1,720,990 research outputs found
Knowledge and virtue: re-ordering humans in Robert Grosseteste’s Philosophy of Education
Get PDFThis chapter attempts to explore Robert Grosseteste's philosophy of education. He did not write a 'philosophy of education', but 'Grosseteste was an educator; he had been eminent in the schools with which he retained his links throughout his life'. The breadth of Grosseteste's reading is hard to overstate, both in terms of the quantity of material and the geographical origin of texts, combining 'Neoplatonic concepts with Christian concepts from Augustine or Basil, Aristotelian and Arabic concepts, and mystical concepts, from Pseudo-Dionysius, for example, to form a new and original philosophy'. Grosseteste's beliefs about human potential and flourishing, and the role that education might play in this, are developed from assumptions about the disordered state of human experience. Grosseteste views wisdom as something that is hard to acquire and involves humans reordering themselves in order to gain knowledge: it does not come 'naturally'
The human ordering of the arts and sciences
Get PDFThis chapter begins with reference to the thirteenth-century polymath Robert Grosseteste’s reflections on his own curriculum - the seven ‘Liberal Arts’ of the medieval universities. Grosseteste prefaces the body of his published work on natural philosophy and scientific topics with a remarkable treatise on the seven liberal arts. The arts, for Grosseteste, do not primarily support vocation or employment, but constitute vital virtues that underpin them. Science is increasingly divorced from the notion of creativity - ‘there is no room for imagination in science’ asserted a presenter full face to camera in a BBC science documentary. In particular, the medieval centuries, so foundational to modernism, yet without the stark divisions of humanities and sciences to which modernism had become so strongly wed, present themselves as potential sources for more fruitful reconciliation. The most salient differences in accounts of creativity do not, on close inspection, present themselves aligning across the arts and sciences, nor to distinguish between medieval and modern
Perceptions of ‘value’ in foundation year programmes
Get PDFUniversities have developed Foundation Year programmes to widen participation and provide
an alternative access route into higher education. Foundation Year programmes are designed
to target students who have not met the A-level conditions needed to gain university admission
and qualification. The provision of Foundation Year programmes has, however, been criticized
by policy makers who argue that they are cash-cows for universities and exploitative of
students. Drawing on data from Foundation Year programmes students and practitioners in
England, this study aims to do two things: first, to investigate and assess the value of
Foundation Year programmes from the perspective of students and of practitioners who teach
on them; and second, to assess the role of Foundation Year provision and its place in higher
education. I use the Capability Approach to evaluate Foundation Years, in particular how the
programmes impact students’ ability to take advantage of opportunities. The findings reveal
that students have a wide-ranging understanding of the value of Foundation Year programmes.
Students express strong support for the continuation of Foundation Year programmes and
reject the suggestion that they are exploitative and a poor investment. The data show that
Foundation Year teaching methodology is suited to students’ individual circumstances and life
contexts: the education is pluralistic and the programmes encourage students to think critically
about their subject matter in relation to the wider world. The capabilitarian evaluation also
reveals that the provision is highly valued by students and universities alike and serves as a
valuable tools for Widening Participation
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Students’ academic self-formation in local and international higher education: evidence from South Korean students
No full textThe dominant notions of higher education derived from human capital theory have been accused of disregarding the active agency of students and diminishing the significance of knowledge. Meanwhile, the emerging concept of higher education as student self-formation places emphasis on student agency (Marginson, 2014, 2023a). The process of self-formation within the context of higher education is distinctive by its academic nature, as it highlights deep engagement with knowledge (Ashwin, 2020). While the idea of self-formation has drawn favourable reactions within the discipline, its comprehensive and normative nature has constrained empirical inquiries. To lay the groundwork for self-formation research, the present study aims to develop a theory that can explain what academic self-formation is (RQ1), and how students engage in it (RQ2). While previous researchers have so far almost exclusively focused on international students, the present study expands the self-formation discourse by examining academic self-formation in both local and international higher education (RQ3).
Based on Archer’s (1995) realist social theory, I devised a research design that enables building a conceptually sound and empirically supported theory. On the one hand, the conceptual phase of this study critically reviewed theories/concepts that are relevant to academic self-formation. On the other hand, the study also collected and analysed ethnographic data from thirteen first-year South Korean graduate students, seven being local students in Korean universities and six being international students in the UK. Findings from the conceptual and empirical research reflexively interacted with each other, as a theory emerged.
