Challenging Performativity in Higher Education: Promoting a Healthier Learning Culture

Abstract

The nature and context of education have changed dramatically in recent decades. The increased prioritisation of standardisation, performance indicators and metrics often means that holistic, afective and wellbeing education are seen as less important in the educational endeavour. The value of education for education's sake is under siege. Previous emphasis on the education of the whole person (i.e., moral and creative aesthetic development) is often replaced by a more functionalist perspective of education as servicing economic need and global capitalist interests. Marketization of education has increased at an exponential rate and has had an adverse impact on the health and well-being of both educators and students. This chapter elucidates how the triad of assessment, student well-being and academic well-being intersects in the ever increasing performative and neo-liberalist cultures of higher education. It demonstrates the reciprocal dynamic of stress that is becoming more and more evident among educators and students. The chapter makes the case for more empowering and human-centred educative contexts in order to facilitate beter educational outcomes for students and healthier outcomes for all involved in the educational endeavour.

The Neoliberal University in Ireland: Institutional Bullying by Another Name?

“…There is an obsession with the quantification of outputs at individual and institutional levels [2], where everything is rendered to what is numerically measurable. These multiple accountability measures create a regime of performativity [2,39,83], which impacts both directly and indirectly on staff, as individual academics are required to assemble information about teaching hours, students grades, student feedback processes, student retention, staff training, PhD recruitment and completion rates, international recruitment, non-traditional recruitment, research income, publications, impact, and citations, and then to relay this to various central offices/functions, usually on a yearly or biennial cycle. They then may be required to attend review boards, strategic operational planning team meetings or workshops to consider the findings and recommendations for improvement arising out of performance reviews, and to report on progress on those recommendations.…”

“…The impact on creativity is likely to be extremely negative. Furthermore, precarious employment is a powerful disincentive for one to discuss controversial issues or to express unorthodox views which is according to Washburn, a troubling prospect for academic freedom [83,90]. In effect, it both silences and erodes academic freedom.…”

Marketization, Performative Environments, and the Impact of Organizational Climate on Teaching Practice in Business Schools

“…However, proponents argue that by removing direct government regulation, a free market or what is deemed a marketization solution will emerge to promote competition between suppliers and create more choice for consumers while also improving efficiency, transparency and quality (Molesworth et al, 2009). Marketization has in turn reshaped models of teaching and research practice to include explicit elements of "performance management and quality control of teaching and research" (Deem & Brehony, 2005: 226, see also Deasy et al, 2016) as the means to assess whether the goals of efficiency and quality are being met.…”