Discourses in Higher Education and Their Implications for Student Experience.
Discourses in higher education and their implications for student experience.
What are the ways in which discourses emerge in higher education and what are their implications for a student experience?
Discourses in higher education are apparent in almost every interaction a student has with any aspect of the higher learning institution including but not limited to staff and policies and procedures (including assessment procedures). The notion of subjectivity, or the subject position of student is also central to the following discussion of discourse. The use of language in promoting and maintaining such discourses can be seen in higher education policy documents developed by both the Government and the higher education institution, documents with students as a large proportion of the intended audience. A number of claims are made in these higher education policy documents that are ambivalent and ambitious (to say the least), and possibly even misleading. I will qualify this statement by highlighting some of my own experiences as a student in higher education in which these claims are contrary to what occurs in practice, before suggesting some posible reasons for the disparity between policy and practice. Discourse theory, subjectivity and a number of higher education policy documents including Transforming Australia’s Higher Education System (pp.7-8), University Strategy 2011-2015 (p.5) and School of Psychology Orientation 2011: Course Induction Booklet (p.4 & 6) will be examined to suggest possible implications of such discourses for student experience in higher education. Fox (2011) describes subjectivity as ‘the ways in which all your experiences of your social world have influenced you and will influence your interactions with the world’. (p. 3) She goes on to suggest that your culture, country, the social groups to which you belong, communities you have previously or currently belong to, schooling experiences, friends and family will all
What are the ways in which discourses emerge in higher education and what are their implications for a student experience?
Discourses in higher education are apparent in almost every interaction a student has with any aspect of the higher learning institution including but not limited to staff and policies and procedures (including assessment procedures). The notion of subjectivity, or the subject position of student is also central to the following discussion of discourse. The use of language in promoting and maintaining such discourses can be seen in higher education policy documents developed by both the Government and the higher education institution, documents with students as a large proportion of the intended audience. A number of claims are made in these higher education policy documents that are ambivalent and ambitious (to say the least), and possibly even misleading. I will qualify this statement by highlighting some of my own experiences as a student in higher education in which these claims are contrary to what occurs in practice, before suggesting some posible reasons for the disparity between policy and practice. Discourse theory, subjectivity and a number of higher education policy documents including Transforming Australia’s Higher Education System (pp.7-8), University Strategy 2011-2015 (p.5) and School of Psychology Orientation 2011: Course Induction Booklet (p.4 & 6) will be examined to suggest possible implications of such discourses for student experience in higher education. Fox (2011) describes subjectivity as ‘the ways in which all your experiences of your social world have influenced you and will influence your interactions with the world’. (p. 3) She goes on to suggest that your culture, country, the social groups to which you belong, communities you have previously or currently belong to, schooling experiences, friends and family will all