http://hdl.handle.net/10379/393 2017-10-29T23:06:28Z http://hdl.handle.net/10379/6488 Trust schools and the politics of persuasion and the mobilisation of interest Warren, Simon; Webb, Darren; Franklin, Anita; Bowers-Brown, Julian This paper sets out the theoretical and methodological approach of a study of the politics of persuasion and the mobilisation of interest in relation to the Trust schools initiative in England. Drawing on the discourse theoretical approach of Laclau and Mouffe the paper argues that the politics of consensus associated with New Labour reconfigures the field of politics, closing down legitimate democratic space. Building on this approach and that of policy sociology the paper outlines how the researchers seeks to address the following questions if the space for legitimate democratic debate is so severely constrained then how does a social democratic government deal with the kind of opposition that Labour faced in relation to Trust schools? How do governments persuade dissident citizens to support unpopular policies? How are citizens mobilised to support such policies? This also raises questions about how, in such a restricted political space, do those questioning or resisting such policies, engage in the politics of persuasion and the mobilisation of interests? The reconfiguration of the field of politics and what this means for the constitution of legitimate democratic debate is the object of study of the research. 2011-06-21T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10379/6394 Openness and praxis: exploring the use of open educational practices in higher education Cronin, Catherine Open educational practices (OEP) is a broad descriptor of practices that include the creation, use and reuse of open educational resources (OER) as well as open pedagogies and open sharing of teaching practices. As compared with OER, there has been little empirical research on individual educators use of OEP for teaching in higher education. This research study addresses that gap, exploring the digital and pedagogical strategies of a diverse group of university educators, focusing on whether, why and how they use OEP for teaching. The study was conducted at one Irish university; semi-structured interviews were carried out with educators across multiple disciplines. Only a minority of educators used OEP. Using constructivist grounded theory, a model of the concept Using OEP for teaching was constructed showing four dimensions shared by open educators: balancing privacy and openness, developing digital literacies, valuing social learning, and challenging traditional teaching role expectations. The use of OEP by educators is complex, personal and contextual; it is also continuously negotiated. These findings suggest that research-informed policies and collaborative and critical approaches to openness are required to support staff, students and learning in an increasingly complex higher education environment. 2017-01-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10379/6192 Struggling for visibility in higher education: caught between neoliberalism 'out there' and 'in here' - an autoethnographic account Warren, Simon What happens when neoliberalism as a structural and structuring force is taken up within institutions of higher education, and works upon academics in higher education individually? Employing a critical authoethnographic approach, this paper explores the way technologies of research performance management, specifically, work to produce academics (and academic managers) as particular kinds of neoliberal subject. The struggle to make oneself visible is seen to occur under the gaze of academic normativity the norms of academic practice that include both locally negotiated practices and the performative demands of auditing and metrics that characterise the neoliberal university. The paper indicates how the dual process of being worked upon and working upon ourselves can produce personally harmful effects. The result is a process of systemic violence. This paper invites higher education workers and policy-makers to think higher education otherwise and to reconsider our personal and collective complicity in the processes shaping higher education. 2016-11-01T00:00:00Z http://hdl.handle.net/10379/5799 The trouble of ‘living with others’: language, community and the politics of belonging Warren, Simon In this article I ask myself the following question: ‘Rather than try to escape the seemingly awful choice between the private and the public, between the particular and universal, or between justice and freedom, I ask if I simply have the option to enact democracy and see ‘what follows?’. To reach that question I engage with an empirical problem, namely the struggle over the legitimacy of the Irish language as a public good, and more specifically as the medium for education in an Irish secondary school. In response to this I analyse the situation in terms of a politics of belonging. However, I then flip my reasoning, questioning its tendency towards ‘master explication’ and the privileged position of the theorist, and instead explore the possibilities offered by an anarchic approach. This latter orientation involves a reading against myself through a dialogue with the work of Gert Biesta as he engages with Jacques Rancière’s concept of subjectification. And so, instead of trying to escape (to master?) the awful choice between justice OR freedom, I am led towards the openness of ‘what follows?’. Journal article 2016-01-01T00:00:00Z