Year: 2024
Author: Mark Selkrig, Nicky Dulfer, Kristiina Brunila, Ron (Kim) Keamy
Type of paper: Individual Paper
Abstract:
Higher education institutions continue to undergo significant transformations as they adjust to a rapidly changing, uncertain, and increasingly connected world. Neoliberal agendas such as massification, marketization, and managerialism, have become entangled in this transformation, profoundly changing how universities operate. In response to how these changes are impacting higher education, arguments are also mounting about universities returning to and advancing the public realm and a re-imagining of higher education.
The myriad of challenges within higher education have resulted in constant pressures on academics to navigate change, such as institutional policy adjustments, technological advancements, shifts in teaching methodologies, or broader societal trends, which can impact academics' well-being, teaching practices, research productivity, and overall job satisfaction. When the competing demands, values, and rhythms of higher education are combined with the supercomplex facets of our post-pandemic world, which are even more precarious and where emotional insecurity proliferates, it is crucial to understand how academics navigate such an ever-changing work landscape and shifts in the field of higher education.
Our international research project titled Turning points: Changes academics make to shape their working lives, interrogated how academics working in the changing higher education environment articulate and represent the turning points that have caused them to change course and do something differently in their faculties, as well as the holding points where the changes have endured. Adopting a phenomenological approach and using snowball sampling, we drew on arts-based and digital methods to generate data. Participants, who were current academics or those who left the sector within the last five years, were invited to provide visual, sound, and text responses to prompts about academic work through an online survey. Over 120 participants, from more than 15 countries at all stages of their career responded.
In this presentation we discuss preliminary findings related to the academic turning points. These findings reveal some of the positive impacts indicate moments of fulfillment and optimism, suggesting that affective encounters in academia are not uniformly negative. Participants also provided some understandings of the potential for resistance and transformation within academia, while underscoring the importance of addressing the individual and sometimes highly personal, along with the collective dimensions (which for example neoliberal governance aims to focus on, at the same time). By understanding the dynamics at play, we highlight some of the complexities of academic life under neoliberal governance and the potential for both individual and collective responses to its pressures.
The myriad of challenges within higher education have resulted in constant pressures on academics to navigate change, such as institutional policy adjustments, technological advancements, shifts in teaching methodologies, or broader societal trends, which can impact academics' well-being, teaching practices, research productivity, and overall job satisfaction. When the competing demands, values, and rhythms of higher education are combined with the supercomplex facets of our post-pandemic world, which are even more precarious and where emotional insecurity proliferates, it is crucial to understand how academics navigate such an ever-changing work landscape and shifts in the field of higher education.
Our international research project titled Turning points: Changes academics make to shape their working lives, interrogated how academics working in the changing higher education environment articulate and represent the turning points that have caused them to change course and do something differently in their faculties, as well as the holding points where the changes have endured. Adopting a phenomenological approach and using snowball sampling, we drew on arts-based and digital methods to generate data. Participants, who were current academics or those who left the sector within the last five years, were invited to provide visual, sound, and text responses to prompts about academic work through an online survey. Over 120 participants, from more than 15 countries at all stages of their career responded.
In this presentation we discuss preliminary findings related to the academic turning points. These findings reveal some of the positive impacts indicate moments of fulfillment and optimism, suggesting that affective encounters in academia are not uniformly negative. Participants also provided some understandings of the potential for resistance and transformation within academia, while underscoring the importance of addressing the individual and sometimes highly personal, along with the collective dimensions (which for example neoliberal governance aims to focus on, at the same time). By understanding the dynamics at play, we highlight some of the complexities of academic life under neoliberal governance and the potential for both individual and collective responses to its pressures.