Review essay: What counts as higher education

REVIEW ESSAY: WHAT COUNTS AS

HIGHER EDUCATION? PURSUING

INTELLECTUALLY COMPELLING IDEAS TREVORGALE Central Queensland University

Barry Dart and Gillian Boulton-Lewis (1998) Teaching and Learning in Higher Education. Melbourne: ACER Press, ISBN 0-86431-234-2 (paperback), $34.95.

V. Lynn Meek, Leo Goedegebuure, Osmo Kivinen and Risto Rinne, Eds, (1996)

The Mockers and Mocked: Comparative Perspectives on Differentiation, Convergence and Diversity in Higher Education. Oxford, UK: Pergamon (for IAU Press), ISBN 0-08-042563-1 (casebound), $114.50.

Roger Mourad J. R., (1997) Postmodern Philosophical Critique and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Higher Education. Westport,Connecticut, USA: Bergin and Garvey, ISBN 0-89789-554-1 (paperback), $29.00. A few months ago I was sitting in a graduation ceremony considering the nature of universities; what it means to do academic work and how this constitutes some higher form of education. Unlike some of my more astute colleagues who had remembered to bring their current reading (copies of Giroux or Gelemter nestled within their graduation programs) to while away the time between applauds for graduates and speeches, I was confined to my own thoughts on matters of importance for universities and their constituents. The ceremony provided critical moments for reflection--for me, centred around the politics of meaningmincluding: the presentation to a colleague of the Vice-Chancellor's award for teaching excellence; the conferring of an honorary doctorate on the guest speaker, Fiji's Prime Minister Major-General Rabuka, for his involvement in restructuring Fiji's system of governance; and the celebration of his visit by the Vice-Chancellor, himself a would-be reformer of systems as a member of the West Review of Australian higher education.

AUSTRALIAN EDUCATIONAL RESEARCHER VOLUME 26 No 2 AUGUST 1999

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It is not my intention in this essay to provide an analysis of these specific events that occupied my thoughts---' everyday' events of university life to which you and I could probably add--but to explore the more general interests they sparked concerning what is currently meant by higher education. In part, the graduation ceremony's contribution, and that of like events, lie in their potential challenge to previous assumptions about the way things are, encouraging us to shift our sensibilities from a somewhat 'unexamined familiarity' with higher education and rendering it unfamiliar in order to pursue 'a new apprehension of the way things may be' (Mourad 1997, p. 94). In the course of such review, I want to focus on three books on higher education and consider what 'new' themes and assumptions, or 'intellectually compelling ideas' (Mourad 1997), are now being given priority. I want to propose that there are at least threeDinvolving the production and consumption of knowledge within universities and their systems---which are part of the larger comodification of knowledge and the marketisation of higher education; processes which have intensified in Australia since the March, 1996, federal election. I begin with a consideration of knowledge production in universities and, in particular, of Roger Mourad's (1997) analysis in Postmodern Philosophical Critique and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Higher Education which is critical of the underlying assumptions of modern research agendas but, more importantly, attempts to legitimise expanded foundations for future intellectual inquiry in higher education. This is followed by an exploration of knowledge 'consumption' through a review of Dart and Boulton-Lewis' (1998) Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, an edited collection of essays which draw on the contributions of John Biggs, particularly his '3P' model, to theories of students' learning and cognitive processes in institutional contexts. Finally, consideration is given to the largely converging or 'dedifferentiating' effects of the market within OECD countries on universities and their systems, as discussed by a collection of authors in Meek, Goedegebuure, Kivinen and Rinne's (1996) The Mockers and Mocked:

Comparative Perspectives on Differentiation, Convergence and Diversity in Higher Education. In reviewing each of these compelling ideas and the texts in

which they are represented, 'it may turn out that the idea [of higher education] is not really different in a compelling way, but is only a restatement of what is already known' (Mourad 1997, p. 96). Nevertheless, I take heart from Mourad's counsel that 'a successful inquiry is the achievement of a new position for the inquirer relative to reality' (1997, p. 96). What follows is such an attempt.

REVIEW ESSAY: WHAT COUNTS AS HIGHER EDUCATION?...

