Opening up Higher Education against the policy backdrop of the 'knowledge economy': navigating the conflicting discourses

Opening up Higher Education against the
policy backdrop of the ‘knowledge economy’:
navigating the conflicting discourses
By Gabi Witthaus
Presentation at ALT-C Conference
Liverpool University, 5 September 2017

Research questions
1. To what extent does the Discourse of groups arguing for a market-
driven approach to higher education overlap with, or diverge from,
that of groups who are seeking to open up education?
2. What can we deduce from this about how close or how far apart
these groups are in terms of their underlying values and
assumptions?
3. How are HEIs navigating the Discourses to both comply with
market-economy type regulations and open up education?
https://padlet.com/witthaus/altc

Big ‘D’ Discourse
Discourses as distinctive ways of speaking and listening, or writing and
reading, coupled with distinctive ways of acting in the world ‘in the
service of enacting specific socially recognizable identities’ (Gee, 2014,
p.183).

Marketization of HE and critical discourse
analysis - history
• Staff members of HEIs felt helpless to resist the ‘distasteful, highly
promotional, highly marketized’ new discursive practices in HE at the
time (Fairclough, 1993, p.159).
• He advocated use of Critical Discourse Analysis in the struggle to
develop a new ‘language’ as a key means of building resistance.

Captured by the discourse (Trowler, 2001)
Traditionalism
Social
reconstructionism
Progressivism
Managerialism

Emergence of discourse of open education
(Bozkurt et al., 2015)
Traditionalism
Social
reconstructionism
Progressivism
Managerialism
Open education

A tale of two texts
• Success as a knowledge economy: teaching excellence, social mobility
and student choice (BIS, 2016) - the White Paper explaining the
recently introduced Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) for England
[the White Paper]
• Opening up Education: a Support Framework for Higher Education
Institutions (Inamorato Dos Santos, Punie & Muñoz, 2016) - an
advisory report by the European Union’s Joint Research Centre aimed
at governments and HEIs in Europe [the OuE Framework]

Caveat: words with insignificant word counts
• success
• knowledge
• excellence
• social
• mobility

Ideational, interpersonal, textual features
• Ideational: ‘the representation and signification of the world and
experience’
• Interpersonal: ‘the constitution (establishment, negotiation,
reproduction’) of identities of participants and social and personal
relationships between them’
• Textual: the distribution of given versus new and foregrounded versus
backgrounded information
(Fairclough, 1993)

Ideational features: HE as a commercial
transaction
‘Competition between providers in any
market incentivises them to raise their
game, offering consumers a greater
choice of more innovative and better
quality products and services at lower
cost’ (White Paper, 2016, p.8)

Ideational features: open
education as a universal good
‘In the OpenEdu project, open education
is seen as a way of carrying out education,
often using digital technologies. Its aim is
to widen access and participation to
everyone by removing barriers and
making learning accessible, abundant, and
customisable for all. It offers multiple
ways of teaching and learning, building
and sharing knowledge. It also provides a
variety of access routes to formal and
non-formal education, and connects the
two’ (OuE Framework, 2016, p. 5).

A social construct with superhero properties
Hidden/ assumed:
• human actors with particular skills, acting with intent
• technologies/ resources
• institutional and political contexts
Openness ‘has become a highly charged and politicised term…’ which
‘has acquired a sheen of naturalised common sense and legitimacy, and
formed what seems to be a post-political space of apparent consensus’
(Bayne et al., 2015, p. 247).

Interpersonal features: cuddly ‘we’
‘Our universities have a paramount place in an economy driven by
knowledge and ideas. They generate the know-how and skills that fuel
our growth and provide the basis for our nation’s intellectual and
cultural success. Higher Education in the UK enjoys a world-class
reputation, with globally renowned teaching and cutting-edge research
and innovation. We have maintained our position as a world leader,
with continuing success in education exports in the face of increasing
international competition. But we must be ready for the challenges of
the future’ (White Paper, 2016, p.7).

Interpersonal features: authoritative ‘we’
‘… (I)n 2010, we took steps to enable England’s higher education
system to adjust to these new demands. In 2012, 13 years after tuition
fees were first introduced, we took the decision to put higher
education funding onto a more sustainable footing…’ (White Paper, p.8)

Interpersonal features: reasonable ‘we’ vs
soon-to-be-extinct ‘they’
‘But we must accept that there may be some providers who do not rise
to the challenge, and who therefore need or choose to close some or
all of their courses, or to exit the market completely. The possibility of
exit is a natural part of a healthy, competitive, well-functioning
market…’ (White Paper, p.10)

Interpersonal features: personification of
institutions
• ‘If a university were to decide...’ (OuE Framework, p. 8)
• ‘institutions should consider…’ (Ibid., p. 30)
• ‘Europe should act now providing the right policy framework and a
stimulus to introduce innovative learning and teaching practices in
schools, universities, vocational education and training’ (Ibid., p. 30).

