Understanding Higher Education
Understanding Higher Education

Author: Chrissie Bowie

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2021-08-23

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 1928502229

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Drawing on the South African case, this book looks at shifts in higher education around the world in the last two decades. In South Africa, calls for transformation have been heard in the university since the last days of apartheid. Similar claims for quality higher education to be made available to all have been made across the African continent. In spite of this, inequalities remain and many would argue that these have been exacerbated during the Covid pandemic. Understanding Higher Education responds to these calls by arguing for a social account of teaching and learning by contesting dominant understandings of students as decontextualised learners premised on the idea that the university is a meritocracy. This book tackles the issue of teaching and learning by looking both within and beyond the classroom. It looks at how higher education policies emerged from the notion of the knowledge economy in the newly democratic South Africa, and how national qualification frameworks and other processes brought the country more closely into conversation with the global order. The effects of this on staffing and curriculum structures are considered alongside a proposition for alternative ways of understanding the role of higher education in society.

The History of U.S. Higher Education - Methods for Understanding the Past
The History of U.S. Higher Education - Methods for Understanding the Past

Author: Marybeth Gasman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-14

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1136976531

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The first volume in the Core Concepts of Higher Education series, The History of U.S. Higher Education: Methods for Understanding the Past is a unique research methods textbook that provides students with an understanding of the processes that historians use when conducting their own research. Written primarily for graduate students in higher education programs, this book explores critical methodological issues in the history of American higher education, including race, class, gender, and sexuality. Chapters include: Reflective Exercises that combine theory and practice Research Method Tips Further Reading Suggestions. Leading historians and those at the forefront of new research explain how historical literature is discovered and written, and provide readers with the methodological approaches to conduct historical higher education research of their own.

Understanding Contemporary Issues in Higher Education
Understanding Contemporary Issues in Higher Education

Author: Brendan Bartram

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-29

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 1000212777

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This insightful book offers a wide-ranging collection of lively discussions on contemporary issues, policies and practices in higher education. Bartram integrates contributions from experienced academics, teachers and students in a unique approach and structure, designed to enable students with both specific and wide-ranging interests in higher education to extend their understanding. Including discussion points, research tasks and suggestions on further reading in each chapter, Understanding Contemporary Issues in Higher Education discusses a range of topics, such as: universities and the mental health ‘crisis’; knowledge, the state and the market; the role of technology in teaching and academic celebrification; disability, diversity and inclusive placement learning. Written specifically for Education Studies students, this book constitutes a timely addition to student-focused themed studies looking at aspects of higher education.

Understanding Authority in Higher Education
Understanding Authority in Higher Education

Author: Dean O. Smith

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2015-01-22

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 1442241780

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Within the complex environment of higher education, administrators and faculty members face daunting challenges in their unique domains of institutional governance. Many of the greatest challenges arise from basic misunderstandings of authority and its limitations by administrators and faculty members alike. These misunderstandings are the primary source of disruptive confusion, mistrust, and mismanagement. Consequently, an institution’s governance would improve significantly if its personnel clearly understand the fundamental principles of authority. To bring about this improvement, Understanding Authority in Higher Education clarifies issues of authority in an academic setting. Throughout, it introduces basic concepts of higher-education administration and then examines the limits of authority in context. Pedagogically, the book strives continuously to ascertain whether authority is used properly from a legal perspective, emphasizing the influence of academic cultural norms on legal principles and vice versa. But, Understanding Authority in Higher Education goes further than law textbooks by using real and anecdotal case studies to examine aspects of authority that don’t appear in court proceedings— those that lie beyond the reach of the law. In these cases, the book explores the anthropology— the behavior and the culture—of authority in the academic environment.

Understanding Mass Higher Education
Understanding Mass Higher Education

Author: David Palfreyman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-10-05

Total Pages: 300

ISBN-13: 1134256442

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In recent years most western democracies have experienced a shift from elite to mass higher education, with the United States leading the way. This text compares the experience of this very important social change within different nation states. Whilst recognising the critical global economic forces that appear to explain the international nature of the change, it sees the issues as rooted within different national traditions. There is a particular focus upon the discourse of access, especially the political discourse. The book addresses questions such as: How has expansion been explained? Has expansion been generated by state intervention or by a combination of economic and social forces? What are the forms of political intervention? What points of agreement and conflict are generated within the wider society by expanding access? Leading academic experts explore the ways in which different systems of higher education have accommodated mass access, constructing comparative pictures and comparative interpretations and lessons in an accessible and informative style. This book should be critical reading for students in education, sociology and politics, as well as policy-makers and academics.

