Table Of ContentHigher Education and
Social Justice
The Transformative
Potential of University
Teaching and the Power
of Educational Paradox
Leonie Rowan
Higher Education and Social Justice
Leonie Rowan
Higher Education
and Social Justice
The Transformative Potential of University
Teaching and the Power of Educational Paradox
Leonie Rowan
School of Education and Professional
Studies
Griffith University
Gold Coast, QLD, Australia
ISBN 978-3-030-05245-4 ISBN 978-3-030-05246-1 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05246-1
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This is easy.
Foof.
A
cknowledgements
This book has been supported by the Griffith Institute for Educational
Research, Griffith University’s School of Education and Professional
Studies, Griffith University’s Arts, Education and Law Group and
Griffith University as a whole. Thank you to Professor Greer Johnson,
Professor Donna Pendergast and Professor Peter Grootenboer for the
various forms of support they have made available in this University
context.
I acknowledge specific support provided through the following initia-
tives and grants:
• The School of Education & Professional Studies Internship
Scheme. 2018.
• A Griffith Grant for Learning and Teaching (Strategic Priority
Scheme). 2015. Building Rapport-ability through Collegial
Conversations: Action Research for Teaching Development.
• A Griffith University/Peking University Collaborative Research
Scheme grant. 2015. International Dialogue on Rapport in University
Teaching: Perspectives on collaborations to enhance research into peda-
gogical practices.
• A School of Education and Professional Studies Active Researcher
development grant. 2013. First months, first years: Investigating
students’ experiences of their first year at University.
vii
viii ACkNowLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to the wonderful people at Palgrave Macmillan includ-
ing Eleanor Christie and Becky wyde and to the editors, research assis-
tants, interns and generally fabulous folk who have found practical
ways to improve this manuscript including Aida Hurem, Ini Akinsanmi,
Elizabeth Stevens and Lynanne Mckenzie. I can’t thank you enough.
The ideas explored in this book have been variously sparked, sus-
tained, re-directed and re-invigorated as a result of the conversations
(and arguments!) I have been lucky enough to have over the past ten
years. Some of these emerged through the funded research projects men-
tioned above. Thank you to those who have been involved in those pro-
jects including kevin Larkin, Sue whatman, Barbara Garrick, Catherine
Beavis, Geraldine Townend, Harry kanasa and Sherilyn Lennon.
Particular thanks to Peter Grootenboer, who helped get a conversation
about “why we teach” started several years ago and who has sustained it
(and me) with cups of tea ever since. I’m super grateful.
Barbara: I miss you.
Across 2018 a bunch of other kind, brilliant and inspiring folk have
helped me ask (and at least start to answer) a range of other questions
central to the themes of the book. You’ve opened doors (and bottles
of champagne) with patience and dexterity: pointing out pathways I
couldn’t find and helping fight monsters I couldn’t see. Thank you.
Conversations, of course, inevitably spark actions. So thank you, as
well, to the generous and energetic folk who have joined me on various
planned and spontaneous educational journeys over the past few years
and who’ve helped me keep going when those journeys started to seem a
little crazy. These hopeful and optimistic people have demonstrated, time
and time and time again, that imagination is powerful, resistance is never
futile and most things are better with music or glitter. Ruth and Roberta,
Sue, Tasha and Loraine, Michelle N, Desley, Michelle R-P, Harry V,
kevin, Aida, Angelique, Ana, Stephen, Levon, Renee, Sonal, Areej,
kartik and Sarah S: these are just some of the wonderful people that I’ve
been lucky to learn from and with over recent years. Special thanks to
Desley for ten years of collaboration and imagination. You are awesome.
Thank you isn’t a strong enough expression for all the support I
receive from my wonderful family and friends. I have never written a
single page that hasn’t been enriched by conversations with them: in
person, via text, through songs, rhymes, mimes and more than the occa-
sional miaow. Apart from being the absolute best partner on the planet,
Chris remains the smartest, sweetest, most generous academic I have
ACkNowLEDGEMENTS ix
ever met. He is also a genuinely annoying critical friend. But even when
it doesn’t sound like it, I promise I am extremely grateful for your feed-
back and intellectual challenges. Honestly. I am. (But if you send me one
more reference for this project I might lose my mind). Sophie and Isaac
have had encouraged my work on this book even while undertaking their
own wild rides across year 12. I’m not sure how you’ve done it all, but
everything you’ve achieved is amazing. You are brilliant and brave and
inspiring and kind: superstars in every way and, as well, in every key. Big
thanks also to the original 4: for all of the ways you make the world a
better place, and me a better person, a better tutor and a better writer.
Leigh: I love you (also: how amazing are our kids!?!?).
Finally, of course, I would like to extend my deepest thanks to all of
the students who have shared their thoughts, ideas and feelings with me
as we have worked together to open up and sustain productive, trans-
formative conversations about education and social justice. University
students are an amazing source of inspiration and encouragement and
consistently and courageously demonstrate the power of educated hope.
It’s because of you that I really believe education truly is the practice of
freedom.
c
ontents
1 The Transformative Potential of Higher Education:
Engaging with Educational Philosophy to Labour for
Justice and Freedom 1
2 Influences on Academic Decision-Making in University
Teaching: Perspectives from Policy, Literature, and
Student-Centred Research 27
3 Purposeful Decision Making for Relationship-Centred
Education: Productive Paradox in University Teaching 67
4 Purposeful Decision Making for Relationship-Centred
Education: Speech and Silence in University Classrooms 97
5 University Teaching as Situated Work: Imagining,
Experimenting, and Working for Change 125
Index 139
xi
A A
bout the uthor
Dr. Leonie Rowan is a Professor at Griffith University in Australia.
She has an established reputation for leading high quality, high impact
research focused on the broad fields of higher education, educational
pedagogy, social justice and the power of transformative, student-
centred educational environments. She is well known for high impact,
internationally recognised publications in each of these areas and for the
connections she has made between research-centred educational philos-
ophies and the transformative practices of schools, universities and other
learning contexts. Her research and teaching are fundamentally inter-
connected and build on more than two decades of experience in higher
education. She has received numerous, prestigious awards for her teach-
ing and multiple competitive research grants which signal the quality and
impact of her work in higher education as a teacher, and a researcher,
who has the pursuit of social and educational justice as her most funda-
mental priority.
xiii