Textual features: noticeable by their absence
• Teaching excellence – what is it?
• Academics mentioned three times in total…
• The White Paper cautions against allowing the development of a
‘crafty mutually convenient disengagement contract among
distracted academics and instrumentalist students’ (White Paper,
p.12), as has reportedly been seen in the American higher
education system.

Textual features: freedoms in principle (Lane,
2016) and false binaries (Oliver, 2015)
‘Through open education each and every individual, at every stage in
their lives and career development, can have appropriate and
meaningful educational opportunities available to them. These include
access to content, courses, support, assessment and certification in
ways that are flexible, and accommodate diverse needs. Barriers, as
regards for example entry or cost, are reduced or eliminated (OuE
Framework, p.5)

Some common high-frequency words
White Paper Opening up Education Framework
The market needs to be opened up (to new providers) Education needs to be opened up (to more, and more diverse, learners)
New entrants (i.e. institutions) need access to the market Learners need greater access to education
Consumers (students) primarily need protection from institutions that
may fail them, as well as support to succeed
Learners (students) need support to succeed
Competition (between institutions) is essential to ensuring high
quality delivery of HE
Collaboration (between institutions) is essential to ensuring high
quality delivery of HE - building bridges between informal, non-formal
and formal learning.
Widening participation means bringing more young people into HE Widening participation means bringing more people into lifelong
learning
Consumers (students) require information about the content of courses
- in order to be able to choose the ‘best’ institution to enrol at
Learners (students) should have access to openly-licensed content
(materials and resources for learning, including research outputs)
Recognition of new HE providers will help to stimulate competition
(between institutions) in the sector
Recognition of prior learning is an essential element in opening up HE
to all
High quality research as an indicator of the reputation and
competitiveness of an institution
Openly published research as a way of removing barriers to access to
knowledge, and broadening participation in research

Research questions 1 & 2
1. To what extent does the Discourse of groups arguing for a market-
driven approach to higher education overlap with, or diverge from,
that of groups who are seeking to open up education?
2. What can we deduce from this about how close or how far apart
these groups are in terms of their underlying values and
assumptions?

Research question 3 (on Padlet)
3. How are HEIs navigating the Discourses to both comply with market-
economy type regulations and open up education?

References
Bayne, S., Knox, J., and Ross, J., 2015. Open education: the need for a critical approach. Learning, Media and Technology, 40(3),
pp.247–250.
Bozkurt, A., AkgunOzbek, E., Yilmazel, S., Erdogdu, E., Ucar, H., Guler, E., Sezgin, S., Karadeniz, A., Sen-Ersoy, N., Goksel-
Canbek, N., Dincer, G.D., Ari, S., and Aydin, C.H., 2015. Trends in Distance Education Research: A Content Analysis of Journals
2009-2013. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 16(1).
Department for Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS). 2016. Success as a knowledge economy: teaching excellence, social mobility
and student choice. London: Department for Business, Innovation & Skills.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/523546/bis-16-265-success-as-a-knowledge-
economy-web.pdf
Fairclough, N., 1993. Critical Discourse Analysis and the Marketization of Public Discourse: The Universities. Discourse & Society,
4(2), pp.133–168.
Gee, J.P. 2014. How to do Discourse Analysis: A Toolkit 2nd edition, Abingdon: Routledge.
Inamorato Dos Santos, A., Punie, Y., & Muñoz, J. C. 2016. Opening up Education: a Support Framework for Higher Education
Institutions. Seville: Joint Research Centre, European Union. https://doi.org/10.2791/293408
Lane, A., 2016. Emancipation through open education: rhetoric or reality? In: P. Blessinger & T. Bliss, eds. Open Education:
International Perspectives in Higher Education. Open Book Publishers.
McLean, M. & Ashwin, P. 2017. The Quality of Learning, Teaching and Curriculum. In New Languages and Landscapes of Higher
Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Oliver, M., 2015. From openness to permeability: reframing open education in terms of positive liberty in the enactment of academic
practices. Learning, Media and Technology, 40(3), pp.365–384.
Trowler, P., 2001. Captured by discourse? The socially constitutive power of higher education discourse in the UK. Organization,
8(2), pp.183–201.

Thank you!
Gabi Witthaus
@twitthaus
g.witthaus@lancaster.ac.uk

Opening up Higher Education against the policy backdrop of the 'knowledge economy': navigating the conflicting discourses

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