Theory and Method in Higher Education Research: Volume 5

Stakeholders and their organizations are increasingly involved in governance of higher education, not only within institutions or at system level, but also in various supra-national and intergovernmental processes. For these, as well as pragmatic reasons (ease of access and relatively simple methods for analysis), this chapter advocates for a more systematic approach to studying stakeholder organizations, their participation in and impact on governance of higher education. Specifically, the chapter: (1) provides a three-fold nested conceptualization of policy positions of stakeholder organizations, comprising issues, preferences concerning these issues, and the normative basis utilized to legitimize said preferences; (2) presents advantages and disadvantages of different methodological approaches to analyzing policy positions of stakeholder organizations, including qualitative and quantitative content analysis, employing either human coding or computer-assisted coding of policy documents; and (3) highlights different insights one can gain from analyzing policy positions of stakeholder organizations. It combines (thus far limited) insights from higher education studies with the more generic literature on interest groups, and uses examples from European level stakeholder organizations to illustrate its points.

We seek to expand the disability theoretical toolkits of higher education scholars to include frameworks that view disability as multivalent. We start by describing limitations scholars can encounter when employing traditional medical, social, and minority frameworks. Then, we draw upon: (1) the temporal and fluid understandings of disability in critical disability theory, (2) the value critical realism gives to the body, impairment, and the environment, and (3) the work of Deaf epistemologies to call attention to the varied communication methods disabled college students use to encourage the use of frameworks that promote intersectional understandings that are authentic to lived experiences. We extend scholars’ toolkits by encouraging the use of frameworks that value diverse human neurology and draw attention to the hegemonic dominance of Western thought. We conclude by discussing four implications and two limitations for higher education scholars.

This chapter puts “new” material feminist theory to work to re-think curriculum practices in undergraduate higher education. Drawing on the work of Karen Barad and her elaboration of agential realism, the chapter explores the following questions: how can thinking with new material feminism help develop and support new modes of curriculum design? How does new material feminism facilitate the development of innovative teaching and learning practices? And how does new material feminism expand the means by which knowledge is produced? The chapter utilizes Barad’s notion of diffraction to illuminate how curriculum-making can be done via a patterned activity of creative interference. Empirically grounded in a module on an undergraduate BA Education Studies degree, the discussion employs practical examples of how new material feminist thinking and doing activates different ways of thinking about the body, materiality, affect, space, places, and objects in the undergraduate curriculum. More broadly, the chapter speaks into long-standing concerns about how feminist theory might support innovative teaching and learning, and how it might promote new modes of relation between our students and us as educationalists. The chapter is written from the point of view of the tutor’s reflexive insights on the module as a novel curriculum instantiation of material feminist practice.

The term “loose coupling” has been widely employed in higher education research. Building partly on the “garbage can model” of decision-making, it proposed an alternative to rational and linear views on organizing and governing, emphasizing instead ambiguity and complexity. The review of higher education research literature presented in this chapter demonstrates that the concept of loose coupling has frequently been used as a background concept, often taken for-granted either as a point of departure for studies of organizational processes in higher education or as a diagnosis of the complexity of higher education organization that inhibits implementation of reforms. This chapter provides systematization and critical examination of how the term “loose coupling”/“loosely coupled systems” has been employed in journal articles focusing on higher education in the last 40 years. It presents a broad mapping of 209 articles and a more detailed qualitative review of 22 articles, which employed loose coupling as more than a background concept.

The chapter proposes that higher education researchers descriptively analyze and evaluate practices regarding university leadership and management through the lens of phronēsis (understood as “practical reasonableness”). It elaborates and develops an emerging orientation, coming from a range of social and organizational theorists, for a “philosophical” or “moral sociology” that derives neo-Aristotelian insights into agency and social practices.

This chapter seeks to open a conversation around the increasingly pressing question of what is the role of the white researcher in qualitative Critical whiteness Studies (CwS) research in higher education. While the past 30 years have seen an increase in scholarship that critiques the ways that whiteness operates in higher education at both individual and institutional levels, to date no work exists that explores how this research should be conducted. In introducing a Critical whiteness Methodology (CwM) for higher education, this chapter is intended to provide an initial framework to inform the ways that white CwS scholars conceptualize, and conduct themselves throughout the research process. Grounded in core theoretical frameworks in CwS and influenced by critical race theory (CRT) and critical race methodologies (CRM), we propose five tenets that serve as a starting point in the conceptualization of a CwM. Utilizing these tenets, we then provide suggestions that white researchers can utilize to intentionally structure their research designs, protocols, and practices to actively challenge whiteness through CwS scholarship in higher education.