Access to Higher Education
Access to Higher Education

Author: Anna Mountford-Zimdars

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2016-11-18

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 1317409574

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How do we understand and explain who has access to higher education? How do we make sense of persisting and new forms of inequality? How can global, national and institutional policymakers and practitioners make higher education more inclusive? Access to Higher Education: Theoretical perspectives and contemporary challenges seeks to update thinking on these questions, combining new voices and emerging perspectives with established writers in the field. This pioneering text highlights the contribution of social theory to issues of access to education, with chapters introducing and drawing on the works of key interdisciplinary thinkers including Pierre Bourdieu, Margaret Archer, Amartya Sen and Herbert Simon. It then moves to examines how theoretical perspectives can be applied to the contemporary challenges of forging more equal access, with examples drawn from a wide range of contexts, including the UK, the US, Australia, South Africa and Japan. Global in scope, this book documents the shared nature of the access challenge in a period when higher education is growing rapidly, but inequalities continue to be stark. It concludes by proposing a new direction for research and a reassertion of the role of the researcher as a social activist for disconnected and disadvantaged groups, equipped with the thinking tools needed to move the agenda forward. Access to Higher Education is a rigorous text for the global research community, with relevance to policymakers, practitioners and postgraduate students interested in social justice and social policy. It provides those with an academic interest in access and a commitment to enhancing policy with theoretical and practical ideas for moving the access agenda forward in their institutional, regional or national contexts.

Understanding Community Colleges
Understanding Community Colleges

Author: John S. Levin

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 0415881269

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Understanding Community Colleges provides a comprehensive review of the community college landscape--management and governance, finance, student demographics and development, teaching and learning, policy, faculty, and workforce development--and bridges the gap between research and practice. This contributed volume brings together highly respected scholars in the field who rely upon substantial theoretical perspectives--critical theory, social theory, institutional theory, and organizational theory--for a rich and expansive analysis of community colleges. The latest text to publish in the Core Concepts in Higher Education series, this exciting new text fills a gap in the higher education literature available for students enrolled in Higher Education and Community College graduate programs. This text provides students with: A review of salient research related to the community college field. Critical theoretical perspectives underlying current policies. An understanding of how theory links to practice, including focused end-of-chapter discussion questions. A fresh examination of emerging issues and insight into contemporary community college practices and policy.

Understanding Learning and Teaching
Understanding Learning and Teaching

Author: Michael Prosser

Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)

Published: 1999-02-16

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0335232604

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How can university teachers improve the quality of student learning? Prosser and Trigwell argue that the answer lies in determining how students perceive their unique learning situations. In doing so they draw upon the considerable body of educational research into student learning in higher education which has been developed and published over the past three decades; and they enable university teachers to research and improve their own teaching. This book outlines the key principles underlying successful teaching and learning in higher education, and is a key resource for all university teachers.

Remaking College
Remaking College

Author: Mitchell Stevens

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2015-01-07

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 0804793557

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Between 1945 and 1990 the United States built the largest and most productive higher education system in world history. Over the last two decades, however, dramatic budget cuts to public academic services and skyrocketing tuition have made college completion more difficult for many. Nevertheless, the democratic promise of education and the global competition for educated workers mean ever growing demand. Remaking College considers this changing context, arguing that a growing accountability revolution, the push for greater efficiency and productivity, and the explosion of online learning are changing the character of higher education. Writing from a range of disciplines and professional backgrounds, the contributors each bring a unique perspective to the fate and future of U.S. higher education. By directing their focus to schools doing the lion's share of undergraduate instruction—community colleges, comprehensive public universities, and for-profit institutions—they imagine a future unencumbered by dominant notions of "traditional" students, linear models of achievement, and college as a four-year residential experience. The result is a collection rich with new tools for helping people make more informed decisions about college—for themselves, for their children, and for American society as a whole.