‘Production lining’ higher education. Shadow practices as the organisational effect of educational standardisation
Author(s):
Katja Brøgger (presenting / submitting)
Conference:
ECER 2013
Network:
22. Research in Higher Education
Format:
Paper

Session Information

22 SES 09 C, Policy, Management and Governance in Higher Education

Paper Session

Time:
2013-09-12
11:00-12:30
Room:
STD-401
Chair:
Monne Wihlborg

Contribution

The presentation explores the organisational effects of the standardising processes of higher education at teacher level; that is the performative effects of the new ministerial orders and curricula shaped in accordance with the European reform processes.

Bologna is possibly one of the most extensive examples of policy transfer in higher education (Dale & Robertson 2012; Steiner-Khamsi 2004, 2012a,b). This policy borrowing  process has altered what it means to talk about knowledge and educational organisation and through this what is sayable and doable education wise (Gornitzka 2005; Keeling 2004; Nóvoa & Lawn 2002; Henckel & Wright 2008). The new imaginative regimes of world-wide attractiveness and competitiveness desired in the official documents of the Bologna have given rise to a certain marketisation and commodification of higher education. The flows of educational policies and practices in higher education reform are simply named consumerist mechanisms by Naidoo (2003). These mechanisms are displayed through the ambition of mobility and though the massive curricula reform that Bologna has given rise to throughout Europe and beyond.

The curricula reforms all include a shift from a semestrial time frame structure to a modular structure in which each module constitutes a learning unit in itself and must be completed by a test. It also implicates a shift from curricula directed towards the student’s development throughout the education to curricula directed towards learning outcomes. The learning outcomes relate to the so called qualification frameworks (framework of qualifications for the European Higher Education Area 2005 and The European Qualification Framework for Lifelong Learning 2008) . The core of the EQF concerns eight reference levels describing what a learner knows, understands and is able to do on completion of a learning process; the so called 'learning outcomes' which are defined in terms of knowledge, skills and competence.

As in the case of the curricular changes mentioned above, the Bologna process has transformed the higher education architectures through a profound educational standardisation that has been criticized for ‘production lining’ the educations leading to instrumental predictability and thereby excluding innovation and entrepreneurship to the margins (Nielsen & Sarauw 2012). Here ‘standard’ is coined as a specification or model for practice securing that the ‘production’ can be carried out independently of time and place. Hence a standard is the quintessence of iteration and reproduction. However, when standards are used as a steering technology as in the case of Bologna it may create a gap between the standard’s ideal premises and the concrete situation (Nissen 2012). In this presentation this will be illustrated through the frictions between the ideal premises of European educational harmonisation and the non-reproducible situatedness, historical embeddedness, of the educations. 

Method

This presentation is based on empirical data from an implementation process of a new educational ministerial order and curriculum, shaped in accordance with the European reform processes, at a university and a university college in Denmark. The presentation centers on the effects of two major curricular changes: The shifts towards modularization and learning outcomes. The research represents a qualitative study making use of observations of meetings, log books for teachers and midlevel management and 30 semi structured interviews lasting approximately one hour each. This is combined with document analysis of international and national steering documents related to the Bologna process, the governmental and institutional level. The empirical data has been collected from March 2011 to January 2013. The presentation has a point of departure in a performativity oriented theoretical ambition to emphasize the current implementation processes as something more than rational decisions frictionless emanating down through the organisation leading to calculated changes of practice. The presentation centers on the micro processes in the educational organisation, that is how something is ‘done’, practiced within complex relational entanglements between human and non-human actors (e.g. ministerial orders) (Barad 2007).

Expected Outcomes

The empirical data show that the implementation of curricula shaped in accordance with the European reform processes pushes and reorganizes the everyday work for the lecturers. The profound reorganizing of the work gives rise to unexpected effects in that it dislocates the lecturers in their organisational positions. They start protecting their disciplines in ways leading to battling amongst themselves. Observing these battles the field work shows that the ‘situatedness’ of the educations in terms of e.g. historical ways of organising the work, still have constitutive impact on the day-to-day practice even though it has been excluded from the new ministerial orders and curricula. The ways in which the situatedness ‘disturbs and haunts’ the standardisation processes are analysed through Derrida’s neologism ‘hauntology’ from Specters of Marx (Brøgger 2013). Even though the lecturers re-act on the reform processes it seems as if their actions are displaced to the shadows. The empirical data suggest that the pressure from the ongoing reforms adds to the intensification of the stretch between ‘what is performed on the outside’ and ‘what is practiced on the inside’. What is practiced on the inside simply seem to be enacted behind the official documents; as shadow practices.

References

Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway. Duke University Press. Brøgger, K. (2013 (under review)). The Ghosts of Higher Education Reform. On the organisational processes surrounding policy borrowing. Globalisation, Societies, Education. Dale, R., & Robertson, S. (2012). Towards a Critical Grammar of Education Policy Movements. In G. Steiner-Khamsi & F. Waldow (Eds.), World Yearbook of Education 2012. Policy Borrowing and Lending in Education. Routledge. Derrida, J. (1993 [1994]). Specters of Marx. The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International. New York: Routledge. Gornitzka, Å. (2005). Coordinating policies for a 'Europe of knowledge'. Emerging practices of the 'Open Method of Coordination' in education and research. Arena working papers, 16. Henckel, O., & Wright, S. (2008). The Bologna Process: a voluntary method of coordination and marketisation? Teaching and Learning, 1(2) Keeling, R. (2004). Locating ourselves in the ‘European Higher Education Area’: investigating the Bologna Process in practice. Naidoo, R. (2003). Repositioning Higher Education as a Global Commodity. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 24(2) Nielsen, G. & Sarauw, L. (2012 (under review)). Entreprenørskab: uddannelsesindustrialisering i nye klæder? Dansk Pædagogisk Tidsskrift Nissen, M. (2012). http://substance.ku.dk/om/ Retrieved 02-01-2013, 2012 Nóvoa, A., & Lawn, M. (Eds.). (2002). Fabricating Europe - The Formation of an Education Space. Kluwer. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2004). The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending.Teachers College Press, Columbia University. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2012a). Understanding Policy Borrowing and Lending. In G. Steiner-Khamsi & F. Waldow (Eds.), World Yearbook of Education 2012. Policy Borrowing and Lending in Education. Routledge. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2012b). What is wrong with the what went right approach? Keynote at ECER 2012. Paper from ECER 2012.

Author Information

Katja Brøgger (presenting / submitting)
Aarhus University
Department of Education
Copenhagen

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