Monash University > News and Events > Monash Memo > Notices

Faculty of Education seminar - Clayton campus

Published: 13 May 2009

'Disciplining academics: Competing discourses in the Canadian tenure review'

Presenter: Professor Sandra Acker, University of Toronto, Canada.

The 'tenure review' is a key material and symbolic transitional point in the careers of Canadian academics. Tenure is high-stakes evaluation, given that refusal means the loss of a job and the possibility of stigmatisation thereafter. Looking at the Australian university context in the 1980s and 1990s, Jill Blackmore (1997) argues that discourses of efficiency and effectiveness shaping the radical restructuring of higher education…have silenced earlier discourses of equity. Drawing on 23 recent interviews with key informants in seven Ontario universities (in a study titled 'Disciplining Academics'), this paper takes up her contention in the context of Canadian tenure practices as an exemplar of regulation and an area where competing discourses influence ways in which gender and other forms of equity enter uneasily into the evaluation of academic work.

Time: 11 am to 12.30 pm
Date: Wednesday 20 May, 2009
Venue: Room G23, Building 6, Clayton campus

For further information contact:
Name: Faculty of Education Research Office
Telephone: +61 3 9905 2896
Email: seminars@education.monash.edu.au
Website: Education faculty website