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Systematic sustained inquiry: Whose system? Research involves systematic and sustained inquiry; all 'good' research methodology texts say so! Implicitly, and more to the point, this often means that research does not involve idiosyncratic and serendipitous activity, at least not in most systems of knowledge production which are legitimated in higher education institutions. Of course, this is a view which has received criticism by a number, of social theorists and has led to significant changes in the legitimisation of certain research methodologies within universities, although some remain more 'legitimate' than others in institutional and disciplinary terms. Postmodern critiques of research agendas in higher education are not different in this critical sense but they are certainly distinctive. And it is this distinctiveness that 'frustrates' the incorporation of postmodern concerns into 'mainstream' research activity. In short, rejection of the major underlying assumptions of the modernist project often positions postmodern understandings outside traditional foundations of intellectual inquiry. Such positions can prompt more 'gympathetic' modernists to celebrate the deconstructive powers of postmodernity but lament its reconstructive impotence. It is here that Mourad's text, Postmodern Philosophical Critique and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Higher Education, makes its most valuable contribution; first in defining the parameters of contemporary inquiry and expanding them to include (postmodern) research possibilities informed by broader understandings and, secondly, by eliminating the constraints on modern inquiry that restrict its capacity to add value to human experience. Mourad's intent is to provide an alternative notion of research that does not reject modern inquiry out of hand but which provides the possibility for expanded investigations including those more orientated to postmodern concerns. Throughout Postmodern Philosophical Critique and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Higher Education, Mourad criticises the modern pursuit of knowledge and its production of truth (knowledge as absolute and objective), science (knowledge as explanation), democracy (knowledge as the basis for good citizenship, in Western cultural terms), and humanity (knowledge as virtuous and an end in itself). Each of these pursuits, Mourad argues, is founded on assumptions of 'pre-existent reality'mthat phenomena exist before and independent of inquiry and persist relatively unchanged by itmand on its 'mirroring' by theoretical knowledge; the accuracy of which is said to be mediated by a research collective with separate and specific understandings of reality progressively contributing to form a coherent whole, even if this can never be fully 'complete'. But for Mourad, the re-creation of reality in the form of theoretical knowledge forms only one particular intellectually compelling idea. Another is that 'the production of knowledge is also the creation of a new reality' (p. 96). Further, he suggests that

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the disciplines---modern categories of knowledge of pre-existent reality--' are fragmented rather than unified, autonomous wholes ... [and] the order that they impose a priori for the pursuit of knowledge is not a posteriori' (p. 84). Mourad's attempt to develop an alternative notion of inquiry is informed by his exploration of the work of five philosophers---Jean-Francois Lyotard, Richard Rorty, Calvin Schrag, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida--many of whom are characterised by their various associations with French thought and European philosophy more broadly. Lyotard and Foucault, for example, were French while Derrida had French-Algerian roots and Rorty appropriated elements of French thought in developing his 'postmodern bourgeois liberalism'. While acknowledging the shortcomings of these theorists in their contributions to the development of an alternative approach to inquiry, Mourad identifies from their work a number of possible conditions for postmodern research: the experimental, dynamic and unpredictable nature of research activity and outcomes (Lyotard); structures that produce opportunities for and conversations about 'abnormal' inquiries (Rorty); knowledge 'outcomes' which emerge from within the activity of inquiry and which are fluid across contexts (Schrag), reinterpretations of existing knowledge which act on and construct new realities (Foucault); and research activity which is intended to change reality in tangible, material ways (Derrida). Drawing on these contributions, Mourad's expansion of the 'foundations' for contemporary inquiry is achieved first through his assertion that research can be both a recreation of reality (in the form of theory or explanation) and a creation of reality through the activity of inquiry. What the latter achieves is a shift in focus onto the researchermthe source of the activity. Indeed, Mourad's second contribution, his notion of 'intellectually compelling ideas', draws on this assertion that research is an intellectual .experience. Intellectually compelling ideas, then, are those which seem unfamiliar enough to the researcher to indicate that, if pursued, they would provide a valuable experience for the researcher and contribute towards 'enhancing the quality of human experience in general' (p. 95). For Mourad, as noted above, disciplinary pursuits represent variations of one intellectually compelling idea, 'namely the idea of reality as independent of the inquirer and accessible to intellect' (p. 8). To overcome this constraint on inquiry, Mourad's third proposition seeks to construct an intellectual space outside the disciplines for 'postdisciplinary inquiry'; a more 'honest' space given its explicit recognition of the fragmented, inaccessible and context-dependent nature of reality. Postdisciplinary research programs emphasise exploration rather than explanation, involve the rearrangement of objects and ideas, and are engaged for the purposes of enhancing human experience. ~ In this postdisciplinary plane, 'disciplinary


