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First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Describes approaches to understanding cultures in higher education, paying particular attention to cultures and cultural construction at departmental level. Implications of cultural characteristics for issues around change initiatives, including the enhancement of teaching, learning and assessment are a key focus of this book.
The ‘tribes and territories’ metaphor for the cultures of academic disciplines and their roots in different knowledge characteristics has been used by those interested in university life and work since the early 1990s. This book draws together research, data and theory to show how higher education has gone through major change since then and how social theory has evolved in parallel. Together these changes mean there is a need to re-theorise academic life in a way which reflects changed contexts in universities in the twenty-first century, and so a need for new metaphors. Using a social practice approach, the editors and contributors argue that disciplines are alive and well, but that in...
This book uses social practice theory to offer a new perspective on the professional world of higher education. It presents a practice sensibility that helps to identify the successful paths to changes for enhancement in teaching and learning regimes.
Acclaim for the first edition of Academic Tribes and Territories: '...Becher's insistence upon in-depth analysis of the extant literature while reporting his own sustained research doubled the thickness of the material to be covered...Academic Tribes and Territories is a superb addition to the literature on higher education...There is here an education to be had.' (Burton R. Clark, Higher Education) '...Becher's landmark work. The higher education community - both practitioners and educational researchers - need to assimilate and to heed the message of this important and insightful book.' (Alan E. Bayer, Journal of Higher Education) 'a bold approach to a theory of academic relations...The re...
Paul Trowler take a close look inside one British university to explore how academic staff at the ground level respond to changes in higher education. During the period of this study there was a remarkably rapid expansion in student numbers and, at the same time, a shrinking unit of resource. Meanwhile new systems and structures were being put in place, particularly those associated with the 'credit framework': the constellation of features associated with the assignment of credit value to assessed learning, including modularity, franchising and the accreditation of prior learning. The book explores the nature and effects of academics' responses to these changes and develops a framework for explaining these responses. It offers a valuable insight into change in higher education and highlights some of the processes which lead to policy outcomes being rather different from the intentions of policy-makers.
Higher education is a particularly complex site for enhancement initiatives. This book offers those involved in change a coherent conceptual overview of enhancement approaches, of the change context, and of the probable interactions between them. The book sets enhancement within a particular type of change dynamic which focuses on social practices. The aim is to base innovation and change on the probabilities of desired outcomes materializing, rather than on the romanticism of policies that underestimate the sheer difficulty of making a difference. Following a theoretical introduction to these ideas, there are case studies (from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Norway) at the...
As its title suggests, the subject matter of this edited collection is higher education policy, institutional change and the ways in which they inter-relate. It does not, however, see policy and policy-making as distinct from or 'above' processes of implementation and change, located only in formal settings of policy design or strategy formulation. Instead it draws on a model of policy-making and implementation which acknowledges that policy is made in ways other than in formal settings of government or Vice-Chancellors' offices and which sees 'implementation' processes as essentially creative – and therefore also part of the policy-making process.
This short book is designed to be helpful for anyone who wants to create a good structure for their doctoral thesis; one in which they can be confident that they have covered all the bases. It is part of Paul Trowler's series, originally written for the Kindle, Doctoral Research into Higher Education.The book is not designed to create a template for thesis structure to be followed slavishly, rather it offers suggestions and advice as well as indications of where some options are low risk and others high risk when it comes to examination of the thesis.The book is concise, while still being comprehensive and useful, at around 12,000 words (about 40 printed pages). It gives guidance on the cont...
Known as either ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ ‘managerialism’, ‘new managerialism’ or ‘new public management’, this new narrative has, irrespective of moniker, permeated the institutions of higher education almost everywhere. Taking this as its context, this volume is founded on a comprehensive international comparative analysis of the evolving role of middle-level academic managers—deans, heads of department and their equivalents. The chapters address key questions that will determine the future of academe: have the imperatives of management theory caused a realignment of the values and expectations of middle-level academic managers? In what way do the new expectations placed on th...