The policy unconscious: educational labor, the research-and-teaching relationship and the unquestioned meaning of higher education

ABSTRACT

Recent developments in higher education have shown that policies that promote employability tend to be at odds with policies that aim to ensure a close relationship between teaching and research. In this article, we explore how university teachers enact a policy demanding a close relationship between research and teaching. Based on a conceptualization of educational labor practices as policy enactment, we show that teachers enact the policy by using scientific papers in class; by teaching students how to attain a ‘scientific attitude’; by drawing upon one’s own research experiences; and finally, by emphasizing formal competence. As the policy is enacted through educational labor practices, and those practices give higher education its meaning, the policy enactment is enabled by what we term the policy unconscious. This term denotes not only the educational labor practices by which the policy is enacted, but also the dialectics between the particular labor practices and the general meaning ascribed to higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Research and teaching relationship
• policy enactment
• higher education
• educational labor
• policy unconscious

Introduction

A central idea in higher education is the idea that teaching should be based on research. This idea is often thought to characterize the university as an educational institution in modern societies (Bienenstock et al. 2014; Geschwind and Broström 2015). It is also associated with the so-called Humboldtian ideal of bildung, which is holistic in its ambition to combine cultural knowledge and general learning (Tight 2016). The idea that higher education should be based on close relationship between teaching and research is often also formalized in official policy documents in universities in various national contexts (Bienenstock et al. 2014; Macheridis, Paulsson, and Pihl 2020). This also goes for Sweden, which is the context explored in this paper.

Previous studies on higher education have shed light on the ambiguous characteristics of the research and teaching relationship (Healey 2005; Marsh and Hattie 2002; Ramsden and Moses 1992; Robertson and Bond 2005; Tight 2016). Numerous typologies have been developed to make sense of this ambiguity, and we will discuss these briefly below. But unlike those studies, we do not want to elaborate on new typologies. We rather want to critically explore how university teachers reflect upon their own daily practices. Our purpose, then, is to explore how university teachers enact a national policy in their educational labor. When exploring this, we draw upon the literature on policy enactment and revisit the previous scholarship on the research and teaching relationship (see Buckley 2011; Horta, Dautel, and Veloso 2012; Visser-Wijnveen et al. 2012).

In Sweden, most higher education institutions are public authorities and many university teachers are therefore state employees. Their educational labor practices include, but are not limited to, planning of teaching, conducting teaching activities and assessing students’ performance. As part of these practices, the teachers are formally expected to ensure that there is a close relationship between research and teaching, as this is stipulated in The Swedish Higher Education Act (SFS 1992). Even though we explore this in a Swedish context, it is related to processes unfolding in other contexts as well as many higher education institutions struggle to balance different and sometimes conflicting policies. For example, many institutions have to grapple with policies demanding students to learn practical skills in order to raise their level of employability on the one hand, and policies demanding rigorous academic training and theoretical reasoning on the other hand (see e.g. Macheridis, Paulsson, and Pihl 2020).

In the critical policy studies literature, there has been a long debate over the definitions of policy. Policy is occasionally understood as text (Ball 1993; Ball 2015), discourse (Bacchi 2000; Fairclough 2013), assemblage (Mellaard and van Meijl 2017; Savage 2020), governmental technology (Webb 2014) and so forth. While we are sympathetic to these developments and seek to avoid conceptual closure, we narrow the review of the previous literature to discussions of policy enactment. Enactment denotes the practices involved in making policy a reality (Braun, Ball, and Maguire 2011). When using the concept of policy enactment, we are inspired by the works of Braun, Ball, and Maguire (2011) and Yanow (1996; Yanow 2015). They highlight the actorhood involved when policy is practiced. Whereas these practices are shaped by culture, values and organizational structures, our point of departure is that policy is enacted on a daily basis through actors’ plans, actions and talks. Policy is thus enacted through the teachers’ educational labor practices.

