Conference Agenda

Whilst the path traversed by those seeking research leadership within higher education are well-defined and recognised, the journey to leadership in learning and teaching (L&T) is often not widely discussed and/or recognised. Much of the literature around leadership in academia focusses on those who have accessed leadership positions owing to their research excellence (see for e.g. Bryman, 2007; Dopson et al.,2016) and less so due to their learning and teaching leadership (Hofmeyer et al. 2015; Shaked, 2021). This might be owing to the position learning and teaching occupies in comparison to research ( see for e.g. Chen, 2015). Therefore, the indicators of what might count as L&T leadership and how might individuals get to these places of leadership are often ill defined.

With the increased emphasis on L&T leadership in higher education globally, and considering its significance for the student learning experience, a focus on understanding the challenges of L&T leadership is therefore timely and appropriate. We draw on 21 personal narratives and 8 case studies of L&T leaders from nine countries including those from Europe in this study. Using a motivational framework of push and pull factors, we analysed 21 personal narratives and 8 case studies of L&T leaders from nine countries including those from Europe to:

1. Contribute to our collective understanding of the diverse forms of learning and teaching leadership which currently exists within Higher Education

2. Explore the particular motivations and challenges faced and opportunities available to those seeking to establish themselves as L&T leaders within academia.

In this article I explore the university discussion about the language use in teaching, which is balancing between the arguments of internationalization and language protection.

Among the language dimensions in current higher education, the use of English is the most researched aspect. For instance, Philipson (1992) discusses power and ideology contributions to the linguistic imperialism of English and presents this as a feature characteristic to English language. From the perspective of Crystal (1997), it stems that this kind of power could be brought up within any language, and that research should consider historical, political and cultural context. Therefore, while both authors explore the expansion of English and its hegemonic power, they differ in drawing political implications from this state of the art. However, the interpretation of practices concerning language(s) and their balance in different parts of the world could not be derived from these studies. As Pennycook (2000) and Chorpita (2005) argue, the large-scale theories are too general to embrace the shifting landscape of languages in the political, cultural and social context.

Meanwhile, Pennycook (2000) suggests the distinction between the general discussion on English and its political power, and ideological impact of English on other languages and cultures. He fully acknowledges the first one, which in his interpretation unites the polarized positions of Philipson (1992) and Crystal (1997). However, he argues for a more nuanced approach with the analysis of the second one. In his view, this analysis of the ‘discursive effects’ of English could have divergent analytical frameworks, including colonial celebration, laissez-faire liberalism, language ecology, linguistic imperialism and language rights. Finally, he also elaborates on the postcolonial performativity approach, which “seeks to understand through contextualized sociologies of local language acts how English is constantly implicated in moments of hegemony, resistance and appropriation” (2000, p.108). This position seems to be most fruitful in analyzing the situation with several languages in the academia, because it reflects on language rights and ecology, along with linguistic imperialism, while trying to maintain a fluid and functional perspective on language. Yet, it also gives analytical perspective in approaching practices.

In analyzing practices, positions vary as well. For instance, Julianne House relies on the idea of De Swaan that in the sphere of science an argument about the most effective communication might hold equally strong power, and this rationale might prompt the choice of language (De Swaan, 2001, p.52 c.f. House, 2013). Further analyses of the practices feature a variety of aspects that English as a lingua franca brings into different disciplines and planning of teaching. Due to the changing picture of languages and perspectives on them, there a rethinking of professional fields, which have not been fully explored.

According to Warriner (2016), institutional arrangements have been transformed in such a way that language is conceptualized in a reduced form, merely as a tool of communication without a larger context of history and culture. As a result, it is no longer placed within humanities, its instruction has been reduced and less languages are being learned in tertiary studies. This inability to upkeep multilingualism is also a result of the macro conditions of strategizing of few stronger languages. This explains emergence of discussion around language preservation, which is focused on the national languages. This becomes a topic for discussion in the language policy, which I am focusing on in this article. In particular, I am addressing two questions:

(1). What kind of ethical claims are communicated by different respondents?

(2). What kind of practices are considered as the most valuable or problematic by different participants?

This presentation gives a snapshot of my new book, The Alternative University: Lessons from Bolivarian Venezuela, Stanford University Press 2023.

The decline of the public university has dramatically increased under intensified commercialization and privatization, with market-driven restructurings leading to the deterioration of working and learning conditions. A growing reserve army of scholars and students, who enter precarious learning, teaching, and research arrangements, have joined recent waves of public unrest in both developed and developing countries to advocate for reforms to higher education. Yet even the most visible campaigns have rarely put forward any proposals for an alternative institutional organization. Based on extensive fieldwork in Venezuela, The Alternative University outlines the origins and day-to-day functioning of the colossal effort of late President Hugo Chávez's government to create a university that challenged national and global higher education norms.

The book addresses the questions: What are the opportunities for and limitations to an alternative higher education project within the contradictions and confines of advanced capitalism? How are these reflected within a socialist state project in a semi-peripheral petrol state in the Global South and in which the government holds control neither of the balance of power in the bourgeois state subservient to market logic nor of the broader transnational processes of commercialization and stratification they reinforce? How do hierarchies typical of the higher education field and accelerated by processes of globalization manifest within an uneven national university field confronted with its internal gendered and racialized class dynamic? What are the ways in which such a process is experienced, negotiated, or challenged from within by academics and experts seen as proponents and class enemy of alternative education; and then by the poor, who are subject of its empowerment project?

To answer these questions, I examine the tension between enlightened and egalitarian tendencies in higher education, detailing processes that challenge or reinforce old and produce new inequalities. Instead of focusing on just one group, to depict the process in its full complex texture, I map the trajectories over time of the whole field with its various actors: experts, academics, staff, students, and community activists. I explore how existent and novel structural and symbolic hierarchies condition the relation of these different groups to each other and to the nation-state through its higher education policy. I show how the structural and agentive opportunities the new regime offers are limited by asymmetries of economic and symbolic power: ultimately, beyond certain redistributive initiatives, the class power of old educated elites stays strong while the success of the socialist project rests on its ability to produce affective reality and mobilize the social reproduction labor of women in poor communities. The global field of higher education (Marginson 2008) and the labor market of a semi-peripheral petrol state, with their own logic, hierarchies, and norms, also limit Bolivarian higher education policies. The resistance of traditional academics to both the massification of elite public universities and the accreditation of the new programs of UBV also sabotages the alternative university project. However, in the book I also show some aspects that are less dependent on global and systemic constraints and more on path dependencies of the political culture of petrol states and past socialist experiments. Political opportunities are missed, and responsibility is diffused by tendencies to start from scratch and build new parallel institutions every time resistance appears, to treat expertise as contingent and replaceable, and to circumvent critical feedback from sympathizers. Together with the objective structural constraints, these tendencies have reinforced the precariousness of Bolivarian institutions and frustrated higher education’s opportunity to serve as a key tool for national and global social change.