Marie A Vander Kloet | University of Bergen (original) (raw)
Papers by Marie A Vander Kloet
International Journal of Academic Development, 2024
Canadian higher education has been critiqued for its inequitable structures and failure to change... more Canadian higher education has been critiqued for its inequitable
structures and failure to change despite claiming to be inclusive.
This paper considers the experiences of 15 academic developers
who engage in varied forms of institutional equity work. By focusing
on how their work takes place, why they pursue equity work
and their relationships with co-workers, I open a critical discussion
of how prepared Canadian teaching and learning centres are to
support equity work. By examining equity work and how it is
supported, I intend to contribute to ongoing dialogues about the
urgency of structural change in Canadian academic development
workplaces.
Higher Education Research and Development, 2024
Universities, both in Canada and throughout the global North, are predicated on empiricist and po... more Universities, both in Canada and throughout the global North, are predicated on empiricist and positivist understandings of knowledge and knowledge production which are communicated and strengthened through research practices and protocols. Drawn from a larger study exploring research leadership among accomplished academic staff, this paper examines interviews with eight racialised female academic staff who focus on social justice research predicated on co-producing knowledge with marginalised communities. Building on the rich scholarship which conveys the consequences of systemic discrimination for racialised and Indigenous scholars working in Canadian universities, we explore how participants navigate systems that fail to understand their epistemological and methodological orientation towards research and consider what it reveals about research culture and claims of inclusiveness in the Canadian academy. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's work on performative diversity in academia, we consider how academic structures, protocols and policies associated with research influence the social production of knowledge and resist change toward greater equity and Reconciliation demanded of Canadian higher education.
The Social Production of Research: Perspectives on Funding and Gender, Apr 2, 2024
This chapter examines how academic labour related to seeking research funding and managing resear... more This chapter examines how academic labour related to seeking research funding and managing research projects is gendered and valued by university staff. Drawing on interviews in Canada with professional staff in research administration and academic staff in the social sciences who focus on social justice in their research, the chapter explores the extent to which particular kinds of work (e.g. thinking and creative work, care work, administrative work) are positioned as valuable and essential aspects of research. Both professional and academic staff perceive thinking and creative work related to project development to be part of their work and identity. Given that thinking work is highly valued in the academy, it is unsurprising that both groups value and seek to contribute to it. Importantly, care work, which has often been feminised and devalued, is identified as work that both staff groups identify with and take up. In the interviews, participants speak about practices which provide care for people and the projects themselves. In many ways, this kind of care work enables rather than disrupts the academy’s demand for evermore research productivity. The analysis contrasts care work with administrative work (e.g. paperwork, budgeting, coordination of travel), which neither group of staff is willing to claim as work they value or for which they should have responsibility. The conclusion considers what might be possible if administrative work were valued as a part of research work.
European Journal of Higher Education, Jan 9, 2024
When higher education instructors introduce changes in teaching and assessment strategies to meet... more When higher education instructors introduce changes in teaching and assessment strategies to meet either personal or institutional goals, they often navigate practical and political challenges alone. This study investigates the perspectives of Norwegian university instructors in their effort to replace lectures and exams with a series of problem-solving activities and assessment for learning strategies in an undergraduate science course. Using grounded theory, we analysed 11 interviews with 7 instructional staff involved in two offerings of the course. Our findings show how instructors took specific measures to bridge gaps in expectations about learning with students and to address misconceptions, teaching conventions, and bureaucratic barriers that hinder the development of more meaningful learning and assessment experiences. Instructors found some success in making teaching and learning visible to students. However, they did not have similarly effective strategies for making their teaching practices clear to peers (academic and professional staff). We argue that these processes of making teaching and learning visible, as well as intelligible within institutions, is a crucial part of course design and warrants inclusion in institutional curriculum guidelines. We discuss the need for structural change in how educational reforms are enacted so lasting cultural changes can be achieved.
This work was funded in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (43... more This work was funded in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (435-2017-0104).
Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 2014
What we hear at universities and in public conversations is that there is a crisis in graduate st... more What we hear at universities and in public conversations is that there is a crisis in graduate student education and employment. We are interested here in the (re)circulation of the discourses of crisis and responsibility. What do graduate students hear about their education, their career prospects, and their responsibilities? How does work in educational development contribute to these conversations? We explore these questions through an analysis of two data sets: the course outlines for multidiscipline graduate courses on university teaching, and popular and academic press articles on graduate education and employment. Through this discursive analysis, we first examine what graduate students hear through these two archives of writing. We then unpack two key discourses that emerge across the archives: the privileging of practice over theory, and the desire to assign responsibility for how the crisis of graduate education and employment should be resolved and by whom.