Mixed methods approaches have become increasingly relevant in social sciences research over the last few decades. Nevertheless, we show that these approaches have rarely been explicitly applied in higher education research. This is somewhat surprising because mixed methods and empirical research into higher education seem to be a perfect match for several reasons: (1) the role of the researcher, which is associated with strong intersections between the research subject and the research object; (2) the research process, which relies on concepts and theories that are borrowed from other research fields; and (3) the research object, which exhibits unclear techniques in teaching and learning, making it difficult to grasp causalities between input and results. Mixed methods approaches provide a suitable methodology to research such topics. Beyond this, potential future developments underlining the particular relevance of mixed methods approaches in higher education are discussed.

Without controlling for selection bias and the potential endogeneity of the treatment by using proper methods, the estimation of treatment effect could lead to biased or incorrect conclusions. However, these issues are not addressed adequately and properly in higher education research. This study reviews the essence of self-selection bias, treatment assignment endogeneity, and treatment effect estimation. We introduce three treatment effect estimators – propensity score matching analysis, doubly robust estimation (augmented inverse probability weighted approach), and endogenous treatment estimator (control-function approach) – and examine literature that applies these methods to research in higher education. We then use the three methods in a case study that estimates the effects of transfer student pre-enrollment debt on persistence and first year grades. The final discussion provides guidelines and recommendations for causal inference research studies that use such quasi-experimental methods.

Drawing on Lefebvre’s theorization of rhythm, this chapter presents and discusses rhythmanalysis as a philosophical orientation and as an experimental methodology for social, cultural, and historical research. In particular, it innovatively deploys rhythmanalysis to explore and investigate the everyday life of the contemporary university. To this end it, critically reviews the methods (and findings) of a pilot project that aimed to capture the rhythmic nature of the quotidian activities of staff and students at a “modern” university in the West Midlands of England (2017–2018). The novel combination of research methods employed, comprising audio-visually recorded walking interviews, time-lapse photography of three campuses, and of classroom/laboratory/studio teaching sessions, is examined to reveal the affordances of rhythmanalysis qua experimental methodology. The concluding section offers a reflection on the intellectual and practical purchase of the rhythmanalytical project while suggesting the possibility to further develop these innovative methods in order to refine current analyses and understandings of the contemporary university.

The chapter addresses the challenges of research into educational technology in the context of higher education and of theory-building in this field afforded by singular research methods and philosophies. Using an exemplar case study, the authors argue for the adoption of pluralism to facilitate deep exploration of complex social phenomena. Pluralism is conceptualized by distinguishing between methodological, analytical, and philosophical pluralism. In addition, arguments for and against pluralism are advanced. The chapter concludes with step-by-step proposals for engaging pluralism in higher education research studies.

Technological advancement and the expansion of resources are key propellers of methodological innovations in scientific research. The virtual field is gradually occupying a larger space in scientific research, particularly regarding qualitative research. There are numerous tools that help in accessing the field of study, collecting data, recruiting of subjects, and providing support in processing and analyzing data. Low cost, time saving and access to otherwise inaccessible groups are the main potentialities pointed out in the literature. This chapter aims to enrich methodological discussions regarding information and communication technologies (ICTs), as well as to improve data collection methods mediated by ICTs used in qualitative research. Through a review of the body of literature on internet mediated research (IMR), production on the topic was characterized. The most widely used data collection methods are identified and discussed. Discussions originated from the review were broadened and deepened through contributions emerging from a study carried out by the authors. The results reinforce the contributions pointed out by the analyzed body of work and highlight the contextual, relational, and data validity dimensions. In an interconnected way, these dimensions allow for the production/obtaining data with specificities deriving from a new relation of individuals with time and space. Finally, attention is drawn to the idea that the background for methodological discussions about IMR is the same as the one for methodological discussions regarding science in its most different approaches – the demand for strong methodological, epistemological and ontological coherence.

Bruno Latour, one of the architects of actor-network theory, has now enfolded this approach within a larger project, An Inquiry into Modes of Existence – AIME. Framed as an empirical inquiry into the ontological and epistemological conditions of modernity, Latour argues for a radical shift in how “objective truth,” “scientific fact,” and “meaning” are established within the world. In this chapter, I draw on several elements of AIME to illustrate how Latour’s ontology, building on, augmenting and responding to criticisms of actor-network theory, can be used to explore higher education, focussing on one episode derived from a larger ethnography of medical education.