Critical learning development and the crisis of the university: a collective consideration
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47408/jldhe.vi32.1450Keywords:
critical learning development, academic literacies, crisis of the university, community of practiceAbstract
This participatory session concerned consideration of the ‘critical turn in LD’ (Syska and Buckley, 2023: 107), manifest through an emerging critical LD movement – as centring an academic literacies approach (Hilsdon, 2018; Asher, 2022, 2023a; Dhillon, 2023; Rooney, 2023) – as a response to ‘the crisis of the university’ (Bacevic, 2017). The focus is on the positionality of LD/LDers within the increasingly neoliberal university, and to this critical learning development movement. Time and space are provided for sharing experiences, worries and hopes for LD/HE and to collectively explore the contemporary realities/trajectory of LD/HE – and alternative futures.
The central cause of the crisis of UK HE, exacerbated by government and senior management responses to COVID-19, is intensifying and accelerating processes of the ‘deep neoliberalisation’ of the public university – reflected in industrial action concerning ‘pay devaluation; pay inequality, based on gender and race; excessive workloads; and casualisation’ (Hall, 2020a). The session explores where LD/LDers are positioned within the HE crisis, before considering how critically oriented LD/LDers who believe HE should be a social and public good can best respond to the crisis, while connecting such to wider contemporary societal and global crises. Specifically:
- How might LD/LDers respond to different contexts of crisis in ways that encompass LD’s developmental/pedagogical ethos, emancipatory values and empowering academic literacies approach (Syska and Buckley, 2023; Webster, 2019)?
- How do we link with wider critical educational theories, practices, communities and struggles?
- What might be the role of critical Learning Development and academic literacies?
The objective is critical reflection on contemporary LD/HE contexts – with take-aways, as thus grounded in actual lived experiences of the crisis, including:
- Developing understandings as to self, team and LD contemporary positionality.
- Considerations of possible actions and next steps, including the potential for an ALDinHE CoP focused on critical LD and academic literacies.
References
Albert, M. (2002) Thought dreams: radical theory for the 21st century, US: Arbeiter Ring Publishing.
Asher, G. (2015) ‘Working in, against, and beyond the neoliberal university’, SCUTREA, University of Leeds. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/13925922/Working_in_against_and_beyond_the_neoliberal_university (Accessed: 22 October 2024).
Asher, G. (2022) ‘Working in, against, and beyond the neoliberal university: critical academic literacies as a critical pedagogical response to the crisis of the university’, in G. Asher, S. Cowden, S. Housee and A. Maisuria (eds.) Critical pedagogy and emancipation: a festschrift in memory of Joyce Canaan. Oxford: Peter Lang.
Asher, G. (2023a) ‘Learning development in, against, and beyond the neoliberal university: critical learning development and critical academic literacies’, in A. Syska and C. Buckley (eds.) How to be a learning developer in higher education: critical perspectives, community and practice. London, UK: Routledge.
Asher, G. (2023b) ‘Collaboration in, against, and beyond the neoliberal, neocolonial, pandemic university’, in S. Abeggelen, T. Burns. and S. Sinfield (eds.) Collaboration in higher education: a new ecology of practice, Bloomsbury.
Asher. G. in conversation with Buckley, C. and Sykes, A. (2024) ‘In, against, and beyond, the neoliberal university’, The Learning Development Project podcast, 22 August. Available at https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ldproject/episodes/Gordon-Asher-in--against-and-beyond-the-neoliberal-university-e2nfsak (Accessed: 23 September, 2023).
Asher, G., Cowden, S. Housee, S. and Maisuria, A. (eds) (2022) Critical pedagogy and emancipation: a festschrift in memory of Joyce Canaan. Oxford, UK: Peter Lang.
Bacevic, J. (2017) Why is it more difficult to imagine the end of universities than the end of capitalism, or: is the crisis of the university in fact a crisis of imagination? Available at: https://janabacevic.net/2017/10/11/is-the-crisis-of-the-university-in-fact-a-crisis-of-imagination/ (Accessed: 22 October 2024).
Bloch, E. (1995) The principle of hope, Cambridge, US: MIT Press.
Chomsky, N. (2004) Chomsky on MisEducation, Maryland, US: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
Dhillon, S. (2023) ‘Critical self-reflection in learning development’, in A. Syska and C. Buckley (eds.) How to be a learning developer in higher education: critical perspectives, community and practice. London, UK: Routledge.
