Given the experiences of educators and learners through the COVID-19 pandemic, it is certainly timely to explore disruption in higher education. As Flavin rightly states, despite radical changes in technology over the last 20 years, technology has not disrupted higher education in any meaningful way. However, within the last 12 months, COVID-19…

Raymond Williams was a literary critic, sociologist, novelist, and political activist but above all a teacher, with a theory of education as a societal process running through his work. He styled the UK's educational establishment of the 1960s 'Old Humanists'; guardians of a dominant elite culture who were losing their influence to the new…

In this response article, the author argues that the notion of 'disruptive innovation' should not be a guiding light for higher education. First and foremost, proponents of this idea would do well to recognise that much broader discourses of revolutionary change have characterised the field of education technology for decades. In short, it is an…

Besides a lack of focus on the context in which the innovation thrives or dies, the author takes issue with some of Dr. Flavin's choice of examples. Flavin argues that Wikipedia has disrupted higher education. The author is a supporter of Wikipedia (both through donation and article edits) and uses it regularly, but does not believe it has had…

A recent collaboration between the professional organization of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO), with support from research partner Hobsons, resulted in a November 2016 report which seeks to examine college perceptions of dual enrollment as an enrollment management initiative. According to AACRAO,…

This is a reflective opinion piece, on our efforts in Australia to achieve alignment between the goals of Indigenous self-determination, Indigenous studies programmes and decolonising theory for an open and critical dialogue in south-south scholarship agendas. In this spirit, extant approaches to Indigenous studies in the Australian higher…

In this commentary, authors Frank Fear and Lorilee R. Sandmann reflect on their 2001-2002 "Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement" article "The 'New' Scholarship: Implications for Engagement and Extension" reprinted in this 20th anniversary issue of "Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement."…

The present article is the fourth in an unintended series charting the author's experiences of academic censure via social exclusion, or "amicable exclusion" as the Vietnamese reprint has it (Jones, 2012, 2013, 2014). Here in talking about academic censure, Jones touches on former psychoanalyst Jeffrey Mason's (1990) excoriation by the…

National and transnational qualifications frameworks are an increasingly present feature of the education and training landscape. The United Kingdom can be regarded as one of the pioneers of qualifications frameworks, with partial frameworks appearing from the mid-1980s onwards. However, approaches in England if not in the whole of the UK have…

The humanities are at the heart of knowing about the human condition; they are not a luxury. The erosion of support for the humanities and the perennial anxiety about the state of the humanities are systemic. The author contends that until people acknowledge this fact, they will keep lurching from one point to another, unable to recognize the…

This article aims to contribute to the discussion surrounding Manuela du Bois-Reymond's important "trendsetter learner" thesis and, in so doing, to join the wider debate about post-compulsory learning cultures. The article outlines the trendsetter learner thesis and then considers recent criticisms that it has attracted. While the author…

I want to use this essay -- basically a commentary -- as a context for some political reflections on what is happening to the governance and the labour processes at universities internationally. In the process, in addition to my critical reflections on the neoliberal impulses affecting universities, I want to do two other things. First, I shall…

This article is a response to criticism of my book "Big Ideas for Little Kids." The main topics addressed are: Who is the audience for the book? Can people without formal philosophical training can be good facilitators of elementary school philosophy discussions? Is it important to assess attempts to teach philosophy in elementary school? Should…

University access programmes inherently and inevitably provide students with a "label". Firstly, students are generally segregated and stigmatised as they are treated as a separate group that accessed university somewhat "illegitimately". Access programmes generally place more emphasis on academic development and in so doing…

Long regarded by the vanguard of America's universities as antiquated and even dangerous, civic education is suddenly fashionable again. With the publication of "A Crucible Moment," a long battle in the culture wars appears to be winding down. It appears that everyone supports civic education today. For the past three decades, the ideal of civic…