The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2017
An increasingly large number of courses in Canadian postsecondary institutions are taught by cont... more An increasingly large number of courses in Canadian postsecondary institutions are taught by contingent instructors who hold full- or part-time positions for contractually limited time periods. Despite strong commitments to advancing teaching and learning, the labour and employment conditions for contingent instructors affect the incentives and possibilities for them to engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Through a collaborative writing inquiry, the 9 authors examine the influences of three key conditions of contingency: institutional knowledge, status, and role; invisibility and isolation; and precarity. Four composite stories demonstrate the ways varied conditions of contingency may play out in contingent instructors’ lives and typically undermine the possibilities for them to pursue SoTL. Institutions present contingent instructors with a mixed message: research and SoTL are desirable and frequently encouraged, yet contingent instructors are often ineligibl...
The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2015
It is increasingly understood that university education must be accessible to persons with disabi... more It is increasingly understood that university education must be accessible to persons with disabilities. The responsibility to make the university accessible is arguably shared by all of us and yet, the extent to which it has become fully accessible is certainly suspect. By undertaking qualitative, discursive analysis of websites, online texts and other materials provided by Ontario’s teaching and learning centres, this paper seeks to do two things. First, it provides a critical overview of the types of training currently available at Ontario universities for teaching assistants on accessibility and teaching. This review will outline initiatives directed towards compliance with Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) requirements, those focused on education and advocacy (as well as areas of overlap) and broader equity training which encompasses accessibility. Second, this paper, considering the content of the reviewed material and informed by critical disability stu...
Educational Research and Evaluation, 2012
Microteaching, a standard method for developing teaching skills, places high importance on peer f... more Microteaching, a standard method for developing teaching skills, places high importance on peer feedback, which is guided by post-session feedback forms. This paper focuses on how feedback forms can shape what becomes understood as important to teaching. A sample of 10 microteaching evaluation forms drawn from North American postsecondary education institutions were examined using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Through a mixed-methods, interdisciplinary approach combining quantitative form classification based on distinct teaching elements with qualitative analysis drawing on Foucauldian and post-structural feminisms, key challenges are identified in the way that peer feedback forms may shape perceptions of what constitutes ''good teaching''. We interpret that the close attention paid to the management of the body and the disproportionate focus on presentation and style may foreclose other modes of teaching beyond a conventional lecture-based class. This leads to a discussion on the ways in which the evaluation forms can be enhanced to provide a more effective educational tool.
Critical Studies in Education, 2013
ABSTRACT In this article, we examine how our work in educational development, specifically in gra... more ABSTRACT In this article, we examine how our work in educational development, specifically in graduate student training, enacts the logic of neoliberalism in higher education in Canada. We approach this examination through a collaborative autoethnographic consideration of and reflection on our practices and experiences as educational developers, the design and delivery of a graduate student survey and our own experiences of and identification with ‘self-actualizing graduate students’. Further, we illustrate how neoliberalism shapes the work of teaching and learning centres resulting in offering programming, which compels graduate students to act in ways that can be read as responsible and capable of navigating an increasingly bleak academic labour market. Throughout the article we call attention to the ways in which our role as educational developers may either reinforce or disrupt neoliberal discourses. While we urge a critical approach, we also reflect on constraints to such criticism.
Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 2023
Professional staff in research administration work closely and collaboratively with academic staf... more Professional staff in research administration work closely and collaboratively with academic staff. Examining research administrators’ work provides a point of entry for investigating research culture inthe Canadian Academy. We focus on interviews with 19 research administrators from 5 universities within a larger project on the social production of research. We draw on Davies’ theorisation of subjectification to analyse the interviews as sites wherein a research administration subject is produced. We argue this subject is positioned as a legitimate subject through arrival stories characterised as incidental and/or as a strategic move away from precarity, through descriptions of their work as meaningful due to a proximity to research, and through care for academic staff. The research administrator subject strives to gain legitimacy through her proximity to research and through her strategic positioning as ally to academic staff.
