The realm of higher education, much like everything else in a global and mobile world, has rapidly altered in the last few decades. More and more universities and seats of higher education are using strategies towards ' 'internationalization'; by increasing heterogeneity in rank, student composition, resource endowments, faculty profiles, and their social spaces. The essays in this volume take a critical look at universities across South Asia, more specifically, at the dynamics of student mobility and mobilizations existing in such localized social spaces, and compares these with their counterparts in universities across the world. While elite universities in South Asia, as elsewhere, have been caught in a stiff international competition and are aspiring for the highest ranks, students from the most excluded communities and remote parts of the country seek entry to badly endowed universities, facing obstacles during their courses, and upon seeking entry into employment. The volume evaluates such universities as spaces for mobility opportunity and mobilizations in a globally networked world. It combines local and international perspectives with thorough observations of the dynamics in localized university spaces while embedding them in transnational processes.

The realm of higher education, much like everything else in a global and mobile world, has rapidly altered in the last few decades. More and more universities and seats of higher education are using strategies towards ' 'internationalization'; by increasing heterogeneity in rank, student composition, resource endowments, faculty profiles, and their social spaces. The essays in this volume take a critical look at universities across South Asia, more specifically, at the dynamics of student mobility and mobilizations existing in such localized social spaces, and compares these with their counterparts in universities across the world. While elite universities in South Asia, as elsewhere, have been caught in a stiff international competition and are aspiring for the highest ranks, students from the most excluded communities and remote parts of the country seek entry to badly endowed universities, facing obstacles during their courses, and upon seeking entry into employment. The volume evaluates such universities as spaces for mobility opportunity and mobilizations in a globally networked world. It combines local and international perspectives with thorough observations of the dynamics in localized university spaces while embedding them in transnational processes.

Higher education has been presented as a solution to a host of local and global problems, despite the fact that learning and assessment can also be used as mechanisms for exclusion and social control. Developing Transformative Spaces in Higher Education: Learning to Transgress demonstrates that even when knowledge may appear to be the solution, it can be partial and disempowering to all but the dominant groups. The book shows the need to contest such knowledge claims and to learn to transgress, rather than to conform. It argues that transformative spaces need to be found and that these should be about the creation of new opportunities, ways of knowing and ways of being. Working in and through spaces of transgression, the contributors to this volume develop frameworks for the possibilities of transformative spaces in learning and teaching in higher education. The book critiques the ways in which Western higher education culture determines the academic agenda in relation to dialogue on social differences, minority groups and hierarchical structures, including issues of representation among different groups in the population. It also explores the personal and political costs of transgression and outlines ways in which transitions can be transformative. The book should be of interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students engaged in the study of higher education, education studies, teacher training, social justice and transformation. It should also be essential reading for practitioners working in post-compulsory education.

This book explores the narratives and experiences of LGBTQ+ and gender non-conforming students around the world. Much previous research has focused on homophobic/transphobic bullying and the negative consequences of expressing non-heterosexual and non-gender-conforming identities in school environments. To date, less attention has been paid to what may help LGBTQ+ students to experience school more positively, and relatively little has been done to compare research across the global contexts. This book addresses these research gaps by bringing together ongoing research from countries including Brazil, China, South Africa, the UK and many more. Each chapter examines results of empirical research into school experiences of LGBTQ+ students, and the experiences and perspectives of teachers and parents. All contributions are theoretically informed by aspects of queer theory and/or critical feminist theory, with additional insights from psychological, sociological and linguistic perspectives. Contributing chapters consider how educational workers may question socially sanctioned concepts of normality in relation to gender and sexuality in ways that benefit all students, and how they can ‘queer’ schools to make them less oppressive in terms of gender and sexuality. Expertly written and researched, this book is an invaluable resource for researchers, policymakers and students in the fields of education, sociology, gender studies and anyone with an interest in gender and sexuality studies.

This volume captures the spirit of collaboration and innovation that its authors bring into the classroom, as well as to groundbreaking undergraduate programs and initiatives. Coming from diverse points of view and twenty different disciplines, the contributors illuminate the often perplexing debates about what matters most in higher education today. Each chapter tells a unique story about creating vital pedagogical arenas that have the potential to transform teaching and learning for both faculty and students. These exploratory spaces include courses under construction, cross-college and interdisciplinary collaborations, general education reform initiatives, and fresh perspectives on student support services, faculty development, freshman learning communities, writing across the curriculum, on-line degree initiatives, and teaching and learning centers. All these spaces lend shape to an over-arching, system-wide project bringing together the often disconnected silos of undergraduate education at The City University of New York (CUNY), America’s largest urban public university system. Since 2003, the University’s Office of Undergraduate Education has sponsored coordinated efforts to study and improve teaching and learning for the system’s 260,000 undergraduates enrolled at 18 distinct colleges. The contributors to this volume present a broad spectrum of administrative and faculty perspectives that have informed the process of transforming the undergraduate experience. Combined, the voices in these chapters create a much-needed exploratory space for the interplay of ideas about how teaching and learning need to matter in evolving notions of higher education in the twenty-first century. In addition, the text has wider social relevance as an in-depth exploration of change and reform in a large public institution.

Transformation of the University imagines preferable futures for the university, building hope for the institution’s necessary transformation. It transcends old criticisms and presents fresh ideas on how the institution might be conceived, organised and put into practice while safeguarding that which makes it a university – the pursuit of knowledge. This book is divided into three main parts: Part One – ‘Knowledge’ assumes the role of the university in generating knowledge for the benefit of society; Part Two – ‘Cultural Growth’ expands on how the university might contribute to and benefit from the cultural growth of society, with both explicit and implicit connections to social and epistemic (in)justice; and Part Three – ‘Institutions’ focuses on imaginative processes for enacting the university as an institution that meets the unforeseen future challenges facing societies around the world. With contributions from scholars across the world, Transformation of the University is an essential read for all academics, practitioners, institutional leaders and broad social thinkers who are concerned with the future of the university and its contributions to society.

This volume captures the spirit of collaboration and innovation that its authors bring into the classroom, as well as to groundbreaking undergraduate programs and initiatives. Coming from diverse points of view and twenty different disciplines, the contributors illuminate the often perplexing debates about what matters most in higher education today. Each chapter tells a unique story about creating vital pedagogical arenas that have the potential to transform teaching and learning for both faculty and students. These exploratory spaces include courses under construction, cross-college and interdisciplinary collaborations, general education reform initiatives, and fresh perspectives on student support services, faculty development, freshman learning communities, writing across the curriculum, on-line degree initiatives, and teaching and learning centers. All these spaces lend shape to an over-arching, system-wide project bringing together the often disconnected silos of undergraduate education at The City University of New York (CUNY), America’s largest urban public university system. Since 2003, the University’s Office of Undergraduate Education has sponsored coordinated efforts to study and improve teaching and learning for the system’s 260,000 undergraduates enrolled at 18 distinct colleges. The contributors to this volume present a broad spectrum of administrative and faculty perspectives that have informed the process of transforming the undergraduate experience. Combined, the voices in these chapters create a much-needed exploratory space for the interplay of ideas about how teaching and learning need to matter in evolving notions of higher education in the twenty-first century. In addition, the text has wider social relevance as an in-depth exploration of change and reform in a large public institution.