Publications

Global learning through the lens of Vygotskian sociocultural theory

Vygotsky saw mental and cultural development as 'mediated' by artefacts, including tools and signs. He used his 'genetic method' to investigate higher cognitive processes in historical context. These insights are foundational to sociocultural theory, which is widely used in education research. However, since Vygotsky, communicative globalization has changed the conditions of theorization, research, policy and practice. Global convergence is characterized by extensive and intensive flows of people, messages, knowledge, ideas and money, and sudden, multiple and disjunctive changes. Educational activity is 'glonacal' activity, shaped simultaneously in global, national and local spheres. This article argues that nevertheless, once developed to incorporate global phenomena into the genetic method and the notion of mediating artefacts, Vygotsky's ideas have much to offer the analysis of globally affected educational practices. This conceptual approach combines the spatial insights of globalization theory with the socio-historical relational understandings enabled by the genetic method. It is illustrated by a case study on the learning to teach English practices of a cohort of Vietnamese pre-service teachers during their practicum. Global flows, media and artefacts, which are used extensively by these teachers, articulate with national and local practices and conventions in innovative ways.

Student security in the global education market

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Global field and global imagining: Bourdieu and worldwide higher education

This paper maps the global dimension of higher education and associated research, including the differentiation of national systems and institutions, while reflecting critically on theoretical tools for working this terrain. Arguably the most sustained theorisation of higher education is by Bourdieu: the paper explores the relevance and limits of Bourdieu's notions of field of power, agency, positioned and position‐taking; drawing on Gramsci's notion of hegemony in explaining the dominant role played by universities from the United States. Noting there is greater ontological openness in global than national educational settings, and that Bourdieu's reading of structure/agency becomes trapped on the structure side, the paper discusses Sen on self‐determining identity and Appadurai on global imagining, flows and 'scapes'. The dynamics of Bourdieu's competitive field of higher education continue to play out globally, but located within a larger and more disjunctive relational setting, and a setting that is less closed, than he suggests.

Mass higher education and the slow road to freedom

4. The Uses of the University

No abstract is provided for this article.

Trends in the Funding of Australian Higher Education

No abstract is provided for this article.

Academic Freedom: A Global Comparative Approach

Academic freedom is best understood not as an abstract universal principle or an ideal state of being but as concrete university practices nested in specif

Higher education and research: multiple negative effects and no new opportunities after Brexit

Brexit has weakened collaboration between UK higher education institutions and their EU counterparts, with negative implications for UK resources and capacity, without leading to new global strategies and opportunities. In 2020 the UK government withdrew from the Erasmus student mobility scheme and introduced the Turing scheme. While Erasmus had supported both outward UK student mobility and inward movement from Europe, Turing supports only outward mobility. In 2021–2022 the cessation of UK tuition fee arrangements for EU citizens entering UK degrees led to a sharp drop in numbers. Collaborative European research programmes have been crucial in building the infrastructure and network centrality of UK science and in attracting EU citizen researchers, but at the time of writing future UK participation as a non-member country was unresolved. The long uncertainty about this, coupled with the cessation of free people movement, have triggered the exit of some UK-based researchers and declines in UK researchers' competitiveness in European grants, EU doctoral students and established researchers entering UK, and EU country citizens as a proportion of UK academic staff. In addition, the loss of access to European structural funds has slowed the modernisation of UK higher education institutions and reduced their social contributions.

An ontological transition in higher education: Space, power and technology

The paper provides an overview of geopolitical developments and tensions in universities and science, and the impact in social space-making and relations of power. Innovations in space-making in higher education combine pre-given materiality with the ideas and interpretations of agents, and the social practices they develop, some of which become part of the ongoing materiality of the sector. One example of global space-making is the Academic Ranking of World Universities (the ‘Shanghai Ranking’), an early example of China ‘going out’ in higher education to transform global university relations. Global evolution in universities and science has passed through three historical layers, all of which enter into current practice: 1) the beginnings of post-coloniality and the 1945 UN Charter and its sovereign international order; (2) from 1990 onwards the strengthening of neo-coloniality in Pax Americana and U.S.-led processes of accelerated globalization; (3) in the last 15 years the partial fragmentation of the neo-colonial order amid growing multi-polarity and the rise of China. The paper expands on present issues and tensions, including the advent of AI in education and research (which should be the subject of international cooperation but is not), and the U.S.-driven closure of relations with China in science and technology. It argues that the decoupling strategy is ill-conceived, and while it has been disruptive it is unlikely to achieve its goals. Despite the geopolitics universities need to find ways of nurturing and developing a cooperative global space based on mutual respect.

Five Somersaults in Enschede: Rethinking Public/Private in Higher Education for the Global Era

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HAYEKIAN NEO-LIBERALISM AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM

This paper reflects on some consequences in academic practices in higher education, of the neo-liberal project for the remaking of social order. In conventional critiques of neo-liberalism, it is understood as a project for the suppression of university autonomy, academic criticism and free creativity. But these critiques (which perhaps confuse the neoliberal project with the political conservatism often joined to it) do not go to the root. Neo-liberal practices constitute more than the suppression of persons or opportunities. The neo-liberal positioning of human subjects not only offers benefits to those subjects privileged by it; successful entrepreneurs, senior managers in universities and so on; it provides all human subjects with forms of positive action. Much of the popular appeal of neo-liberalism lies in its potent message about freedom. The argument in this paper is not that neo-liberalism suppresses academic freedoms, but that it channels and limits academic freedoms. We are not robbed of agency per se, but we are robbed of certain forms of agency vital to us.

Student security and regulation

We're basically seen as cash cows and that's something that should change.~ male, 33, PhD in medicine, Spain

The enterprise university comes to Australia

Editorial

No abstract is provided for this article.

The new higher education landscape

"The new higher education landscape" published on 01 Jan 2007 by Brill.

Towards World-Class Systems

There is a worldwide tendency to develop High Participation Systems (HPS) in higher education, systems that enrol more than 50% of the age cohort. In the last 15 years there has been a remarkable surge in enrolment into higher education. The tendency is not confined to wealthy countries.

Editorial

No abstract is provided for this article.

Living with the Other: Higher Education in the Global Era.

No abstract is provided for this article.