Invisible labour: Do we need to reoccupy student engagement policy?

Research output: Contribution to specialist publication or newspaperEditor of Special issue

Abstract

The 'academic orthodoxy' (Brookfield 1986) of student engagement is questioned by Zepke, who suggests that it supports 'a neoliberal ideology' (2014: 698). In reply, Trowler argues that Zepke fails to explain the mechanisms linking neoliberalism to the concepts and practices of student engagement (2015: 336). In this article, I respond to the Zepke-Trowler debate with an analysis of student engagement policies that illuminates the role of discourse as one mechanism linking neoliberal values with practices of student engagement. Through a corpus-based Critical Discourse Analysis, I demonstrate a persistent and alarming omission of human labour from university policy texts. Instead, the engagements of students and staff are attributed to technology, documents and frameworks. Student engagement is discussed as a commodity to be embedded and marketed back to students in a way that yields an 'exchange value' (Marx 1867) for universities. 

Original languageEnglish
Pages19-34
Number of pages16
Volume11
No.1
Specialist publicationLATISS
PublisherBerghahn
Publication statusPublished - 16 Jul 2018

Bibliographical note

This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedited version of an article published in Learning and Teaching. The definitive publisher-authenticated version 'Invisible labour: Do we need to reoccupy student engagement policy?' Sarah Hayes. Learning and Teaching, 11:1, 19-34. is available online at: https://doi.org/10.3167/latiss.2018.110102

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