Higher education systems are caught between two dynamic processes, one referring to economic value and the other to status value. Although these political rationalities are presented as part of a coherent programme of reform and ‘modernization’, they pull higher education systems and the actors within them in contradictory directions. Their impact can collectively be referred to as research selectivity, since these rationalities encompass both research performativity and institutional practices of recognition and reward and subjective strategies. In this paper, we first aim to map the dominant orientations of higher education studies research and how they reflect the relationship between neoliberalism and the restructuring of higher education systems and research infrastructure. Our reading shows that this is a significant context for inquiring into research selectivity as it is enacted and, at the same time, suggests that we need to pay attention to the privileging of existing centres of higher education research and the relative absence of sustained focus on research selectivity in the non-core regions of Europe. Secondly, the paper puts forward the case for a sustained research agenda that focuses specifically on the identification of the differential impact of processes of research selectivity in non-core regions of Europe, organized around three intersecting themes – linguistic, epistemological, and disciplinary impact. Arguing for the importance and relevance of this research agenda for empirical research in Europe and globally, the paper emphasizes that its main objective is to create a critical space within which we can, collectively, think higher education otherwise.
COBISS.SI-ID: 18267139
This article considers the conceptualisation of the “external dimension” of the Bologna Process and debates around it in the light of the 20th anniversary of the Bologna Declaration. The term began to be used in the early 2000s and referred to the articulation of possible relationships between the then emerging European Higher Education Area and the rest of the world. We analyse issues related to the drafting of the Bologna Global Strategy (2007), also by taking into account less well-known policy documents, and the reactions to the Bologna Process from various global regions. Further, we critically elaborate on the thesis of the “Bologna model” and its alleged “export” to the world. We argue that this thesis is controversial and that its background should be sought in dichotomies related to the Europeanisation process, in particular in the dichotomy of “means” versus “ends” as well as the “market” versus “cultural” mission of European higher education institutions.
COBISS.SI-ID: 12676681
The research carried out on a sample of Slovenian higher education staff from pedagogical study programs, which we report on in the article, is the first such research to be submitted to the international public. The article analyzes their ideas about the concepts of inclusion of marginalized groups in the school system, the quality of study programs in terms of providing relevant knowledge and skills needed to work with marginalized groups of children and adolescents and the relevant content that study programs should include. The analysis shows that almost half of the respondents are more in favor of the integration and inclusion of special pedagogical content in study programs, while only a good half are in favor of the implementation of inclusiveness. Also, almost half of the respondents estimate that the existing study programs should be at least partially renewed if we want to achieve greater inclusiveness in our school system. The research also addressed colleagues from Croatia, so we used a translated questionnaire on a sample of teachers and associates working on pedagogical study programs at the University of Rijeka. We compared the data obtained on the Slovenian sample and the sample of employees at the University of Rijeka and published it in another article [COBISS.SI-ID 22534659].
COBISS.SI-ID: 12036425
Since the 2008/2009 school year, every primary school in Slovenia has had to prepare its own “school moral education plan” and undertake its moral education activities on the basis of this plan. Although the basic content areas of the moral education plan are prescribed by law, the openness of the legal provisions allows schools to exercise professional autonomy. After a decade of the implementation of moral education plans we conducted an empirical quantitative-qualitative study aimed at analysing them in terms of content. The objective was to determine the extent to which the plans include and how they define the prescribed content areas, as well as the extent to which they include and how they define additional content areas that are not prescribed by law but could be included by schools depending on their individual particularities and the specific challenges of their environment. Data were collected through publications on the websites of a representative sample of randomly selected schools and analysed with a specially prepared instrument. The research shows that upgrading moral education activities through the school moral education plan would require (1) reconsideration and upgrading of the concept, (2) continuous state support for the self-evaluation of schools specifically in this area, and (3) support for schools to gain a deeper professional understanding of current moral education challenges and of forming moral education strategies that differ with regard to the content differences in the reasons for individual moral education challenges.
COBISS.SI-ID: 12650313
We introduce a novel research format for obtaining data on lived experience, combining random sampling of experience with a subsequent retrospective examination of acquired samples in the form of dialogical phenomenological inquiry. The proposed approach (SROE) aims at the examination of reflectively observed experiential moments and is based on researchers’ iterative cultivation of the phenomenological attitude. We address the epistemological and methodological challenges of the proposed approach, discuss its applicability and research potential, as well as examine the characteristics and validity of resulting phenomenal data.
COBISS.SI-ID: 31592451