Abstract
This chapter aims to challenge the narrative of the university in decline in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, by showing how earlier forms of university life and practice persist within emerging forms. It uses the resources of practice theory—more precisely, the theory of practice architectures —to illuminate the analysis. The chapter proceeds in five main steps. First, the theory of practice architectures is outlined. Second, three vignettes of Australian university life in different eras (1964, 1987, 2015) are presented. These give a sense of the changes underway in Australian university life and practice; each is briefly contextualised by reference to a specific university at the time, and in relation to wider Australian culture , economy, and society and politics. Third, the notion of ‘practice landscapes’ is used to interpret and characterise the ‘look and feel’ of Australian university life and practice across the three periods being explored. We describe the university of 1964 as the juridical university, the university of 1987 as the negotiated university, and the university of 2015 as the entrepreneurial university . Fourth, we return to the notion of practice architectures to show how multiple forms of university life and practice have coexisted over time, with earlier forms persisting within later ones. Finally, we draw the argument to its conclusion, namely, that change in the life and practice of (some) Australian universities 1964–2015 is not a linear progress (or regress) in which earlier forms of the university are destroyed and replaced, but, rather, a complex process in which earlier forms are sedimented and displaced within contemporary university life and practice as a contested terrain. We think this alternative perspective offers scope and hope for transformative action for recovery and renewal in the Australian university.
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Notes
- 1.
Schatzki (2012, p. 14) described practices as “open-ended, spatially temporally dispersed nexus[es] of doings and sayings”.
- 2.
The theory also takes up Schatzki’s (2002) point that practices can occur in multiple sites at a time, and that practices can be the sites of other practices, for example teaching practice can be the site of assessment practices.
- 3.
This was also the case for academic staff.
- 4.
The Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act was passed two decades later (1984).
- 5.
The University officially changed its name to James Cook University in 1998.
- 6.
The Faculty of Education no longer exists as such. Education is located within the College of Arts, Society and Education.
- 7.
The reforms were named after the Federal minister responsible for the reform, John Dawkins (see Australian Government 1988). Note that James Cook University was known in the late 1980s and 1990s as a ‘pre-Dawkins’ university. The university’s amalgamation with the Townsville College of Advanced Education in 1982 pre-dated the Dawkins reforms.
- 8.
A precursor to AUSTUDY and Youth Allowance.
- 9.
HECS was modified in 1996 and then replaced in 2005 by HECS-HELP, a similar user-pays, loan-based scheme.
- 10.
Stands for ‘my Learning Management System’.
- 11.
At such moments, ‘Professor K’ speaks the kind of discourse Bernstein (1996, p. 46) calls regulative discourse.
- 12.
We draw here on the old distinction between ‘the rule of law’ and the ‘rule of men’ [sic], in which the latter is prone to arbitrariness and whim of rulers, whether tyrants, monarchs or elected officials.
- 13.
‘Masters’ in the sense that they were holders of the degree of Master. Le Goff (2011, p. 84) writes that ‘The [medieval] universities were … universitates magistrorum et scolarium, or corporations of masters and students, though they varied to a greater or lesser extent from each other, from Bologna where the students were in control, to Paris which was ruled by the masters.’
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Kemmis, S., Mahon, K. (2017). Practice Architectures of University Education. In: Grootenboer, P., Edwards-Groves, C., Choy, S. (eds) Practice Theory Perspectives on Pedagogy and Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3130-4_6
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