This section has discussed the background and purpose of the study. In the next section, we introduce previous research on policy enactment and educational labor. Then we describe how we gathered the qualitative material and what interpretative strategy we used when analyzing this. The narrative accounts illustrate the four educational labor practices, through which the policy is enacted. Finally, we introduce ‘the policy unconscious’ to conceptualize the dialectics between particular labor practices and the general meaning ascribed to higher education.

Policy enactment and educational labor

Our study zooms in on educational labor practices and how policy is enacted through these . We are not so much concerned with the policy process as such, but with what policy does to the labor practices, and how these practices do policy (Singh, Heimans, and Glasswell 2014). We approach policy enactment by studying it through, or in relation to, its ‘contextual understanding, ordinary knowledge, narrative storytelling, emotional expression and communicative practices generally’ (Fischer et al. 2015, 6). While policy is ostensibly enacted through practices, new ideas and emerging interests are translated into these ongoing labor practices (Braun, Ball, and Maguire 2011). To us, this means that political, cultural and organizational contexts must be taken into account when analyzing ‘the how’ of policy (Codd 1988; Lascoumes and Le Gales 2007; Welsh 2019; Grimaldi 2012).

Policy enactment denotes that policy involves actorhood, is co-constructed, translated and obstructed when policy texts encounter policy contexts. In building upon critical approaches that highlight the actors’ translations, we follow Yanow (2015, 409) in her analysis of policy. She has developed a four-step analytical procedure which tries to try map the ‘architecture of meaning’. The first step is to identify the categories or category set in use, which may be done by focusing on policy language and discourse as expressed in key documents. The second step involves analyzing the elements of similarity, which means that focus is placed on how the problem that the policy is targeting is formulated and which kind of knowledge that is mobilized to grapple with it. The third step is to identify the implicit point of view from which the problem is defined. Who defined the problem and what assumption lays behind the categories in use? The fourth step is about tracing and ‘reading’ the linkages between policy solutions and policy problems, and so deconstruct those linkages (Yanow 2015, 409). What these four steps have in common is that they all assume that policy is operating through practices, occasionally reflected upon by the actors, occasionally not, and this feeds into the concept we are using later on to conceptualize this, namely the policy unconscious.

As teaching is a key practice in educational labor, we draw on Boyer (1990), who has a broad understanding of teaching. For him, teaching it ostensibly about building bridges between the teachers and their understanding of the topic on the one hand, and the students’ learning processes on the other hand. Teaching then involves much more than in-class lectures and discussions). Pedagogical design, implementation of teaching activities, planning the students’ learning processes, the managing of the relationships between teachers and students, as well as examination and grading, are all activities included in this broader understanding of teaching. Since teaching is here understood very broad (Boyer 1990), it is bordering on what we term educational labor. While both concepts overlap, at least to some extent, we prefer the term educational labor as this is closer to our theorization of policy enactment.

Unpacking the research and teaching relationship

Viewing the research and teaching relationship as a form of policy enactment means that we are interested in exploring the university teachers’ educational labor practices. Earlier studies of the research and teaching relationship tend to be instrumental in character, that is, they are influenced by governmental policies, driven by managerial objectives and/or focusing on evaluating the performance of policies or managerial frameworks (Elken and Wollscheid 2016; Healey 2005; Robertson and Bond 2005). One thing often repeated again and again in earlier studies is that the research and teaching relationship varies over time and space: it may mean one thing in one discipline and another thing in another. Unsurprisingly, how closely connected research and teaching is also depends on the level of the higher educational system one is looking at. At undergraduate level, there is generally a looser connection, whereas at graduate level, the connection is tightly coupled (Neumann 1992, 1994). Taken together, these ways of understanding the relationship suggest that it varies over time and space, is contingent on the practices and definitions established in different disciplines, and moves from being loosely to tightly coupled through the various stages in the educational system.

