LEARNING AND DEVELOPMENT IN HE

Learning and development in HE



Learning and development in HE

Introduction

This is in many ways an ironic account in which I want to recognise my own contradictory positioning from a outset. It is a critique of a UK academy, its values and practices by a feminist who is simultaneously deeply embedded in its culture and practices. I do not claim to be noncompetitive or without ambition. However, a longer I spend in academia a more and more I yearn for more feminist and egalitarian ways of being. A focus throughout this paper is on a feminised contract researcher, but this is not to deny that female lecturers are not disregarded and disvalued in what remains a male and masculinised academy. As Blackmore (1996; p. 345) succinctly comments:

Restructuring has led to a re-masculination of a centre or core and a flexible, peripheral labour market of increasingly feminised, casualised and deprofessionalised teaching force.

A disrespect and disregard for women teachers endemic in English state schooling is also prevalent in a academy and currently many casualised women lecturers are facing similar work conditions to those of their female teacher counterparts. Academia in Britain remains a territory ruled by men; a masculine cultural economy where a vast majority of women if they count at all count for less. As Howie and Tauchert (1999; p. 2) assert, 'women either find themselves silenced, or babble, or are judged as lesser men, and act as a harshest critics of other women while a men pay no attention'. Ironically, against a backdrop of a feminisation of a labour market (Adkins, 2002), a women who do succeed in this new masculinised economy are often those who assume masculine ways of being . Williams' (1991) insight, that a assertion of professionalism both masculinises and whitens, is being enacted in a academic field, as ambitious women play male and ethnic minority faculty have to 'act white' in order to get on.

However, I want to focus on a feminised 'lumpen proletariat' of a academy not its female 'go-getters'. It is impossible to write about a ways in which emotions are enmeshed with gender and class in a academy without re/focusing on a work of a contract researcher. If there can be seen to be an academic version of manual labour, it lies in contract research—a feminised but also powerfully classed academic grouping. As Oakley (1995; p. 22) asserts:Like housework contract research is severely undervalued and under supported in relation to its actual importance.

Activity Theory

Activity Theory is a framework or descriptive tool for a system. People are socio-culturally embedded actors (not processors or system components). There exists a hierarchical analysis of motivated human action (levels of activity analysis).

Activity Theory is more of a descriptive meta-theory or framework than a predictive theory. Considers entire work/activity system (including teams, organizations, etc.) beyond just one actor or user. Accounts for environment, history of the person, culture, role of the artifact, motivations, complexity of real life action, etc.

The unit of analysis is motivated activity directed at ...