Session Information
SES C 06, Paper Session
Paper Session
Contribution
This contribution seeks to critically examine the values of the Bologna process, and contrast these with findings of research indicating the values in the interpretations of this process. The research questions it asks are very simple: are there (and what are) values inherent in the Bologna process? How are these values reflected and interpreted in the discourses of different actors and institutions? What are the reasons for, and implications of, the differences in these interpretations?
It is commonly asserted that the Bologna process is value-neutral and relatively unconcerned about cultural values, aiming primarily for a technical harmonisation of degree structures and programmes (cf. Corbett 2005). However, events in Europe in the past years have clearly demonstrated that not only does the process entail values (Neave 2002), but also those values are differently interpreted among different stakeholders. Whether one conceives of Bologna as a tool for promoting mobility and increasing employment or as the process of commercialisation of knowledge, for instance, has significant consequences for the ways this process will continue to change the concept of education in Europe. Currently, the only thing stakeholders agree on is that the process entails change: however, what kind if change, remains largely a matter of interpretation.
As cultural theory tends to remind us, the struggle over meaning-making, or the monopolisation of discourse, is the process which is at the very core of the creation and construction of culture itself (Wright 1999; also Foucault 1980).
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bacevic, J. 2010. Masters or Servants? Power and Discourse in Serbian Higher Education Reform. Social anthropology Vol. 18 No. 1 [in print]. Corbett, A. 2005. Universities and the Europe of knowledge: ideas, institutions and policy entrepreneurship in European Community higher education policy, 1955-2005. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Foucault, M. 1980. Power/Discourse: selected interviews and other writings. New York: Pantheon. Geva-May, I. 2002. Cultural Theory: the Neglected Variable in the Craft of Policy Analysis. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, Vol. 4, 243-265. Levin, B. and J. Young. 2002. The Rhetoric of Educational Reform. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice, Vol. 2, 189-209. Neave, G. 2002. Anything Goes: or, How the Accommodation of Europe’s Universities to European Integration Integrates an Inspiring Number of Contradictions. Tertiary Education and Management Vol. 8, 181-197. Paltridge, B. 2007. Discourse analysis: an introduction. London: Continuum. Wright, S. 1998. The Politicization of Culture. Anthropology Today, Vol. 14. No. 1, 7-15.
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