Dinerstein, A.C., Vela, A.G., Gonzalez, E. and Holloway, J. (eds) (2020) Open Marxism 4: against a closing world, London, UK: Pluto Press.
Freire, P. (1972) Pedagogy of the oppressed. UK: Penguin.
Freire, P. (2004) Pedagogy of indignation. Boulder, US: Paradigm Publishers.
Giroux, H. (2019) Neoliberalism’s war on higher education, Haymarket Books.
Giroux, H. (2021) Race, politics and pandemic pedagogy: education in a time of crisis. London, UK: Bloomsbury.
Gorz, A. (1967) Strategy for labor: a radical proposal, Boston: Beacon Press.
Hall, R. (2013) It is time to stand up for collective forms of higher education and contest the enclosure and commodification of the university. Available at: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/it-is-time-to-stand-up-for-collective-forms-of-higher-education-and-contest-the-enclosure-and-commodification-of-the-university/ (Accessed: 22 October 2024).
Hall, R. (2020a) Notes on what passes for university leadership in an age of crisis. Available at: http://www.richard-hall.org/2020/03/15/notes-on-what-passes-for-university-leadership-in-an-age-of-crisis (Accessed: 22 October 2024).
Hall, R. (2020b) ‘The hopeless university: intellectual work at the end of the end of history’, Postdigital Science and Education, 2, pp.830–848. Available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00158-9
Hall, R. (2021) The hopeless university: intellectual work at the end of the end of history. London, UK: MayFly Books. Available at: http://mayflybooks.org/?page_id=305 (Accessed: 22 October 2024).
Hall, R. and Winn, J. (eds) (2017) Mass intellectuality and democratic leadership in higher education. London, UK: Bloomsbury.
Hilsdon, J. (2018) The significance of the field of practice ‘Learning Development’ in UK higher education. PhD Thesis. University of Plymouth. Available at: https://dspace.plymouth.ac.uk/handle/10026.1/10604 (Accessed: 22 October 2024).
Holloway, J. (2016) In, against, and beyond capitalism, PM Press: Kairos.
Holloway, J. (2022) Hope in hopeless times, London: Pluto Press.
Lea, M. (2016) ‘Academic literacies: looking back in order to look forward’, Critical Studies in Teaching & Learning, 4(2), pp.88-101. Available at: https://www.ajol.info/index.php/cristal/article/view/149790 (Accessed: 22 October 2024).
London Edinburgh Weekend Return Group (1979/2021) In and against the state: discussion notes for socialists, London, UK: Pluto Press.
Monticelli, L. (ed.) (2024) The future is now: an introduction to prefigurative politics, Bristol University Press.
Petrina, S. and Ross, E.W. (2014) ‘Critical university studies: workplace, milestones, crossroads, respect, truth’, Workplace: A journal for academic labour, 23. Available at: https://doi.org/10.14288/workplace.v0i23.184777
Rooney, S. (2023) ‘The mess we’re in: LD pedagogies and the question of student agency’, in A. Syska and C. Buckley (eds.) How to be a learning developer in higher education: critical perspectives, community and practice. London, UK: Routledge.
Stetsenko, A. (2014) ‘Transformative activist stance for education: the challenge of inventing the future moving beyond the status quo’, in T. Corcoran (ed.) Psychology in education, critical theory-practice. Rotterdam, Netherlands: Sense Publishers, pp. 181–198. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/7183279/TRANSFORMATIVE_ACTIVIST_STANCE_FOR_EDUCATION_The_challenge_of_inventing_the_future_in_moving_beyond_the_status_quo (Accessed: 22 October 2024).
Syska, A. and Buckley, C. (eds.) (2023) How to be a learning developer in higher education: critical perspectives, community and practice. London, UK: Routledge.
Webster, H. (2019) ‘Emancipatory practice: the defining LD value?’ Rattus Scholasticus, 4. Available at: https://rattusscholasticus.wordpress.com/2019/02/04/emancipatory-practice-the-defining-ld-value (Accessed: 22 October 2024).
Williams, J.J. (2012) ‘Deconstructing academe: the birth of critical university studies’, Chronicle of Higher Education. Available at: https://www.chronicle.com/article/deconstructing-academe/ (Accessed: 22 October 2024).
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