Beyond this, the actual research and teaching relationship can be conceptualized in at least three ways (Elken and Wollscheid 2016; Marsh and Hattie 2002). First, research and teaching can be complementary, that is, both are considered important but they do not mutually contribute to each other. Second, research and teaching may be independent constructs, that is, academics are not active as both researchers and teachers, at least not at the same time. Third, research and teaching can be antagonistic, that is, teaching activities can limit the time and energy available for conducting research. This might be perceived a problem if research and teaching revolve around entirely different types of labor practices, which they often tend to do.

Previous studies also show that there is a widespread and strong opinion that the relationship between research and teaching should be tightly coupled, and that they should mutually reinforce each other (Marsh and Hattie 2002; Ramsden and Moses 1992; Robertson and Bond 2005). The more positivist tradition in higher education research have delivered some astonishing results on this: one study showed that ‘the teaching-research relation is close to zero’ (Marsh and Hattie 2002, 628), while another one found little or no evidence for the view that research has a positive causal relationship to teaching (Ramsden and Moses 1992). In other words, a research-intensive and highly regarded university department may offer low-quality education, and vice versa. While it is crucial to keep in mind the methodological limits of these studies as well as their inconclusive results, they nonetheless point toward a general understanding of the meaning of the relationship – that it is loaded with positive associations (Verburgh, Elen, and Lindblom-Ylämne 2007).

While summarizing how the relationship has been understood in previous studies, Griffiths (2004, 722) point out that the research and teaching relationship could be aligned in four ways. Teaching can be research-led, which means that there is an emphasis on students’ learning about research and research ‘findings’. Teaching can also be research-oriented, meaning that emphasis is placed on students’ learning and understanding of the research process and its problems. Teaching may be research-based, which means that students are expected to learn by doing researcher themselves. Finally, teaching may be research-informed, which means that emphasis is placed on systematic inquiry into the teaching and learning process itself.

In sum, previous studies on the research and teaching relationship are rich in conceptualizations and often point to the importance of enabling a creative and inspiring educational environment by establishing a close connection between teaching and research. Yet, relatively few studies have critically explored how the policy is enacted or even part of broader meaning-production processes (for notable exceptions, see Buckley 2011; Horta, Dautel, and Veloso 2012; Visser-Wijnveen et al. 2012; Elsen et al. 2009). We will do this by introducing the concept of policy enactment and by providing insights on how university teachers enact a policy as an integral part of their educational labor practices.

Situating the method and methodology

This study draws upon interpretative methodology and its development at the intersection of critical policy studies and organization studies (Yanow 1996, 1999, 2007). As with other interpretative approaches, this methodology is appropriate for investigating how meaning is produced in practices and embodied in language, symbols, objects and actions (Smircich 1983; Yanow 2015). The study is based on sixteen e-interviews with university teachers at two universities in Sweden during May-June 2017.

We choose to explore one research-intensive and one teaching-intensive university. The university teachers were selected based on their experience of research and teaching. All of them had been, or still were, responsible for developing courses and modules. We interviewed adjunct teachers, senior lecturers, associate professors, and professors, which meant we covered all levels of seniority. Few of them were also head of undergraduate or graduate programs. It is worth noting that in Sweden, senior lecturers/readers/associate professors in most social science disciplines usually get 30% of research as part of their working time. Full professors have around 50% of research. However, this may differ between different disciplines and faculties. Some faculty staff also have administrative positions as part of their working time. This reduces the available time for doing research and teaching. We approached teachers in the subject of business studies because we had a good insight into the educational labor practices in this discipline. Such insider-knowledge equipped us with the contextual understanding for interpreting the teachers’ accounts of their practices (Corbin and Buckle 2009).

E-interviewing is a suitable method when the interviewer and interviewee are free to respond at a time of their choosing, as opposed to ‘real time’ communication during traditional face-to-face interviews. The interviewee may, moreover, respond in a setting of their choice. Egan (2008, 244) suggests that such ‘asynchronicity allows more time for reflection, and this may produce a richer quality of data’. We experienced this as the responses we received were rich both in terms of content and reflection. Since e-interviewing enables the interviewee to create his or her own space to think and a prolonged time to ‘talk’, it is a method which allows both a physical distance between the interviewer and interviewee as well as a notable time-lag between questions and answers (James 2007; Meho 2006; James 2016). Building upon this, the e-interviewing process was done in two steps.