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knowledge is something to experience in unfamiliar and compelling ways' (p. 101) as starting points 'to create new determinations of reality' (p. 102). There is much in Postmodern Philosophical Critique and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Higher Education which is compelling. I am compelled by the idea of research as an activity that creates reality, not simply as an activity that 'recreates' it. Amongst other things, such understandings provide opportunities for more explicit recognition of the research experience of researchers and the researched, including their experiences of how they and the research are represented. I am also attracted to the notion of intellectually compelling ideas which seem more akin to my own research experiences in which ideas for research have seemed interesting and unfamiliar enough to suggest value in their exploration. However, I am less compelled by ideas of fragmented and inaccessible realities. Perhaps this is because 'from the standpoint of modern inquiry, these alternative constellations may appear to be disparate, paradoxical, or even alogical and a-rational arrangements' (p. 100). For me, and from Mourad's own perspective it would seem, the idea of the 'fragmentation' of reality draws more on modernist categories than postmodern ones; 'coherence' being fragmentation's binary opposite. What is needed in postmodern inquiry are ways of exploring reality which do not construct it as being 'without' and in so doing defer to modernist understandings. For these reasons I prefer Mourad's notion of the 'alteration of reality' in which the 'overdetermination' of disciplinary contexts is penetrated and broken down, allowing for ideas to be reordered and reemphasised and put together in new and intellectually compelling ways through a process of intellectual displacement. There is need for displacement of the systematic nature of much inquiry in higher education. Too much 'legitimate' research serves to perpetuate the dominance of certain disciplines and individuals and groups within them, as well as particular views of what constitutes knowledge. But in Postmodern

Philosophical Critique and the Pursuit of Knowledge in Higher Education

Mourad provides more than a timely critique of this system. While many postmodernists are uneasy about talking in these terms, Mourad offers a 'foundation' on which a new system of inquiry might be legitimately expanded, rather than replaced, providing the potential for a new direction and purpose for research in institutions of higher education.

Out of context New direction and purpose with respect to issues of teaching and learning also seem to be a concern of the current higher education environment. The quality

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debates of recent years--largely driven by neo-classical economic discourses which have produced concern for 'customer satisfaction', 'product control' and 'competitive advantage'--have ensured that it is not just faculties and departments of education who are interested in how teachers can improve their students' learning outcomes. Along with a growing number of specifically designated teaching-and-learning academic (teaching scholars) and administrative positions, there is now a burgeoning market in Australian universities for educationalists to provide their colleagues in other disciplines with university teaching qualifications. And there are institutional and systemic awards for those individuals who are able to demonstrate their teaching excellence relative to their peers. Dart and Boulton-Lewis' text, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, reflects these 'new' directions and purposes in higher education. Organised around John Biggs' presage-process-product ('3P') model of learning, the authors follow Biggs' own recent forays into areas of higher education; a researcher who is probably better known for his contributions to theorising cognitive processes in school contexts. There is an underlying assumption in this shift from school to university: that the lessons learnt about teaching and learning in schools have relevance for higher education. Indeed, these connections and extensions are made explicit by Kember in the opening chapter when he observes, amongst other things, that 'teaching approaches which are considered novel and innovatory at universities are used on a daily basis in my children's school' (p.

2).

As hinted above, the reasons for such 'delay' within universities in the development of teaching methods are both political and pragmatic. But there are at least two other observations which should be made about these connections; one methodological and one theoretical. First, the explicit references to Biggs' work are revealing especially given the claim that 'some of the leading advocates and practitioners of phenomenographic research on learning are contributors to this book' (p. v). To be fair, there are authors in this collection who allow themes to emerge from their own research data on teaching and learning in higher education and at several points make contributions to how Biggs' theories and models might be adjusted and extended. Still, there remains a strong overlay, or 'framework' as the editors describe it (p. xi), which can appear more prescriptive than descriptive. Some authors, for example, are intent on applying Biggs' conceptions of learning to higher education contexts and do not simply 'allow' themes to emerge. Methodologically, I am happier with the dialectical relationship between theory and data which other contributors approach (but do not acknowledge), although 1 am less sure that this is the intent of phenomenography.


