Aneta Hayes

Transnational academic capitalism in the Arab Gulf: balancing global and local, and public and private, capitals

This article contributes to the emerging theoretical construct of what has been called ‘transnational academic capitalism’, characterised by the blurring of traditional boundaries between public, private, local, regional and international, and between market-driven and critically transformative higher education visions. Here we examine how these issues are reflected in higher education policy in the Arab Gulf, asking: what kinds of capital are being constructed and traded? By and for whom? What is the relationship between higher education competition, governance and the public good? We find contradictory trends, which we see as strategic ambivalence pointing to country-specific readings of similar regional markets and attempts to hedge bets between rival forms of apparent capital. The exploration offers a counterpoint to more widely cited examples, hereby helping to shape new paradigmatic ‘glocalised’ understandings of this field.

Why international students have been “TEF-ed out”?

Abstract The article offers a critical review of the developments in the proposals for the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) in the UK, focusing particularly on international students. The analysis points to the absence of views and discussions regarding the group of international learners, which warrants the claim that international students have been “TEF-ed out”. The article provides the answer why. The article draws on the coverage of the TEF in the Times Higher Education and relevant literature on international students. It is concluded that the TEF reveals signs of “othering” of international students, pointing to the fundamental problem with the TEF as a national tool that legitimises subordination of this group in recent moves and changes to higher education. The article also discusses Internationalisation at Home (IAH) as a possible metric that could create more equal conditions for cultural plurality in the TEF.

Understanding intercultural transitions of medical students.

Objectives The aim of this research was to explore the transition of medical students to an international branch campus of a medical university established in Bahrain. Methods In order to gain insights into this transition, we explored two culturally diverse systems of learning of the university and the local schools in Bahrain, using Communities of Practice as a lens for understanding transitions. Focus groups were conducted with secondary school teachers and first year medical students. Additionally, semi-structured interviews were conducted with university lecturers. Results The findings suggest that, while Communities of Practice have been influential in contextualising transitions to university, this model does not seem to help us to fully understand intercultural transitions to the case-study university. Conclusions The research emphasises that more attention should be given to learner individual agency within this theory as a framework for understanding transitions. It also challenges approaches within medical education that attempt to standardise systems of learning through acquisition of established practices.

Deconstructing the ‘magnetic’ properties of neoliberal politics of education in Bahrain

ABSTRACT This article makes contributions to questions of why international transfers of programmes do not lead to the outcomes that nations engaging in them expect to gain. Using Bahrain as an example, it is argued that tensions arising from policy borrowing are rooted in the complexities of the political incoherence between the new teaching policies, the Kingdom’s economic vision and educational aspirations of many locals that have been shaped by old political and employment settlements within the nation state. The research shows that educating for global development is not a ‘magnet’ that equally attracts everyone.

The role of time in policymaking: a Bahraini model of higher education competition

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to discussions about the nature and scope of higher education (HE) business in light of some of the emerging ways in which countries seem to be reframing the impact of globalism. In particular, it develops a discussion about spatialities and temporalities of HE policy by drawing on the Kingdom of Bahrain’s distinctive approach to free markets, transnational capitalism, trade of international services and foreign influence. The paper draws on key HE policy documents and regulatory frameworks issued by the Higher Education Council in Bahrain. In the paper, we ask about priorities that drive HE investment in Bahrain, as well as their impact on the role of international input in HE policy building. We find that policymaking in Bahrain is driven by ‘nationalisation’ as a pragmatic strategy at the time of transition to a knowledge economy. We also find that these goals are transient, thus providing suggestions for policy analysis from the perspective of time intervals in a space.

Nation boundedness and international students’ marginalisation: What’s emotion got to do with it?

Abstract This paper contributes to an understanding of the ways in which not being bound to the nation of education, in legal and cultural terms, excludes international students. Based on narrative interviews with 20 students from 6 countries, the paper considers a range of difficulties international students encounter in social and educational domains in which they are interacting and, utilising the conceptual framework of ‘nation-boundedness’, explains these difficulties. The analysis offers new insights in terms of the role of emotions that were seen in the research to be a new discursive practice, prompting international students to marginalise their rights and voices and not to exercise rights that could protect them from discrimination and racism. The paper concludes that by considering emotions alongside regulatory structures that are established for international students in the receiving countries, a more complex understanding of the ways in which lack of ‘nation-boundedness’ excludes can be developed.

Liberating the “oppressed” and the “oppressor”: a model for a new TEF metric, internationalisation and democracy

ABSTRACT The paper proposes a statistical model for a TEF metric that could liberate the “oppressed” (international students) and the “oppressors” (home students) from the influence of public policies which, through constructions of international students as “supplicants” and “beneficiaries” of the prestigious British education system, have created conditions for their exclusion in the classroom. It is argued in the paper that such representations have contributed to international students’ subordination through coloniality and have also limited home students’ agency to engage with their international peers on socially and politically equal terms. The paper conceptualises the design and philosophical nature of a supplementary TEF metric that could prevent such symptoms of public policies. It also shows how such a metric could work in practice by modelling the UK Engagement Survey (UKES) data from a case study university. The paper proposes ideas about how understandings and practice of internationalisation could be re-articulated through the proposed metric. As such, it also discusses new “standards” of internationalisation that could enter reputational rankings and ways in which they could be applied internationally.

Regional solidarity undermined? Higher education developments in the Arabian gulf, economy and time

ABSTRACT The paper theorises fragility of regional solidarities in light of the emerging ways in which two Arabian Gulf states, Bahrain and Oman, are undertaking their transition to a knowledge economy. The paper shows ways in which regional symbolic solidarity goals of common economic and educational development in the Gulf region are challenged by locally focussed priorities at the level of each nation state. These findings carry important theoretical implications as the time of transition to a knowledge economy seems to drive readjustments in thinking about what the ‘Gulf-wide unity is for’, prompting its repositioning from an alliance established to protect and facilitate regional development to a means supporting local ends. The paper therefore challenges the spatial focus in some theoretical frameworks used in analyses of the sociology of regional solidarities and calls for the need of temporal lenses in such analyses.

The Role of Cultural Contexts in Research Design Decisions: Reflections on the Conflicting Study Results in the Bahraini Context

Self-reporting surveys in social science are commonly criticized for generating results that are often found not to reflect the actual behavior of participants. This article discusses the limitations of such surveys specifically in exploring the Arabian Gulf context and explains how the Islamic Work Ethic can create biases in survey research. The reflections in this article are based on the author’s experiences in conducting social research in Bahrain using self-reporting questionnaires and focus groups. The discussion presented in this article highlights the salience of socio-cultural factors in designs of research studies and suggests that the cultural context in which a study is conducted may significantly affect the adequacy of specific research methods. This article also implies that, due to societal values, using self-reporting surveys to identify patterns in institutional practice may result in overrated self-evaluations rather than a description of “what is.”

Adopting Western Models of Learning to Teaching Science as a Means of Offering a Better Start at University

The most recent developments in secondary school science education in Bahrain include adopting inquiry-based curricula. This initiative is part of the government’s educational improvement vision which aims at aligning education in Bahrain with other international models and to produce graduates who are able to access higher education in many educational systems.