What we hear at universities and in public conversations is that there is a crisis in graduate st... more What we hear at universities and in public conversations is that there is a crisis in graduate student education and employment. We are interested here in the (re)circulation of the discourses of crisis and responsibility. What do graduate students hear about their education, their career prospects, and their responsibilities? How does work in educational development contribute to these conversations? We explore these questions through an analysis of two data sets: the course outlines for multidiscipline graduate courses on university teaching, and popular and academic press articles on graduate education and employment. Through this discursive analysis, we first examine what graduate students hear through these two archives of writing. We then unpack two key discourses that emerge across the archives: the privileging of practice over theory, and the desire to assign responsibility for how the crisis of graduate education and employment should be resolved and by whom.
In this article, we examine how our work in educational development, specifically in graduate stu... more In this article, we examine how our work in educational development, specifically in graduate student training, enacts the logic of neoliberalism in higher education in Canada. We approach this examination through a collaborative autoethnographic consideration of and reflection on our practices and experiences as educational developers, the design and delivery of a graduate student survey and our own experiences of and identification with ‘self-actualizing graduate students’. Further, we illustrate how neoliberalism shapes the work of teaching and learning centres resulting in offering programming, which compels graduate students to act in ways that can be read as responsible and capable of navigating an increasingly bleak academic labour market. Throughout the article we call attention to the ways in which our role as educational developers may either reinforce or disrupt neoliberal discourses. While we urge a critical approach, we also reflect on constraints to such criticism.
UMI, ProQuest ® Dissertations & Theses. The world's most comprehensive c... more UMI, ProQuest ® Dissertations & Theses. The world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses. Learn more... ProQuest, Baywatch babes as recreation workers: Lifeguarding, subjectivity, equity. by Vander Kloet ...
... Authors: Vander Kloet, Marie. Advisor: Dehli, Kari. Department: Sociology and Equity Studies ... more ... Authors: Vander Kloet, Marie. Advisor: Dehli, Kari. Department: Sociology and Equity Studies in Education. Keywords: whiteness Foucault outdoor recreation masculinity representation Canadian nationalism self governance consumption wilderness. Issue Date: 1-Mar-2011. ...
International Journal of Canadian Studies, Jan 1, 2009
International Journal of Academic Development, 2024
Canadian higher education has been critiqued for its inequitable structures and failure to change... more Canadian higher education has been critiqued for its inequitable
structures and failure to change despite claiming to be inclusive.
This paper considers the experiences of 15 academic developers
who engage in varied forms of institutional equity work. By focusing
on how their work takes place, why they pursue equity work
and their relationships with co-workers, I open a critical discussion
of how prepared Canadian teaching and learning centres are to
support equity work. By examining equity work and how it is
supported, I intend to contribute to ongoing dialogues about the
urgency of structural change in Canadian academic development
workplaces.
Higher Education Research and Development, 2024
Universities, both in Canada and throughout the global North, are predicated on empiricist and po... more Universities, both in Canada and throughout the global North, are predicated on empiricist and positivist understandings of knowledge and knowledge production which are communicated and strengthened through research practices and protocols. Drawn from a larger study exploring research leadership among accomplished academic staff, this paper examines interviews with eight racialised female academic staff who focus on social justice research predicated on co-producing knowledge with marginalised communities. Building on the rich scholarship which conveys the consequences of systemic discrimination for racialised and Indigenous scholars working in Canadian universities, we explore how participants navigate systems that fail to understand their epistemological and methodological orientation towards research and consider what it reveals about research culture and claims of inclusiveness in the Canadian academy. Drawing on Sara Ahmed's work on performative diversity in academia, we consider how academic structures, protocols and policies associated with research influence the social production of knowledge and resist change toward greater equity and Reconciliation demanded of Canadian higher education.
The Social Production of Research: Perspectives on Funding and Gender, Apr 2, 2024
This chapter examines how academic labour related to seeking research funding and managing resear... more This chapter examines how academic labour related to seeking research funding and managing research projects is gendered and valued by university staff. Drawing on interviews in Canada with professional staff in research administration and academic staff in the social sciences who focus on social justice in their research, the chapter explores the extent to which particular kinds of work (e.g. thinking and creative work, care work, administrative work) are positioned as valuable and essential aspects of research. Both professional and academic staff perceive thinking and creative work related to project development to be part of their work and identity. Given that thinking work is highly valued in the academy, it is unsurprising that both groups value and seek to contribute to it. Importantly, care work, which has often been feminised and devalued, is identified as work that both staff groups identify with and take up. In the interviews, participants speak about practices which provide care for people and the projects themselves. In many ways, this kind of care work enables rather than disrupts the academy’s demand for evermore research productivity. The analysis contrasts care work with administrative work (e.g. paperwork, budgeting, coordination of travel), which neither group of staff is willing to claim as work they value or for which they should have responsibility. The conclusion considers what might be possible if administrative work were valued as a part of research work.