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Secondly, and more substantively, the application of Biggs' work to universities and the reference to phenomenology raise a number of theoretical issues about the 'decontextualisation' of categories of description (p. 29), particularly given Marton's (p. 180) assertion that universities represent distinctive learning contexts. The book's first section is devoted to these contextual issues or what are referred to in Biggs' model as presage variables. Drawing on Biggs, Boulton-Lewis notes that: In the 3P model, presage includes student factors such as prior knowledge, abilities, ways of learning, value and expectations, and teaching factors such as curriculum, teaching method, climate and assessment (p. 206, emphasis in original). In addressing these precursors to learning, some of the book's authors are concerned with how teachers conceive of teaching, while others focus on how teachers conceive of and constitute what students will be asked to learn. In other sections, account is also taken of student characteristics. However, it is Meyer's chapter which, in my view, contributes most to discussions of the influence of contexts on learning and challenges a number of assumptions about the generalisability of learning theories. It is not just that learning theories need to take account of individual teachers and learners but that these individuals and their differences may impact on how we conceive of learning processes and outcomes in general. As Meyer illustrates, 'a construct as basic as a "deep approach" does not behave very well psychometrically in an Indonesian context' (p. 55). So while Meyer acknowledges the foundational nature of Biggs' model of learning, he argues for the development of more complex models which seek to 'recontextualise' learning. In his words: ... the general purpose models of learning behaviour that have been espoused thus far may require cultural adjustment, specification, and extension, for the interpretation of any consequentiality of variation within them to remain valid beyond the contexts within which they were developed (p. 55). It is interesting, then, that subsequent authors in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education seem to suspend these understandings of context (or 'presage') when discussing how university students learn and the quality of the outcomes they achieve. While the ensuing stages of Biggs' modelmlearning processes and productsmare dealt with in separate sections of the book, discussion of them is often conflated and a fourth section, claiming to focus on the 3P model as a

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whole, also seems to be more concerned with these latter two stages. There are exceptions. Tang, for instance, is drawn 'back' to considering presage variables after observing particular student approaches and learning outcomes in a specific learning context. Similarly, Marton argues that 'earlier ways of seeing the world are the stuff which later ways are made of' (p. 191) and encourages cognisance of university students' 'earlier' understandings. And Watkins is concerned to determine whether the Study Process Questionnaire (SPQ) is a relevant test instrument for assessing the learning processes of non-Western students. In the end Watkins concludes that it is, although he retains a degree of uncertainty and recommends further investigation and possible modification of the SPQ to increase its sensitivity to cultural differences. What is also interesting, given the discussion above concerning school and university contexts, is that the SPQ is the latter version and tertiary equivalent of the school-level Learning Process Questionnaire (LPQ), while the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomymBiggs' alternative to Bloom's taxonomymwas originally utilised to describe learning outcomes in secondary school contexts. Leaving aside this reliance on school contexts for theories to emerge about university students' learning, much of this research seems to have been devoted to exploring process and product aspects of Biggs' model while little similar work has been done with respect to presage. While I am impressed by the authors' significant contributions to our understandings of learning processes and outcomes in higher education and by the critique and development of the work of John Biggs in this regard, the comparative silence with respect to contextual matters is of concern. In a similar vein to Meyer, it might even eventuate that a model of learning that accounts more vigorously for these contextual variables, may conceive of learning in distinctly different ways. Indeed, it seems to me that such contextual attention might enable the 3P model to move beyond its current linear representation; a condition recognised and criticised but not convincingly addressed in its remodelling.

Any colour, as long as it is black Some of these same issues are evident at other levels of higher education, particularly issues of context as they relate to universities and their interrelationships. For example, does higher education differ from one discipline, institution and/or country to another? Does context matter, are there multiple conceptions of what counts as higher education, or can we construct models which have application across disciplinary, institutional and systemic borders? As a comparative analysis of higher education throughout OECD countries, The

