Seminar: Do universities serve a purpose today? Political action in different settings: The case of HE in Latin America
With Professor Ivor Goodson and Dr Tim Rudd (University of Brighton)
Wednesday 13 March 2013
5.00pm to 6.30pm
Room 101, Mayfield House, Falmer
This seminar seeks to raise questions about the purpose and role of HE and Universities in the current political and economic climate and the implications this has for social justice, cohesion and equity. We will present initial findings and reflections from the RIAIPE 3 Project, ‘an inter-university Framework Programme for Equity and Social Cohesion Policies in Higher Education in Latin America’. We shall outline some of conceptual and theoretical ideas developed that are intended to help us better understand the political and ideological bases for change in different historical periods, and which may also help us identify individual and collective points of departure or mediation of policies by actors. We argue that this ‘refraction’ of policy is often based on pre-figurative practice, beliefs and oppositional discourse(s) that are increasingly being overlooked because of the dominance of ideologically informed narratives. Therefore we will argue that such refraction represents a form of agency that should be central to explorations and analyses in studies of educational policies and practices.