The findings reveal that the individual students followed unique self-formation journeys. Three themes emerged as key elements in theorising academic self-formation. First, student agency was found to operate in a mediating mechanism, with four manifestations: effort, self-criticism, active conformity, and mobility. Second, academic self-formation was revealed to include the development of disciplinary agency, as seen in students’ repositioning of the self in their perceived self-knowledge-society relationship. Third, the role of mobility in academic self-formation was explained in terms of its link with the multiplicity of the self. The study concludes by integrating these themes into a theory of academic self-formation, and then by summarising the similarities and differences between self-formation in local and international higher education. The theory can contribute to advancing the research programme of self-formation by providing methodological and theoretical tools for future researchers
Jesuit higher educational leadership: a case study of universities in Asia
No full textThis thesis examined the perceptions of the senior management, faculty members, and administrators of Jesuit leadership in four Asian Jesuit universities.
Using a snowball sampling method, I adopted a two-stage research approach to collect the sample. In the first stage, qualitative research included interviews and expert opinions, and in the second stage, quantitative research comprised surveys. This study was conducted across the Philippines, Indonesia, South Korea, and Japan. Altogether, 30 respondents participated in the interview over the Zoom platform, and 44 completed the online survey.
The research question framed in this study was as follows:
What are the conceptualisation, collaboration with others, and challenges of Jesuit higher educational leadership?
The literature review followed three steps of organisation: The first step was to conceptualise the Jesuit educational leadership by reviewing the four periods of distinctive educational theories and models. As a result, I identified six dimensions of Jesuit higher educational leadership, and various characteristics of Jesuit leaders’ collaboration with others were discussed. The second step explained essential concepts in the Jesuit philosophy, comprising the Catholic Church’s philosophy, the background of the Jesuits, and its higher education. Thirdly, I discussed the ideal characteristics of Jesuit educational leaders and their potential challenges in the modern world.
My study made four significant contributions to the scholarly literature. The first contribution was to conceptualise Jesuit higher educational leadership, which comprised six features: interpersonal support, community building, selflessness, equality, integrity, and spirituality. My second contribution was empirically establishing a scale or a model of Jesuit higher educational leadership. My third contribution empirically confirmed that collaboration with others was the mediator between the Jesuit higher educational leadership and the president’s performance. This could be achieved in four ways: activating the resource assistance in a timely manner, ensuring an encouraging workplace for faculty members, mobilising support from various stakeholders, and synthesising collaborative processes. My last contribution was to discover Jesuit higher educational leaders' challenges, identifying conspicuous similarities and differences between the four universities. Similarities encompassed similar, frequently mentioned international challenges as their significant concerns, including seeking resource assistance from other universities through their unique global or Jesuit university network. The differences included a contrast between the socio-economic challenge, the environmental challenge, and the political challenge
'Access is not about taking people who are already superstars'? Exploring constructions of merit and fairness in the University of Oxford's undergraduate admissions routes
Get PDFThere is a well-researched tension between conceptions of academic merit based on prior attainment and equity concerns regarding widening participation at selective UK universities. Given its decision not to implement contextual offer-making policies, this is particularly true at the University of Oxford. This thesis explores how admissions stakeholders conceptualise merit and fairness in the context of the Astrophoria Foundation Year’s (AFY) development and implementation. The AFY is an innovative admissions programme for applicants from acutely disadvantaged backgrounds; its introduction represents a moment of disruption in the context of Oxford’s admissions because it systematically lowers the entry grades required of its applicants, challenging existing norms which oppose such action in mainstream admissions. The project focuses on the narratives and conceptual framings of merit and fairness which academics and student representatives construct and enact in the mainstream admissions process and the AFY. Using a Bourdieusian framework inorporating doxa and institutional habitus as my primary analytical tools, I explore the spectrum of normative views salient in the mainstream undergraduate admissions space. I find that Oxford’s doxic boundary of autonomous academic judgement facilitates the existence of both credentialist and contextualist conceptions of merit, which operate in the mainstream admissions process as institutional habituses. These tensioned practices are stabilised and maintained via a legitimised mode of relational interaction, a new concept I term the relational institutional habitus. The introduction of the AFY generates both support and opposition among admissions stakeholders, articulated in complex and messy ways by participants; it disrupts the relational institutional habitus, generating new forms of strategic action I theorise as institutional work (Lawrence and Suddaby, 2006). The AFY programme becomes a site of contestation where divergent constructions of the appropriate value frameworks in admissions are advanced, critiqued, synthesised and managed, reflecting the performance of these narratives in the mainstream admissions process. I explore differing attitudes to the relationship between the mainstream admissions process and the AFY, offering insight into how change and stasis in attempts to widen undergraduate admissions in Oxford, both through policy positions and their enactment, occur
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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