Abstract
This paper takes a diagnostic and discourse-analytic approach to the prevalent concern for students’ mental well-being at universities around the globe. We explore whether we are witnessing a discursive continuation or, indeed, a discontinuation with wide implications for what is understood as the educational core task.
We start from the observation that the manifold initiatives and resources to enhance students’ well-being, currently developed by or for the universities, bring new student figures to life that warrant critical attention. For the last three decades John Biggs' (1999) version of outcomes-based education has dominated mainstream thinking about ‘good teaching’ in Higher Education (HE). His pervasive delineation of the student-centred regime posits two archetypal student figures: the problematic Robert, motivated solely by the pursuit of a diploma, and the self-motivated Susan, embodying the ideal student. Biggs advocates for educators to shape all students into self-directed learners akin to Susan, achieved through student-centred designs fostering independent activities. Robert, as the necessary problematic figure, legitimised a host of new terms and teaching practices in HE.
The current well-being agenda, as witnessed in said resources, introduces new figures of the ‘ideal’ and the ‘problematic’ student: The ‘ideal’ student is now the one performing self-efficacy, a growth mindset, and contributing to fostering a positive classroom atmosphere, contrasting the ‘problematic’ student with mental health challenges. The resources imply a shift in core educational tasks and responsibilities from revolving around educational designs that would encourage students to ‘deep learning’ to revolving around the formation of particular (positive) mental states, mindsets, and attitudes (Petersen & Sarauw, 2023; Sarauw et al., 2023). An example of this shift is found in the attached, and on the conference, the example will be analysed in further detail.
From a discourse-analytic perspective, the question of continuity and discontinuity of discourse is ultimately a question of power and transitions from one configuration of power to another. On the one hand, the current development towards conflation of the subject and object of education, where students' mindsets become both the subject and object of educational processes, appears to diverge from previous student-centred regimes, hinting at a more profound 'governing of the soul' (Rose, 1999). On the other hand, this development seems to have been anticipated and possibly facilitated by Biggs and the student-centred approach, viewing students through a psychologically individualistic lens, and focusing on fostering specific learning styles.
This suggests that under the new agenda we are grappling with both continuities and discontinuities, which raises the question, if we witnessing a new power configuration in HE teaching and learning, and if so, how? To explore this question, we propose an analysis that further explores the intersection between particular constructions of HE’s purpose and the projection of particular student figures as ‘ideal’ or ‘problematic’. The analysis will focus on the present and recent developments, which means that we are not exploring whether the well-being agenda is a continuation or discontinuation of what preceded Biggs (1999). First, building on the German-Nordic Didaktik tradition, and its core question about why education - for whom and how (Westbury, 1999) – as an analytic framework we inquire further into ongoing transformations of the purposes and practices of the university as a complex and multi-determined movement in which these three questions continuously interweave. Second, we centre on the role that the ‘problematised’ student figures, or ‘necessary’ antagonist, play and have played in legitimising particular answers from Biggs (1999) to the present. Drawing on Laclau & Mouffe (1983) and Bacchi (2012), we examine how today’s antagonists, the students with mental health issues, may function to neutralise normative discussions about universities' purposes, practices and responsibilities, which, in turns, stands out as the self-evident, rational and politically neutral way forward.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Publication date | 1 Jun 2024 |
| Number of pages | 3 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jun 2024 |
| Event | 6th Annual PaTHES Conference: Higher Education Brought To Life - NTNU Tronheim, Trondheim, Norway Duration: 11 Jun 2024 → 13 Jun 2024 Conference number: 6 https://pathesorg.wordpress.com/higher-education-brought-to-life/ |
Conference
| Conference | 6th Annual PaTHES Conference |
|---|---|
| Number | 6 |
| Location | NTNU Tronheim |
| Country/Territory | Norway |
| City | Trondheim |
| Period | 11/06/2024 → 13/06/2024 |
| Other | “It is the ultimate task of our existence to achieve as much substance as possible for the concept of humanity in our person, both during the span of our life and beyond it, through the traces we leave by means of our vital activity. This can be fulfilled only by the linking of the self to the world to achieve the most general, most animated, and most unrestrained interplay.”<br/>Wilhelm Von Humboldt [1793] Theorie der Bildung des Menschen.<br/><br/>The theme for the 2024 PaTHES conference is Higher Education Brought to Life.<br/><br/>With this theme, we want to bring education as an aspect of humanity’s living the world into play. We hope that the ambiguity of the theme will inspire you to play with philosophical ideas and to theorise on higher education as we know it and as we aspire it to be. It is an opportunity for creativity, problematization and imagination.<br/><br/>While the theme might suggest that higher education has been removed from or (could be) brought back to lived life, a central question to be addressed is how we as researchers can contribute in developing meaningful understandings of lived experience of individuals, communities, cultures and societies through our research on and in higher education. Approaching this question, we bring into mind the rhythms and everyday life of and in higher education, and understandings of the self and the lifeworld, of bodies and a vivid present, of time, space and place, of sociality and practice, of community and institution.<br/><br/>The theme for the Trondheim conference is also motivated by where the 2024 conference is situated and the Nordic tradition of Pedagogy (Pedagogikk) – a concept that alters its meaning depending on regional contexts. In the Nordic countries ‘Pedagogy’ is a descriptive and normative discipline or field of study rooted in the continental didactic tradition and the ideas of Bildung. The theories and approaches connect both in history and in ideas to other traditions for understanding higher education. We invite you to bring into play local and contextual understandings of education as individual and communal life processes, on the timeless and timely, universal and situational.<br/><br/>Furthermore, there is the notion of hybridity, and the ambiguity and conflation of the dichotomy between the living and not-living. The machinery. The computer. The human. The student. The forest. The community. A living human industry has produced things in our image. And things are no longer inert. We experience that the “things” that we have made to manipulate the world, are now manipulating us, having in some ways gained a life of their own. What have we brought to life, and how? Our living present and history could lead us to believe that a thriving humanity and a living planet are contradictory. Are we producing an end to all life?<br/><br/>Higher Education Brought to Life engages us to discuss the purpose of higher education. Are we educating students to dystopia or to imagine hopeful futures and agency to change the way we live the world? Education is regarded as a cornerstone for societal and personal development. However, in the dominant imperative of today, higher education in particular is often reduced to economic and individual development and gain. Through the conference, we want to think collectively about how higher education can be a powerful place to envision and create future trajectories of societies; how co-existence and peace can be built.<br/><br/>The conference theme may play both on Genesis and on Apocalypse. It may engage our thinking on the very notion of and historicity of higher education and the higher education institutions. Is the University – as an idea, as a space and a place, as living practice – in a coma? We envision the conference as a place to discuss how higher education is brought to life; as a hopeful place – hope in the sense that Ernst Bloch (1954) describes it as a realisation of our humanisation. What living memory do we inscribe in the institutions which we create and nurture through our educational practices and our careers?<br/><br/>The conference Higher Education Brought to Life invites you to engage in dialogues on what is of worth in higher education, and what is at stake, engaging together in bringing to life hope and imaginaries of alternative futures. |
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