{"title":"Laure and Bataille as educators: On the useless value of sacred experiences","authors":"Martin Hauberg-Lund Laugesen, Jon Auring Grimm","doi":"10.47989/kpdc498","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47989/kpdc498","url":null,"abstract":"Whereas there are potentially many ways to have sacred experiences as part of one’s higher education, we show how exam writing as a specific study activity can serve as an occasion for such experiences to occur. Experiences through writing that involve the destruction and creation of worlds, of losing and regaining oneself and of learning profound things along the way. Illustrated through the case of Sofie, an undergraduate philosophy student, we show how experiencing the sacred involves the temporary entrapment of the self by the self, in a demonic fashion. The process of emergence and dissolution of this entrapment ultimately makes up a sacred experience that nourishes a learning-development process that can best be described as an oscillating process of becoming. Our article draws its main philosophical inspiration from Laure and Georges Bataille.","PeriodicalId":413842,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Praxis in Higher Education","volume":" 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140995168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Why critique the sacred and the profane in higher education: In conversation with Professor Bruce Macfarlane","authors":"Emily Danvers, Trine Fossland","doi":"10.47989/kpdc559","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47989/kpdc559","url":null,"abstract":"This paper contains a conversation with Professor Bruce Macfarlane, a key thinker in debates around what constitutes the sacred and profane in higher education theory and praxis. The authors co-developed questions to ask of Professor Macfarlane as a way to introduce the conceptual framework for the JPHE special issue on ‘critiquing the sacred and the profane in higher education.’ An emergent reflection from our discussion, and the paper that came from it, is the need to confront taken-for-granted dualisms, to stand back from concepts, and critically consider the work concepts that frame our academic lives as they become positioned as ‘sacred’ or ‘profane.’","PeriodicalId":413842,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Praxis in Higher Education","volume":" 9","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140995106","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Trine Fossland, Laura Louise Sarauw, Emily Danvers
{"title":"Critiquing the sacred and the profane in higher education","authors":"Trine Fossland, Laura Louise Sarauw, Emily Danvers","doi":"10.47989/kpdc558","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47989/kpdc558","url":null,"abstract":"This paper sets the stage for an examination of ‘critiquing the sacred and profane in higher education,’ outlining the motivation for exploring collective contribution to the field of higher education studies. Specifically, this paper states that the taken-for-granted concepts that frame academic praxis serve as conceptual lenses to critically evaluate how the academy’s principles and practices are formed and reconstructed over time and across contexts. Paying attention to what is considered sacred (and by whom) and, conversely, what is considered profane reveals a story of what and who is valued and the histories, discourse, and power relations that inform these differential notions of ‘sacredness’. The articles within this special issue collectively illuminate the inherent ambiguity of academic concepts, showcasing their diverse interpretations and the significant implications these hold for higher education practices across different contexts, inviting readers to engage with the complexities and nuances that shape the field.","PeriodicalId":413842,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Praxis in Higher Education","volume":" 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140994248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tapu-gogy: Confining profane pedagogy to a new sacredness beyond the educator’s reach","authors":"V. Olsen-Reeder","doi":"10.47989/kpdc437","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47989/kpdc437","url":null,"abstract":"This paper is situated around a small exhibition installed in the classics museum of the author’s institution, called Tapu-gogy, in November and December 2022. This work explored what a classroom might be like if pedagogy was locked away from the educator, shelved behind a glass case—too tapu (sacred) for an educator to touch. Following the exhibition’s intent, this paper argues that teaching pedagogy itself - once the most profane element of teaching life for any educator—is now too sacred for the educator to touch. As a sacred object can be to a museum, teaching pedagogy is a hijacked item now resting in a glass cage, untouchable by the experts most adept at handling it—the educators who designed it.\u0000 \u0000The paper clings to Māori understandings of the ‘sacred,’ and as such, interpretations may differ slightly from those this readership may have seen before, if they have seen any at all. In Māori society, we define the sacred as that which is tapu. To aid the reader’s understanding of this particular interpretation of the sacred, the paper uses well-known discussions around neoliberalism, the pandemic, and digital teaching pedagogy to make its arguments. It further hovers around the most recent literature on these topics from 2022, as the pandemic weighs so heavily upon the topic in the paper.","PeriodicalId":413842,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Praxis in Higher Education","volume":" 3","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140994384","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Lise Degn, Johanne Grøndahl Glavind, Philipp Pechmann, Simon Fuglsang
{"title":"Challenging the profanity of management of higher education","authors":"Lise Degn, Johanne Grøndahl Glavind, Philipp Pechmann, Simon Fuglsang","doi":"10.47989/kpdc469","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47989/kpdc469","url":null,"abstract":"Management and managerialism in higher education have become increasingly synonymous with the corruption of self-regulating institutions, with the disbandment of collegial governance, and with a general devaluation of traditional academic norms and values; they have become profane concepts. In this paper, this profanity is challenged, through an exploration of its reach into the actual practices of higher education. We conceptualise two versions of profane management: management as discursively profane and as practically profane. Using data from a Delphi study on perceptions of quality and quality management, we explore the usefulness of these concepts and discuss their value.","PeriodicalId":413842,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Praxis in Higher Education","volume":" 24","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140996494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Can we please stop talking about 'Bildung'—and for that matter, too, 'the Humboldtian university'?","authors":"Ronald Barnett","doi":"10.47989/kpdc464","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47989/kpdc464","url":null,"abstract":"Two