Mockers and Mocked: Comparative Perspectives on Differentiation,


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Convergence and Diversity in Higher Education also confronts concerns similar to other comparative texts: whether the objects being compared are similar and/or different and how such analysis can be justified, given that it is the analysis rather than some innate quality of the objects themselves that render such judgements; a point made in the above readings of Mourad's and Dart and Boulton-Lewis' texts. Meek, Goedegebuure, Kivinen and Rinne, editors of The Mockers and Mocked, confront these issues well, I think, on at least two fronts. First, they deal with the dilemmas of comparative investigations by elevating 'diversity', 'differentiation' and related terms to the level of explicit analysis, albeit in the context of the collection's substantive focus rather than with respect to methodologies of comparison. Secondly, this account of similarity and difference is both theoretically and politically informed. Indeed, it is the theoretical accounts which receive prominence in Part II of the collection that provide space for critique in Part III of the political (and economic) experiences of the higher education systems in eight OECD countries includin~ Australia, Canada, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the UK, and the US. In their introductory chapter, which also constitutes Part I, Goedegebuure, Meek, Kivinen and Rinne make a useful contribution to these deliberations by reflecting on what they understand to be the distinctions between differentiation and diversity. Beginning with the biological sciences but also informed by Durkheim's sociology and neo-classical economics, they imply that differentiation refers to processes which produce quantitative differences whereas diversity represents differences which tend to be more qualitative in nature. Such distinctions open avenues for critique of Clark's 'internal perspective' (p. 206) of the diversification of higher education. Clark argues that the creation of 'more [and] varied types of academic tribes' (p. 24) is evidence of greater diversity in higher education. For Clark, 'the story is one of an unrelenting generation of new fields and specialities, of specialization that on a world-wide scale is uncontrolled and uncontrollable' (p. 17). Yet, this explosion of disciplines does not necessarily amount to diversity in a qualitative sense, particularly if the 'fragments' continue to be motivated by a collective desire to fill in the knowledge gaps of a pre-existent reality (Mourad, 1997, pp. 79-80). Other theorists in the collection convey similar sentiments. Both Neave's 'systemic perspective' (p. 206), which concentrates on national and supranational policies and politics, and van Vught's 'environmental perspective' (p. 206), which focuses on the interactions between institutions and their environments, point to 'dedifferentiation and decreasing levels of diversity' (p. 56) in higher education generally.

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The accounts of higher education in particular OECD countries provide interesting explorations of these ideas in context. For example, the chapter by Meek and O'Neill, which details the Australian experience, is illustrative of the post-1987 decline of differentiation within its system of higher education. While it should be noted that the period of their analysis concludes with the demise of the Keating Federal Labor Government, Meek and O'Neill argue that the growth of a competitive Australian higher education marketmthe virtues of which are rehearsed by van Vught (pp. 44-46)--has not delivered diversity as 'promised' but, amongst other things, course convergence and duplication aimed at similar clienteles and a general tendency of universities towards uniformity, evident in newer institutions imitating their more established counterparts. Neave describes such imitation as 'academic drift' which is also reflected in the book's title; a reference to Darwin's observation of butterflies that 'the mockers and mocked always inhabit the same region' (see p. 2). For me, Henry Ford's remark regarding relations between consumer choice and his automobile production line--that 'you can have any colour as long as it is black'--is a more apt description of diversity in a market economy and, it would seem, has resonance in contemporary higher education markets in many OECD countries.

Conclusion What counts as higher education? I began this review by drawing attention to the production and consumption of knowledge within universities and their systems as intellectually compelling ideas about the nature of higher education. There are a number of conclusions which can be drawn from this inquiry. First, despite the discourses associated with economic markets, it would seem that knowledge consumption and production is less diversified across universities than what is often claimed. The proliferation of academic disciplines and even the creation of interdisciplinary spaces have not necessarily led to broader inquiries for researchers. Further, while teaching and learning are now high on university agendas, their conceptual development appears to draw on contexts other than universities and, at other times, at the expense of a genuine recognition of the relevance of specific contexts which can favour some learning processes and outcomesmand the individuals associated with themmover others. While institutions are concerned to emulate the 'best practice' of their competitors, this has led to a reduction in choice for students with less diversity of offerings available in the higher education market place. These are not 'ceremonies' of higher education which we would all applaud. However, the challenges of these three books also provide opportunities for recreating these current realities: to construct spaces for an expanded grounds for


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inquiry and a renewed sense of intellectual purpose and direction for higher education (Mourad); to adopt a more 'experiential' perspective which is 'open to new ideas and new ways of thinking about teaching and learning' (Dart & Boulton-Lewis, p. 266); and to re-examine not just the desirability but also the inevitability of higher education markets and their restricted and restrictive discourses of diversity (Meek, Goedegebuure, Kivinen & Rinne). The 'bull' run of higher education markets is still on. If they are to turn 'bearish' they will require of us both our theoretical and active investments.

Postscript Since the graduation ceremony and writing this essay, I have had more cause for reflection: •

my VC-award-winning colleague (in a team with three other faculty members) won the Education Category of the Australian Awards for University Teaching

•

CQU Press announced that it had won the contract to publish the authorised biography of Fiji's Prime Minister Major-General Rabuka, which, among other things, will focus on a reevaluation of Fiji's two coups and the constitutional reforms that followed (wait for the review!)

•

and the most recent review of Australian higher education has (temporarily?) gone west.

Feel free to applaud the event(s) of your choice between breaks in your latest academic reading.