Robyn Barnacle

An ontological turn for higher education

In this article, the implications of foregrounding ontology for teaching and learning in higher education are explored. In conventional approaches to higher education programmes, ontology has tended to be subordinated to epistemological concerns. This has meant the flourishing of notions such as the transfer and acquisition of knowledge and skills, either generic or discipline‐specific. The authors challenge this emphasis on what students acquire through education by foregrounding instead the question of who they become. They do this through a theoretical/conceptual exploration of an approach to learning that undermines a narrow focus on the intellect by promoting the integration of knowing, acting and being.

Learning networks and the journey of ‘becoming doctor’

Scholars such as Kamler and Thompson argue that identity formation has a key role to play in doctoral learning, particularly the process of thesis writing. This article builds on these insights to address other sites in which scholarly identity is performed within doctoral candidature. Drawing on actor‐network theory, the authors examine the role of material things, what Latour calls ‘the missing masses’, in the process of ‘becoming doctor’, with the aim of unpacking the implications of this for doctoral learning and the journey of becoming a researcher or scholar. Through this approach the authors demonstrate that scholarly identity is distributed and comes to be performed through both traditional and non‐traditional sites of learning. The article concludes by addressing the implications of this for efforts to support candidates in the process of becoming researchers.

Gut Instinct: The body and learning

In the current socio‐political climate pedagogies consistent with rationalism are in the ascendancy. One way to challenge the purchase of rationalism within educational discourse and practice is through the body, or by re‐thinking the nature of mind‐body relations. While the orientation of this paper is ultimately phenomenological, it takes as its point of departure recent feminist scholarship, which is demonstrating that attending to physiology can provide insight into the complexity of mind‐body relations. Elizabeth Wilsons account of the role of the gut in psychological processes suggests a far less hierarchical relation between brain and body than rationalism allows. Such insights are also supported by recent phenomenological inquiries into cognition and the body. My question is, what implications do these insights have for how the nature of embodiment is understood, and, by extension, learning? This paper explores how informal, non‐cognitive modes of knowing, or of engaging with the world, inform learning in higher education contexts. More specifically, it raises the question of what role non‐cognitive modes of engagement, such as sensibility, have in augmenting, enabling or delimiting the learning process.

Assessing the Quality of Research Training: The case of part-time candidates in full-time professional work

Intrinsic to the Australian Federal Governments Research Training Scheme (RTS) is a perception that the quality of research degree graduates is in question (Kemp, 1999a, 1999b); in particular, that they lack a skill set that would enable them after graduating to make a greater contribution to the knowledge economy, the information-rich workplace and to national innovation. However, little or no concrete evidence has ever been given to support these claims. Furthermore, no substantive distinction is made between different categories of research degree candidates—for example, between those who are undertaking their research full-time and those who are already full-time professional workers and are undertaking their research degree in a part-time mode. We argue that making this distinction and exploring its impact is vital and report on a study that examines the role and relevance of research degrees to professionals and the workplace. This provides an evidence-based contribution to questions regarding the quality and attributes of research degree graduates and the synergies between their development in the workplace and the research program.

Research degrees as professional education

There is an increasing trend within higher education and, more specifically, in higher degrees by research, to treat a professional skills set as a desirable graduate outcome. The increasing value that is being placed on a professional skills set in large part reflects growing interest around the world in the role of research degrees in labour markets and economic prosperity. Some have seen this shift as an opportunity to re‐situate higher degrees by research as a form of professional education in the practices of research and scholarship. This raises a number of important issues for research education, which this article aims to identify. While a number of scholars has previously noted several of these issues, this article draws together key issues for interrogating the notion of research degrees as a form of professional education. In doing so, it points to ambiguities in expectations about what is produced through higher degrees by research programs.

A critical ethic in a knowledge economy: research degree candidates in the workplace

This paper provides a philosophical viewpoint to questions regarding the role and purpose of the research degree. Drawing on non‐binary accounts of knowledge within the philosophical tradition, it argues against the instrumentalist conception of applied knowledge evident within higher education policy. The paper identifies a critical ethic at work within the views of research candidates who do a research degree to complement an established professional career. A parallel is identified between the critical ethic that is evident within professionals conceptions of the role and value of a research degree and the notion of philosophy as a way of life that was prevalent in antiquity. The implications for research pedagogy of treating criticality as a way of life are then explored through Ronald Barnetts alternative model for higher education as a facilitator of ‘critical being’.This paper provides a philosophical viewpoint to questions regarding the role and purpose of the research degree. Drawing on non‐binary accounts of knowledge within the philosophical tradition, it argues against the instrumentalist conception of applied knowledge evident within higher education policy. The paper identifies a critical ethic at work within the views of research candidates who do a research degree to complement an established professional career. A parallel is identified between the critical ethic that is evident within professionals conceptions of the role and value of a research degree and the notion of philosophy as a way of life that was prevalent in antiquity. The implications for research pedagogy of treating criticality as a way of life are then explored through Ronald Barnetts alternative model for higher education as a facilitator of ‘critical being’.