terms to be seen especially in the philosophy of higher education, but also more broadly, are those of Bildung and the ‘Humboldtian university’. They have taken on a sacred aura, and have become a form of bewitchment, generating a large intellectual industry. Their sacredness is secured much in the way the two terms have been positioned as markers of educational purity, in response to phenomena such as entrepreneurialism, instrumentalism, learning outcomes, and a separation of research and teaching—phenomena that in turn are positioned as profane. Resort to these two terms has appeared successively over the past one hundred years, in the wake of world wars, the emergence of mass higher education, strong state steering, and the intellectual movements of postmodernism and posthumanism. We may understand such intellectual ploys, in returning to ideas of northern Europe with a two-hundred-year history, as defensive gestures possessing a conservative function. The sacredness of Bildung and ‘the Humboldtian university’ constitutes an ideology that protects certain academic interests. In turn, this sacred aura forecloses on efforts to understand seriously the character of the twenty-first century and to create imaginative educational concepts that are adequate to the complexities that the present century presents. As an example of a more contemporary conceptualisation of higher education, an ecological imaginary is suggested.","PeriodicalId":413842,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Praxis in Higher Education","volume":" 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140994259","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Feldt, S. Horbach, Søren S.E. Bengtsen, Laura Louise Sarauw
{"title":"Reimagining academic citizenship: Challenges, prospects, and responsibilities","authors":"J. Feldt, S. Horbach, Søren S.E. Bengtsen, Laura Louise Sarauw","doi":"10.47989/kpdc550","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47989/kpdc550","url":null,"abstract":"In this introduction, we present the context for the special issue on academic citizenship. We provide a short conversation with recent literature on the topic, and we develop some of the most significant cross-cutting themes that the essays illuminate.","PeriodicalId":413842,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Praxis in Higher Education","volume":"63 12","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140264379","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The meaning of academic profession in light of the genuine mission of academic citizens","authors":"Sanja Petkovska","doi":"10.47989/kpdc483","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47989/kpdc483","url":null,"abstract":"The main goal of this paper is to examine the power of the notion of academic citizenship to become a widely spread, accepted, and well-grounded concept useful for better and more progressive higher education policy solutions at a global level. I claim that the chances this might occur depend on the implementation of notions of transdisciplinarity and post-nationality into its future theoretical conceptualisations. Furthermore, I recognize the quality of transcending the given infrastructural boundaries as crucial for tertiary education and deal with the distinctiveness of the academic profession which could serve as its organizing principle. The approach from which I observe academic citizenship is geopolitical positionality and I argue the concept might be useful in finding better solutions for transnationally mobile scholars. Key principles of academic citizenship are a sense of belonging to the profession, openness followed by solidarity, freedom and unconditionality of endeavours. While minimal requirements for academic citizenship status are related to formal recognition, the additional qualities are gradually added up. One of the layers of belonging to the academic community is collegiality. In the final part, this article examines the potential of academia to fight back for the values and qualities inscribed into the role of academics.","PeriodicalId":413842,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Praxis in Higher Education","volume":"9 6","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140263166","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Public education without proper compensation: An empirical argument for promotion and tenure reform to encourage public scholarship and academic citizenship","authors":"Z. Taylor, M. Y. Taylor, Joshua Childs","doi":"10.47989/kpdc467","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47989/kpdc467","url":null,"abstract":"Institutions of higher education desire their faculty members to be high-quality researchers while also acting as engaged academic citizens who produce public scholarship. However, traditional promotion and tenure processes do not reward public-facing academic citizenship, instead valuing peer-reviewed publications and grant dollars. Therefore, a paradox exists: How can institutions of higher education claim they value academic citizenship without recognizing their faculty members for performing such work? This essay argues for a fundamental reform in promotion and tenure policies for tenure track faculty members to encourage academic citizenship and to reward these faculty members for performing this critical, public-facing, community-building work.","PeriodicalId":413842,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Praxis in Higher Education","volume":"128 27","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140078634","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Academic citizenship and a world in crisis","authors":"Stephen Carney","doi":"10.47989/kpdc468","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.47989/kpdc468","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper I consider how the university might contribute to a regenerated commons. I discuss the problems of global citizenship as a heuristic, putting in its place, Appiah’s notion of cosmopolitanism to describe the Global Humanities bachelor program at my own higher education institution—Roskilde University in Denmark. I then consider the academic citizen as one participating in a space of dialogue and exchange where differences are recognized and the world is read through the lens of pluralism rather than over-confident and singular commitments to social justice, human rights or some idealized commons that threatens yet another dominant/dominating worldview. I end the paper with a reflection on the theme of hopelessness—viewing universities as central to creating academic citizens geared to the logic of deficit-thinking, endless development and abstract progress. Rather than trying to overcome hopelessness, we might be better advised to embrace it as one aspect of a broad and inclusive humanistic imagination; one where there are many knowledges but where most will not be encountered, and where there are no simple solutions","PeriodicalId":413842,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Praxis in Higher Education","volume":"7 8","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140264053","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}