European Journal of Higher Education, Jan 9, 2024
When higher education instructors introduce changes in teaching and assessment strategies to meet... more When higher education instructors introduce changes in teaching and assessment strategies to meet either personal or institutional goals, they often navigate practical and political challenges alone. This study investigates the perspectives of Norwegian university instructors in their effort to replace lectures and exams with a series of problem-solving activities and assessment for learning strategies in an undergraduate science course. Using grounded theory, we analysed 11 interviews with 7 instructional staff involved in two offerings of the course. Our findings show how instructors took specific measures to bridge gaps in expectations about learning with students and to address misconceptions, teaching conventions, and bureaucratic barriers that hinder the development of more meaningful learning and assessment experiences. Instructors found some success in making teaching and learning visible to students. However, they did not have similarly effective strategies for making their teaching practices clear to peers (academic and professional staff). We argue that these processes of making teaching and learning visible, as well as intelligible within institutions, is a crucial part of course design and warrants inclusion in institutional curriculum guidelines. We discuss the need for structural change in how educational reforms are enacted so lasting cultural changes can be achieved.
This work was funded in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (43... more This work was funded in part by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (435-2017-0104).
Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 2014
What we hear at universities and in public conversations is that there is a crisis in graduate st... more What we hear at universities and in public conversations is that there is a crisis in graduate student education and employment. We are interested here in the (re)circulation of the discourses of crisis and responsibility. What do graduate students hear about their education, their career prospects, and their responsibilities? How does work in educational development contribute to these conversations? We explore these questions through an analysis of two data sets: the course outlines for multidiscipline graduate courses on university teaching, and popular and academic press articles on graduate education and employment. Through this discursive analysis, we first examine what graduate students hear through these two archives of writing. We then unpack two key discourses that emerge across the archives: the privileging of practice over theory, and the desire to assign responsibility for how the crisis of graduate education and employment should be resolved and by whom.
The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2017
An increasingly large number of courses in Canadian postsecondary institutions are taught by cont... more An increasingly large number of courses in Canadian postsecondary institutions are taught by contingent instructors who hold full- or part-time positions for contractually limited time periods. Despite strong commitments to advancing teaching and learning, the labour and employment conditions for contingent instructors affect the incentives and possibilities for them to engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Through a collaborative writing inquiry, the 9 authors examine the influences of three key conditions of contingency: institutional knowledge, status, and role; invisibility and isolation; and precarity. Four composite stories demonstrate the ways varied conditions of contingency may play out in contingent instructors’ lives and typically undermine the possibilities for them to pursue SoTL. Institutions present contingent instructors with a mixed message: research and SoTL are desirable and frequently encouraged, yet contingent instructors are often ineligibl...
The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 2015
It is increasingly understood that university education must be accessible to persons with disabi... more It is increasingly understood that university education must be accessible to persons with disabilities. The responsibility to make the university accessible is arguably shared by all of us and yet, the extent to which it has become fully accessible is certainly suspect. By undertaking qualitative, discursive analysis of websites, online texts and other materials provided by Ontario’s teaching and learning centres, this paper seeks to do two things. First, it provides a critical overview of the types of training currently available at Ontario universities for teaching assistants on accessibility and teaching. This review will outline initiatives directed towards compliance with Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA) requirements, those focused on education and advocacy (as well as areas of overlap) and broader equity training which encompasses accessibility. Second, this paper, considering the content of the reviewed material and informed by critical disability stu...