Reflection on Lived Experience in Educational Research

[article extract] Does lived experience offer educational researchers an effective model upon which to base reflective practice and, moreover, one that fully utilises the potentialities of phenomenological thought? This paper will address this question through an examination of how the other of lived experience, non-lived experience, is constituted within reflection on lived experience. What are the implications for educational research of how reflection on lived experience is framed in relation to what does not count as lived experience? In addressing these questions, an opportunity is provided to rethink the possible role and scope of phenomenology within educational research.

New frontiers: exploring the space/s of higher education

Given the tremendous number of submissions this special issue has attracted, it appears there is considerable interest among higher education scholars around the world in exploring the theme of space in higher education. After receiving 53 submissions, we whittled the selection down to just 13 articles that best represent the range of issues canvassed and a global reach. Echoing the spatial theme of the issue, our selection includes contributions from across the globe: Australasia (Australia, New Zealand), the United Kingdom (England, Ireland), continental Europe (the Netherlands, Finland and Denmark) and North America (USA, Canada). It is also pleasing to see contributions exploring the dimensions of space and higher education from a range of disciplinary perspectives including education, social sciences, philosophy and business as well as the arts, architecture and media and communications, and including theoretical, methodological and empirically based work. In all cases, spatial considerations – whether physical, virtual or figurative – provide the common vector throughout. The theme of academic belonging and the extent to which universities provide a ‘space’ for such belonging is a recurring theme throughout the issue. This no doubt reflects the fact that the university is an increasingly contested space, even in relation to the very concept of the university itself. On the one hand, we see the rise of the all-encompassing ‘global’ or entrepreneurial university (Marginson & Considine, 2000) and, on the other, the somewhat less heroic and fragile university in ruins (Readings, 1996). Belief in the capacity of higher education to drive and transform economic and social development is widely held and has led to flows of students, academics and knowledge around the globe. Fuelled by what has been termed ‘knowledge economy optimism’ (Cuthbert & Molla, 2015), we see higher education imbued with extraordinary transformative potential. What does this mean for those who inhabit universities – academics and students? The issue of the meaning and purpose of the university is taken up in the opening article by Nørgård, Smedegaard, and Bengtsen who examine academic citizenship by asking what it means to dwell in the contemporary university. Through the concept of the ‘placeful university’, they explore the potential of genuine mutual obligation between university and society for advancing personal, academic and societal value. Lolich and Lynch also address the issue of academic belonging by examining to what extent students ‘buy into’ the pervasive knowledge economy narrative. They argue that while there is congruence with such narratives with respect to issues such as employability there is also incongruence. Most notably, affective drivers – such as love of topic and care for others – act as significant disruptors to the otherwise dominant instrumental narratives coming from knowledge economy discourses. The highly imagined and contested space of higher education is also the subject of the article by Charteris, Gannon, Mayes, Nye, and Stephenson, which focuses on the constitution of academic subjectivities. Through three stories about the experience of ‘becoming academic’, they explore affective dimensions of working in the contemporary university

Beyond skills: embodying writerly practices through the doctorate

This article explores the features and potential of an embodied, rather than merely skills-based, approach to doctoral writing. The authors’ conceptual framework is derived from the phenomenological literature, particularly Heideggers critique of modern life as permeated by a quest for mastery and control. They address two key questions with respect to this: Firstly, what role might the quest for mastery as achieving command or control play in impeding writing and undermining an embodied writerly practice? Secondly, to what extent might narrow skills-based approaches to writing unwittingly promote the quest for mastery and therefore encourage, rather than diminish, the anxieties that doctoral research writers may feel?

Committed to learn: student engagement and care in higher education

ABSTRACT Efforts to evaluate and improve student engagement have been pervasive in higher education over recent years. Critics argue, however, that troubling affinities are evident between student engagement efforts and a neoliberal agenda which emphasises accountability through performativity. Neoliberalism manifests in policies that focus on the economic benefit to individuals of higher education, rather than the broader social or intrinsic benefits. In this conceptual article, we draw on the work of Martin Heidegger and Nel Noddings in arguing that efforts aimed at promoting engagement and commitment to learn by students should include developing a capacity to care about others and things. Through the lens of care, our aim is to extend current notions of what engagement of students in their learning might look like. Challenging and supporting students entail encouraging them to take a stand on what they are learning and who they are becoming. This enriched conceptualisation has the potential to re-orient student engagement away from a narrow neoliberal agenda, while enabling students to realise the full benefits a higher education can provide.