bernstein, 2000; Singh, 2002; Singh et al, 2013). Through this, we attempt to explore how new forms of knowledge and pedagogical processes and new forms of power relations are relayed at local sites, reconstructing academic spaces of practice. We look into the positions mid-level policy actors take, the resources they draw upon and the 'orientations' to knowledge that they privilege in order to identify shifts in the understanding of knowledge and trace the processes of identity formation.    

Method

This research project explores institutional policy-makers’ and academics’ views on internationalisation policies and practices and their links to language issues as they play out in every day teaching, research and administration practices. Interviews, questionnaires and data drawn from evaluation reports, produced within the national HE evaluation framework comprise our sets of data. Three Universities and two Technological Educational Institutions (TEI) in Greece were selected for the study. These two different types of institutions, traditionally orientated to theory and practice/technical application respectively, comprise the Greek HE sector. The selected institutions are representative of the Greek higher education sector: there is a high-ranked, reputable university and TEI; a well-established university and TEI; and a more recently established university. In this presentation, data from semi-structured interviews with key policy-actors at the institutional level, conducted from December 2015 to June 2016, is used. The responses and the positions assumed by the mid-level actors of our sample are explored to trace the ways in which education policies are “recontextualised”, their modes of “enactment” (Ball et al., 2012), and the means by which new forms of knowledge and the power relations relayed through them are instituted at local sites. Drawing on the theoretical sources as outlined in the previous section as well as relevant work done in studying transformations in Greek Higher Education, in the context of globalisation and Europeanisation (Sarakinioti, 2012; Sarakinioti et al., 2015), we have developed a discourse analysis tool to trace possible power/knowledge change in pedagogic practices, entailing reconfigurations of academic identities (Bernstein, 2000). Our analysis focuses on boundary maintenance or change in power and control relations in H.E. and its structures of knowledge. Power relations map the changes in the degree of autonomy of agents operating in the field of HE policy, and the degree of specialisation and the resources used by agents in this field. Control relations identify the principles regulating the field (i.e., who has control over what) and establishing legitimate forms of communication in processes of production and reproduction of knowledge. The aim is to describe the kinds of knowledge that become legitimate and those that are marginalised or excluded (Bernstein, 2000). This theory-informed analysis allows for a principled description of change and of the processes through which legitimate language-related knowledge is (re)defined, pedagogic practices are (re)constituted and identities are (re)configured, in the context of internationalisation and mobility.

Expected Outcomes

The research findings of this on-going study are expected to further our understanding of governance and knowledge transformations in the Greek HE system and contribute to the growing body of literature on the pedagogising dynamics aiming to transform academic practices and identities (Henkel, 2005; Middleton, 2008). We focus on the discourse articulated by mid-level policy makers since they are key agents in recontextualisation processes and in the 'enactment' of policies at the level of H.E. institutions (Ball et al.,2012). Their diverse responses when confronted with the challenges posed by the need to strategically 'choose' the language of education or the language of communication within the academia rearticulates global dominant discourses on the language issue in the context of internationalisation and mobility. Our findings show that the instrumental use of the English language and the value assigned to it are directly linked to the position HE institutions aspire to take in the global arena of HE. This can be exemplified by the growing number of English-only programmes in HEIs (Kadzierski,2016) and the demands made on academics and researchers to publish in English (Curry & Lillis, 2004). On the other hand, the tensions, the contradictions and the constraints involved in adjusting to a new linguistic code are underestimated in policy-makers’ talk. Issues of social inequality and identity (re)shaping, which are intricately connected to language policies and politics, are marginalised. The internal logics of the re-articulations of the value of linguistic homogeneity in Europeanisation and globalisation processes seem to draw from knowledge resources outside the field of education, especially the market, implying thus that the autonomy of the sector is restricted. Visible, clear-cut rules are absent but nevertheless recommendations and technologies of 'steering from a distance' put pressures towards the transformation of practices and the reconstruction of identities.

References

Altbach,P. and J.Knight. (2007) The internationalization of higher education: motivations and realities. Journal of Studies in International Educatio, 11:3, 290-305. Ball,S.J. (1994). Education reform. A critical and post-structural approach. Buckingham: Open University Press. Ball, S.J., Maguire, M., and A. Braun.( 2012). How schools do policy. London:Routledge. Bernstein,B. (2000). Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity. Theory, research, critique. Revised edition, New York, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Coupland,N. (2010). The Handbook of Language and Globalisation. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Curry, M. J., & T. Lillis. (2004). Multilingual scholars and the imperative to publish in English: Negotiating interests, demands, and rewards. TESOL Quarterly, 38, 666–688. De Wit, H.(2011). Internationalisation of Higher Education: Nine Misconceptions. International Higher Education,64:6-7. Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In: G. Burchell, C. Gordon, and P. Miller (eds) The Foucault effect. Studies in Governmentality. Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 87-104. Haberland,H.(2011).Local languages as the languages of internationalisation: internationalisation and language choice. Intercultural Educational Review, 9:37-47. Henkel, M. (2005) Academic identity and autonomy in a changing policy environment. Higher Education,48(1), 155-176. Kedzierski, M. (2016). English as a medium of instruction in East Asia’s higher education sector: a critical realist Cultural Political Economy analysis of underlying logics.Comparative Education, 52:3, 375-391. Knight, J. (2004). Internationalization remodeled: Definition, approaches, and rationales Journal of Studies in International Education, 8(1): 5–31. Middleton,S. (2008) Research assessment as a pedagogical device:Bernstein, professional identity and Education in New Zealand. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 29:2, 125-136. Power,M. (1994). The audit explosion. London:Demos Robertson, L.S. & M. Kedzierski. (2016) On the move: globalising higher education in Europe and beyond. The Language Learning Journal, 44:3,276-291. Sarakinioti, A. (2012). Knowledge and Identities in the context of European Higher Education Policy: The case of teacher education curricula in Greece. Unpublished Doctoral Thesis. Department of Social and Education Policy, University of the Peloponnese (In Greek). Singh, P., Thomas, S., and Harris, J., 2013. Recontextualising policy discourses: a Bernsteinian perspective on policy interpretation, translation, enactment. Journal of education policy, 28 (4), 465–480. Sarakinioti, A. & Tsatsaroni, A. (2015). European education policy initiatives and teacher education curriculum reforms in Greece. Education Inquiry (EDUI), 6(3):259-288. Singh, P. (2002) Pedagogising knowledge: Bernstein’s theory of the pedagogic device. British journal of sociology of education, 23 (4), 571-582. Singh,P. (2015) Performativity and Pedagogizing Knowledge:Globalising Educational Policy Formation, Dissemination, and Enactment. Journal of Education Policy, 30(3), 363-384.

Author Information

Areti Vogopoulou (presenting / submitting)
TEI of Peloponnese & University of the Peloponnese
Social and Education Policy
Kalamata

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