Educational Research and Evaluation, 2012
Microteaching, a standard method for developing teaching skills, places high importance on peer f... more Microteaching, a standard method for developing teaching skills, places high importance on peer feedback, which is guided by post-session feedback forms. This paper focuses on how feedback forms can shape what becomes understood as important to teaching. A sample of 10 microteaching evaluation forms drawn from North American postsecondary education institutions were examined using both qualitative and quantitative methods. Through a mixed-methods, interdisciplinary approach combining quantitative form classification based on distinct teaching elements with qualitative analysis drawing on Foucauldian and post-structural feminisms, key challenges are identified in the way that peer feedback forms may shape perceptions of what constitutes ''good teaching''. We interpret that the close attention paid to the management of the body and the disproportionate focus on presentation and style may foreclose other modes of teaching beyond a conventional lecture-based class. This leads to a discussion on the ways in which the evaluation forms can be enhanced to provide a more effective educational tool.
Critical Studies in Education, 2013
ABSTRACT In this article, we examine how our work in educational development, specifically in gra... more ABSTRACT In this article, we examine how our work in educational development, specifically in graduate student training, enacts the logic of neoliberalism in higher education in Canada. We approach this examination through a collaborative autoethnographic consideration of and reflection on our practices and experiences as educational developers, the design and delivery of a graduate student survey and our own experiences of and identification with ‘self-actualizing graduate students’. Further, we illustrate how neoliberalism shapes the work of teaching and learning centres resulting in offering programming, which compels graduate students to act in ways that can be read as responsible and capable of navigating an increasingly bleak academic labour market. Throughout the article we call attention to the ways in which our role as educational developers may either reinforce or disrupt neoliberal discourses. While we urge a critical approach, we also reflect on constraints to such criticism.
Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 2023
Professional staff in research administration work closely and collaboratively with academic staf... more Professional staff in research administration work closely and collaboratively with academic staff. Examining research administrators’ work provides a point of entry for investigating research culture inthe Canadian Academy. We focus on interviews with 19 research administrators from 5 universities within a larger project on the social production of research. We draw on Davies’ theorisation of subjectification to analyse the interviews as sites wherein a research administration subject is produced. We argue this subject is positioned as a legitimate subject through arrival stories characterised as incidental and/or as a strategic move away from precarity, through descriptions of their work as meaningful due to a proximity to research, and through care for academic staff. The research administrator subject strives to gain legitimacy through her proximity to research and through her strategic positioning as ally to academic staff.
What we hear at universities and in public conversations is that there is a crisis in graduate st... more What we hear at universities and in public conversations is that there is a crisis in graduate student education and employment. We are interested here in the (re)circulation of the discourses of crisis and responsibility. What do graduate students hear about their education, their career prospects, and their responsibilities? How does work in educational development contribute to these conversations? We explore these questions through an analysis of two data sets: the course outlines for multidiscipline graduate courses on university teaching, and popular and academic press articles on graduate education and employment. Through this discursive analysis, we first examine what graduate students hear through these two archives of writing. We then unpack two key discourses that emerge across the archives: the privileging of practice over theory, and the desire to assign responsibility for how the crisis of graduate education and employment should be resolved and by whom.
In this article, we examine how our work in educational development, specifically in graduate stu... more In this article, we examine how our work in educational development, specifically in graduate student training, enacts the logic of neoliberalism in higher education in Canada. We approach this examination through a collaborative autoethnographic consideration of and reflection on our practices and experiences as educational developers, the design and delivery of a graduate student survey and our own experiences of and identification with ‘self-actualizing graduate students’. Further, we illustrate how neoliberalism shapes the work of teaching and learning centres resulting in offering programming, which compels graduate students to act in ways that can be read as responsible and capable of navigating an increasingly bleak academic labour market. Throughout the article we call attention to the ways in which our role as educational developers may either reinforce or disrupt neoliberal discourses. While we urge a critical approach, we also reflect on constraints to such criticism.
UMI, ProQuest ® Dissertations & Theses. The world's most comprehensive c... more UMI, ProQuest ® Dissertations & Theses. The world's most comprehensive collection of dissertations and theses. Learn more... ProQuest, Baywatch babes as recreation workers: Lifeguarding, subjectivity, equity. by Vander Kloet ...
... Authors: Vander Kloet, Marie. Advisor: Dehli, Kari. Department: Sociology and Equity Studies ... more ... Authors: Vander Kloet, Marie. Advisor: Dehli, Kari. Department: Sociology and Equity Studies in Education. Keywords: whiteness Foucault outdoor recreation masculinity representation Canadian nationalism self governance consumption wilderness. Issue Date: 1-Mar-2011. ...
International Journal of Canadian Studies, Jan 1, 2009