The Entrepreneurial University: A discursive profile of a higher education buzzword

Mautner, Gerlinde

doi:10.1080/17405900500283540

Cited by 181 publications

(88 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Much has been written on detailed forms of linguistic analysis. Persistent, dominant discourses in education policy have already been extensively critiqued through Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2007;Mautner, 2005;Mulderrig, 2011) though less so, in terms of educational technology policy. Studies have revealed how ideology can communicate one particular meaning in the service of power (Foucault, 1984) and marginalise others.…”

Section: A Trans-disciplinary Methodology In Corpus-based Cdamentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning from a Deceptively Spacious Policy Discourse

Hayes

2016

Research, Boundaries, and Policy in Networked Learning

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Networked Learning, e-Learning and Technology Enhanced Learning have each been defined in different ways, as people's understanding about technology in education has developed. Yet each could also be considered as a terminology competing for a contested conceptual space. Theoretically this can be a 'fertile trans-disciplinary ground for represented disciplines to affect and potentially be re-orientated by others ' (Parchoma and Keefer, 2012), as differing perspectives on terminology and subject disciplines yield new understandings. Yet when used in government policy texts to describe connections between humans, learning and technology, terms tend to become fixed in less fertile positions, linguistically. A deceptively spacious policy discourse that suggests people are free to make choices conceals an economically-based assumption that implementing new technologies, in themselves, determines learning. Yet it actually narrows choices open to people as one route is repeatedly in the foreground and humans are not visibly involved in it. An impression that the effective use of technology for endless improvement is inevitable cuts off critical social interactions and new knowledge for multiple understandings of technology in people's lives. This paper explores some findings from a corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis of UK policy for educational technology during the last 15 years, to help to illuminate the choices made. This is important when through political economy, hierarchical or dominant neoliberal logic promotes a single 'universal model' of technology in education, without reference to a wider social context (Rustin, 2013). Discourse matters, because it can 'mould identities' (Massey, 2013) in narrow, objective economically-based terms which 'colonise discourses of democracy and student-centredness' (Greener and Perriton, 2005:67). This undermines subjective social, political, material and relational (Jones, 2012: 3) contexts for those learning when humans are omitted. Critically confronting these structures is not considered a negative activity. Whilst deterministic discourse for educational technology may leave people unconsciously restricted, I argue that, through a close analysis, it offers a deceptively spacious theoretical tool for debate about the wider social and economic context of educational technology. Methodologically it provides insights about ways technology, language and learning intersect across disciplinary borders (Giroux, 1992), as powerful, mutually constitutive elements, ever-present in networked learning situations. In sharing a replicable approach for linguistic analysis of policy discourse I hope to contribute to visions others have for a broader theoretical underpinning for educational technology, as a developing field of networked knowledge and research (Conole and Oliver, 2002;Andrews, 2011).

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Section: A Trans-disciplinary Methodology In Corpus-based Cdamentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning from a Deceptively Spacious Policy Discourse

Hayes

2016

Research, Boundaries, and Policy in Networked Learning

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“…Altbach & Knight, 2007). Moreover, Fairclough (1993), Wernick (1991), Mautner (2005) and Osman (2006) have shown that modern universities have used marketing discourses that portray themselves as innovative and entrepreneurial institutions. Universities are thus propelled to function as businesses (Fairclough, 1993) not only in terms of attracting prospective students and staff but also in generating revenue for themselves through research.…”

Section: Mission Statements In Academiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Commodification of transformation discourses and post-apartheid institutional identities at three South African universities

Banda

Mafofo

2015

Critical Discourse Studies

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Using mission statements from the UCT, UWC and Stellenbosch University (South Africa), we explore how the three universities have rematerialised prior discourses to rebrand their identities as dictated by contemporary national and global aspirations. We reveal how the universities have recontextualised the experiences and discourses of liberation struggle and the new government's post-apartheid social transformation discourses to construct distinctive identities that are locally relevant and globally aspiring. This has led to the semiotic refiguring of universities from spatial edifices of racially based unequal education, to equal opportunity institutions of higher learning, and to the blurring of historical boundaries between these universities. We conclude that the universities have reconstructed distinct and recognisable identities which speak to a segregated past, but with a post-apartheid voice of equity and redress.

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“…Albeit, some scholars believe that talking of entrepreneurial movements has nothing to do with medical staff (e.g. Gibb & Hannon, 2006), to some others medical staff, and more precisely, doctors could be considered as entrepreneurs (Stone, 1997;Mautner, 2005;Khanna, 2016). Therefore, based on the second perspective, universities must become more and more entrepreneurial to succeed in training such individuals (e.g.…”

Section: Academic Entrepreneurship In Medical Universitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%