UNIVERSITY STUDENTS’ SOCIAL POSITIONING IN THE NARRATIVES OF ACADEMIC STAFF AS A CONTEXT FOR REFLECTION ON THE DIDACTIC FUNCTION OF UNIVERSITY

Abstract

The didactic function of the university seems to be the issue that is not very popular among the researchers investigating higher education due to the concentration on the scientific productivity as well as bibliometrics. The article presented is an element of the research project related to the academic cultures of the university and deals with the problem of students’ social positioning in the narratives of the academic staff. The major aim of the article is to raise a question of the perceptions of the students presented by the university scholars and – in this way – pay attention of the Readers to the issue of the didactic function of higher education sector which is as important as the scientific function.
The methodology of the research is a specific version of Critical Discourse Analysis – Critical Metaphor Analysis (CMA). Twenty-eight in-depth qualitative interviews have been conducted and later analysed according to the procedure CMA. All the identified metaphors related to the domain of students as well as female students have been analysed. During the analysis, it soon became clear that the female students are excluded twice – firstly as members of students and then as young women.
The results of the research led to the conclusion that students are thematised as a blockade of the academic staff scientific development and therefore should not be present within the institution of university. The criteria for such thematizations are connected with the insufficient level of students’ intellectual development as well as treating them as people bringing in ‘low culture’ to the world in which ‘high culture’ is required. In this context university seems to be a place not for the students. Additionally, female students are excluded on the basis of aesthetic criteria.
In this context, the question of the crisis of the university must be raised again since one of the most important function of this institution (i.e. educating young people) has been supressed by the logic of scientific productivity and accountability.