The Universities and Education

1
The Universities and Education

• Where are we?
• How did we get to be where we are?
• Where might we/ should we be?

2
ESRC Demographic Review of the Social Sciences

• Education is the second largest discipline under
  consideration and perhaps one of the most
  complex. Structural, historical and
  institutional factors affect all disciplines in
  different ways but in Education their impact has
  been quite profound

3
ESRC Demographic Review of the Social Sciences

• Education is the second largest discipline under
  consideration and perhaps one of the most
  complex. Structural, historical and
  institutional factors affect all disciplines in
  different ways but in Education their impact has
  been quite profound

4
To begin

• Whats a university anyway?
• The idea of a university
• The contested nature of knowledge

The universities and Education a fragile
relationship
5
Individuals and institutions

• Where are we now?

6
People
People A story of second careers
People People People People People People People
People People People People
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Education one of the largest social sciences
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Demography of UDEs
Demography
Demography Demography Demography Demography Demog
raphy Demography Demography Demography Demography
Demography
Demography
Demography
Demography Demography Demography Demography Demogr
aphy

9
Age

• Permanent academic staff by subject and
• proportion aged 50 or over
• Year Total over 50
• 1995-6 2894 35
• 2000-1 3214 48
• 2003-4 3545 50
• Education is the subject area with the largest
  proportion of staff aged 50 and over (50 per
  cent) ESRC 2006

10
Gender

• Permanent academic staff by subject and sex
• Year Total Female
• 1995-6 2894 46
• 2000-1 3214 48
• 2003-4 3545 56
• Education has one of the highest proportions of
  female academics

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Salary

• 2003/4
• Median salary 35,370
• greater than 50,000 4
• Education with the exception of creative arts
  has the lowest proportion of staff on high
  salaries

12
Nationality/ethnicity

• 2003/4
• Non-UK nationals 4
• Education has the lowest proportion nearly
  every other subject is in the mid teens
• Non white 4
• Education has the lowest proportion of non-white
  academics

13
Where do educational researchers come from?
Where do educational researchers come from?
Where do educationalists come from?
Where do educational researchers come from?
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Shorter academic careers

• Many academic staff are on their second career
  making the switch from the teaching profession
  mid career
• ESRC (2006)

15
age of academic and research staff with PhDs
Source HESA 2005/6
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Importers and exporters
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Institutions worlds of difference
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100 university education departments in England

• The pre 1992 Sector
• The research elite
• The research insecure

• The post 1992 Sector
• Ex-polytechnics
• Ex-teachers colleges
• New entrepreneurs
• Teaching only universities

Different institutional trajectories Different
lived realities for staff and students
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Teaching

• Where are we now?

20
What do we teach?The pressure of instrumentalism?

• Core teaching
• BEd
• PGCE
• CPD
• Additional teaching
• Ed Psych, TEFL, MSc, EdDs, PhDs

• TDA insist on a market of multiple providers
• TDA defines
• Course structure
• Course content standards and competences
• Course inspection Ofsted
• Course/institution league tables
• HE has no essential contribution
• cf Europe

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Teaching - the balance sheet in our main market
teacher education

• Strengths
• Ofsted
• Students
• Recruitment

• Weaknesses The pressure of instrumentalilsm
• On theory
• On research
• On topics an over emphasis on schools and
  classrooms
• On staffing
• Who is recruited
• Staff development

22
ResearchWhere are we now?
23
ESRC Demographic Review

• There is much to be done to increase research
  capacity in such a large discipline, and no
  quick-fix solutions. Education, more so than all
  other disciplines, is vulnerable to changes in
  policy legislations, affecting schools and Higher
  Education alike. (p45)

24
Funding
Funding Funding Funding Funding Funding
Funding Funding
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Total funding 70-75 million

• Three times more likely to be funded by
  government than by research councils
• Less likely to receive funds from industry and EU
• Very good chance of receiving charities funding

26
Where does the money go?A highly differentiated
system

• While there are at least 100 separate
  institutions conducting educational research, 80
  per cent of the funding from government,
  charities and Research Councils goes to 22
  institutions (OECD)

• A mid range of institutions (graded 4 or below
  in 2001) with a substantial community of
  research active staff are finding it virtually
  impossible to attract significant funding for
  research (ESRC)

27
Where does the money go?A highly differentiated
system

• While there are at least 100 separate
  institutions conducting educational research, 80
  per cent of the funding from government,
  charities and Research Councils goes to 22
  institutions (OECD)

• A mid range of institutions (graded 4 or below
  in 2001) with a substantial community of
  research active staff are finding it virtually
  impossible to attract significant funding for
  research (ESRC)

28
Where does the money go?A highly differentiated
system

• While there are at least 100 separate
  institutions conducting educational research, 80
  per cent of the funding from government,
  charities and Research Councils goes to 22
  institutions (OECD)

• A mid range of institutions (graded 4 or below
  in 2001) with a substantial community of
  research active staff are finding it virtually
  impossible to attract significant funding for
  research (ESRC)

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1996-2005 ESRC Awards

• London IOE
• Bristol
• Oxford
• Exeter
• Edinburgh
• London KCL
• Sussex
• Bath
• Cardiff
• Lancaster

• Awards graded by income

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What is good educational research?

