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It’s more complex than it seems! Employing the concept of prosumption to grasp the heterogeneity and complexity of student roles in higher education

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Abstract

Much research has been done on students’ role and position within higher education systems and institutions. Different concepts have been developed and employed to offer a thorough account of students’ (shifting) ontological status. While they contribute to our understanding of the complexity of the students’ experience, existing concepts might limit attempts to articulate an overarching perspective on students’ multifaceted role(s). We contribute to the current debate by proposing the employment of the concept of prosumption—a combination of production and consumption—to develop a broad and nuanced account of the complexity and heterogeneity of students’ role(s) and position(s) within higher education.

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Notes

  1. We are aware other scholars might employ terms such as metaphors, analytical tools, rhetorical strategies, discursive techniques and the like to analyse the same topic. As a matter of consistency, we opt for the terms concept(s) and conceptualization(s).

  2. Note that education has long been approached through the conceptual framework of “education as production”, whereby teachers/professors might be assigned the role of workers, managers or machines themselves and students conceived as products (see Cook-Sather 2003).

  3. Note that in this case, students do conduct activities by themselves, either individually or in group(s). This differs from the notion of the student as a producer (of knowledge) put forward by Neary and Winn (2009) where they work in collaboration with academics. Neary and Winn’s notion of the student producer is therefore in line with much of the students as partners’ literature which assumes and/or accommodates students’ collaboration/co-creation with academics (see Matthews et al. 2019 for an overview of SaP as an emerging field of inquiry and of the main existing interpretative framings on SaP practices).

  4. For thorough accounts of whole-class co-creation, see for instance Bovill 2020, Bergmark and Westman 2016, as well as Cook-Sather et al. 2018.

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  1. Department of Sociology, Centre for Higher Education Governance Ghent, Ghent University, Korte Meer 3-5, B-9000, Ghent, Belgium

    Davide Dusi & Jeroen Huisman

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  1. Davide Dusi
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Correspondence to Davide Dusi.

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Dusi, D., Huisman, J. It’s more complex than it seems! Employing the concept of prosumption to grasp the heterogeneity and complexity of student roles in higher education. High Educ 81, 935–948 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-020-00588-1

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