1st Edition
The Dispositif of the University Reform The Higher Education Policy Discourse in Poland
The Dispositif of the University Reform presents a discourse analysis about transformations in higher education in Poland. Combining Foucauldian categories of discourse, dispositif and governmentality with contemporary changes in the area of science and higher education, it proposes an analysis of power in close connection with the development of knowledge.
The book researches the tradition built on the works of Michel Foucault, one of the most prominent and inspiring researchers for the contemporary humanities. It introduces the Polish context to the international debate on higher education transformations and the reception of Foucauldian categories in social research. In addition, it presents the original concept of the dispositif of the reform as a heuristic model of describing and explaining the practice of regulating academic life and education policy.
As a valuable contribution to the knowledge about the legitimization of educational policy and the practice formed by dominant discourses, the book will be of great interest for academics, researchers and post graduate students in the fields of sociology of education, sociology of knowledge, critical pedagogy, public policy, educational studies, and philosophy.
- Chapter 1 Introduction: the reform as a dispositif (Helena Ostrowicka)
- Chapter 2 Academic discourse: formations of knowledge about the reform (Justyna Spychalska-Stasiak, Helena Ostrowicka)
1.1 Governmentality as a research perspective
1.2 The dispositif analytical strategy
1.3 The reform as an order of crisis discourse
Summary
References
- The surfaces of emergence of the discourse on research and higher education
- Public debate as a place and ritual of manifesting the truth
- "Truths" about the reform of research and higher education
- Rituals of producing the truth
Summary
References
- Chapter 3 The dispositif of law: the juridification of the higher education system in Poland (Lukasz Stankiewicz, Helena Ostrowicka)
- Chapter 4 The responsibilized university: the power of parametrization (Helena Ostrowicka, Justyna Spychalska-Stasiak)
- Chapter 5 The dispositif of discipline and the neoliberal governance of students (Lukasz Stankiewicz, Helena Ostrowicka)
- Conclusion
3.1 The dejuridification of the university
3.2 Attempts at system self-regulation
3.3 Neoliberal university
3.4 Expansion of juridification
3.5 Dimensions of higher education juridification
Summary
References
4.1 Thematic dispersion and consolidation
4.2 Types of criticism
4.3 Between activation and functionalization
4.4 Discourse waving: from repressed to responsibilized academia
Summary
References
5.1 The mapping of Polish higher education
5.2 Historical representations of higher education students
5.3 The problematization of mass education
5.4 Interventions: new neoliberal disciplining
Summary
References
List of Figures and Tables
Index Terms
Biography
Helena Ostrowicka is an Associate professor and Chair of Research Methodology and Discourse Studies at Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland.
Justyna Spychalska-Stasiak is an Assistant professor in the Department of Research Methodology and Discourse Studies at Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland.
Lukasz Stankiewicz is an Assistant Professor at Atheneum – University in Gdansk, Poland.