• Differentiated in relation to
• Methodology from RCTs to action research
• Theory from atheoretical positivism to post
  modernism
• Purposes
• policy
• applied and practice based work
• blue skies

• Vulnerable to
• critique
• fashion and
• government intervention

Education a field not a discipline
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Research the balance sheet

• Strengths
• Examples of
• excellent academic work
• excellent policy work
• Established institutions with profile as good as
  many social sciences
• TLRP largest ESRC programme ever
• 11/17th success rate in ESRC funding
• Good profile internationally from ISI data
• 1400 academics in grade 4 or above departments

• Weaknesses
• Success in relation to size
• The recruitment base
• Training opportunities
• Quality of some work
• Limited methodologies
• Major emphasis on schools and classrooms
• Questions not asked
• Growing separation from other disciplines

32
Who is missing?Think tanks
33
Who is missing? Consultancy companies
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Why are we where we are?
 

•  
•  

35
Higher education and global marketisation

• As higher education and science became
  increasingly important instruments of national
  economic policy the relationships between higher
  education and the state were redefined. Higher
  education institutions and their members were
  subject to unprecedented government steerage and
  scrutiny but also had to locate themselves and
  compete in various forms of market (Henkel 2005)

36
The neo-liberal university

• Coming together of
• human
• capital theory
• economic rationalism

• Driving these changes is a redefined internal
  economy in which under-funding drives a
  pseudo-market in fee incomes, soft budget
  allocations for special purposes and contested
  earnings for new enrolments and research grants

37
Neo-liberal research policy

• 1. Massification of Higher Education
• insufficient funding
• government not convinced that research is
  essential for Higher Education teaching
• RAE 20 years of progressive differentiation
• 2006 the first teaching only universities
  appear

• 2. Harnessing research for global competitiveness
  
• The new social contract for research
• More money
• Government defined issues and methodologies
• Increased accountability

• 3. Mode 2 knowledge production
• research carried out in the context of
  application should become the norm

38
Higher education funding paradox

The paradox of this new openness to outside
funding and competition is a process of
isomorphic closure through which universities
with diverse histories choose from an
increasingly restricted menu of commercial
options and strategies (Marginson, 2007)
39
Alternative markets provide positional advantage

• Non ITT undergraduate teaching
• The international post-graduate market
• But
• TDA remains
• the dominant
• market

Universities become vulnerable to a
highly assertive government
40
Teaching and the new professionalism

• Schools too are now part of the national drive
  for international competitiveness
• And competitive institutions in a quasi-market
• Schooling is now too important to be left to
  individual teachers or educationalists
• The collapse of confidence in individual
  professionalism from the Conservatives to new
  Labour

Michael Apple The move towards a small strong
state that is increasingly guided by market needs
seems inevitably to bring with it reduced
professional power and status
41
Marilyn Cochran Smith

• The ends question debates about the purposes
  of teaching and learning in school is closed
• In contrast, at the heart of teacher education
  from a more critical perspective is continuous
  problematizing of the ends question

Many people, myself included, have argued for
years that good teacher education focuses on an
expansive rather than narrow notion of practice.
42
Where Education should/might be?

• Re-tooling Education

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Re-tooling Professional Education

• Rebuilding from below
• Learning for an uncertain world
• Technology
• Knowledge
• Society mobility, values, conflict

More than ever before, we need to educate young
people to think critically about knowledge and
about values, to recognise differences in
interpretation, to develop the skills needed to
form their own judgments in a rapidly changing
world
44
The implications for professional education

• If those who teach are to be critical educators
  then part of their own professional education
  must be based on the same approach to teaching
  and learning.
• We also need high quality practical training
  relevant to institutional and national need.
• The University is a key contributor but not as
  before. Complementary partnerships with schools
  as institutions are essential.
• This will be highly challenging to schools and to
  universities.

45
Implications for universities

• We must maintain our commitment to the
  contestability of knowledge in all our teaching.
• That means
• Every lecturer must be a participant in a
  scholarly culture able to contribute to the
  conversations at the forefront of their
  discipline.
• Personal research as ONE key strategy for
  maintaining a scholarly culture.

46
Re-tooling for new forms of knowledge production

• Knowledge transfer as an essential part of
  university life
• Growing numbers of institutions, including
  educational institutions, that can and do manage
  without us

• The development of new Web 2.00 and social media
  is pushing this process forward at a dramatic
  rate
• What universities have to offer
• Education as a field has not responded well
  apart from action research

47

• A not-for-profit organisation, we work in
  partnership with others to
• incubate new ideas, taking them from the lab to
  the classroom
• share hard evidence and practical advice to
  support the design and use of innovative learning
  tools
• communicate the latest thinking and practice in
  educational ICT
• provide the space for experimentation and the
  exchange of ideas between the creative,
  technology and education sectors.

• Partners
• Futurelab is a consortium comprising some of the
  top players in the software, hardware and
  creative industries. Our partnerships are
  diverse we work with individuals and large
  corporations, practising teachers and Government
  bodies, academics and venture capitalists.
• Policy - details about our key strategic
  partnerships
• Industry - a list of all our industry members and
  project partners
• Education research - our academic project
  partners
• Education practice - a list of all the schools
  involved with our RD work

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Re-tooling for research

• Well resourced, privileged institutions
• To take responsibility for the future of the
  foundation disciplines
• In return, those in the disciplines to maintain
  their commitment to the field of education
• To broaden our research agenda
• Getting better at collaborations

• We need
• HODs insisting that
• All programmes demonstrate a commitment to the
  contestability of knowledge
• Research is essential for higher education
  teaching
• As a community
• to get better at doing research across the full
  range of methods now demanded

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Broadening our research agenda
Religion
Social equality
Social change
The economy
Poverty
Global warming
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Finally

• We must not lose sight of what we are and what
  we are not...
• Two things follow

• 1. For good interdisciplinary work to take place
  
• Our job teaching, research and scholarship that
  puts the contestability of knowledge at its
  heart.
• This is our truth and we need to remain true to
  it in all that we do.

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Putting the U back in UCET