First, based on the literature review, three open-ended questions were formulated. We circulated these questions to the university teachers. The questions were: (i) what is your perception of the close relationship between teaching and research; (ii) how do you conduct teaching so as to enact this relationship; and (iii) what opportunities and challenges have you experienced when it comes to this relationship? Second, after receiving responses from the teachers, we followed up individual answers with additional questions. Once we had completed all interviews, we gathered all of the written responses into one document.

Inspired by the work by Hollway and Jefferson (2000), the open-ended questions were crafted based on the method of ‘free association’. As such, we asked the teachers to say whatever came to mind in order to elicit ‘the kind of narrative that is not structured according to conscious logic, but according to unconscious logic; that is, the associations follow pathways defined by emotional motivations, rather than rational intentions’ (Hollway and Jefferson 2000, 37). In line with the interpretative approach of this study (Yanow 1996, 1999), all answers were then analyzed for common patterns and themes by the two researchers. We followed the analytical four-step procedure developed by Yanow (2015), when identifying common patterns and themes. No observational material was collected. In the following section, we will present our interpretations of the empirical material.

Where does the research and teaching relationship begin?

In Sweden, which is the context explored in this paper, the proposal to make the research-and-teaching relationship an official policy was discussed already in 1977 when the reform on Higher Education was implemented. However, it was not introduced as an official policy until the beginning of the 21th century, when The Statutes of Higher Education came into effect (Bienenstock et al. 2014). From the early 1990s and onwards, The Swedish Higher Education Act has explicitly stated that higher education should involve, or be built upon, a close relationship between research and teaching (SFS 1992, 1992:1434, Chapter 1, Section 3).

Since Swedish universities are public authorities, they are obliged to comply with formal institutional frameworks, regulations and decisions decided by parliament and government as well as administrative and labor-market legislation. The Swedish National Agency for Higher Education is the authority that evaluate the quality of higher education, provides general information to students about their rights, and ensures that all the universities comply with the statutes and regulations that apply to higher education (Swedish National Agency for Higher Education 2019). At the level of the university, the faculties and the departments must comply with the university’s strategies and policies. Yet, both the university and its departments are autonomous in their decision making, as collegiality is the norm of governance (Macheridis and Paulsson 2019).

When interpreting policy

During our interviews with the university teachers, many stated that the research and teaching relationship is crucial for achieving high-quality education. In fact, everyone we interviewed said that they knew what the relationship entailed in broad terms, namely that the content of teaching should be based on research. One teacher suggested that ‘all teaching is to be built on a scientific basis, and new research that is generated should be introduced into teaching as soon as possible’. Another teacher stated that the relationship aimed to involve the students in research, and that this would contribute to novel research vistas.

The basis, as I see it, is that the education should be based on research. It may be my own research, but it does not have to be. As a teacher, I must convey research results, and ensure that the education is updated. It is also about giving students an insight and understanding of what research entails, so that they can assimilate and relate to research results in the future.

Besides this, the relationship was understood to be an issue primarily about student’s acceptance and willingness to learn about research, as well as to learn about the research process and developing an understanding of what knowledge is. Diverging views emerged when this moved over to discussions of what a research ‘attitude’ is and why that is seen as crucial for enacting the relationship. Those who favored such a cultivation of a research ‘attitude’ amongst the student argued that it should be compulsory for students to read, reflect and critically review academically published papers. Only textbooks would not suffice. On the other hand, two teachers argued that the relationship also should be reversed. Research should adapt to, and be linked to, the topics of teaching. So, instead of grounding teaching in research, research should be grounded in teaching. But in the end, one of them explicitly stated, ‘teaching and research should be mixed in the [HE] environments’, by which he confirmed the idea of ‘the bi-directionality’ of the teaching and research relationship.

When enacting policy

While going through and reflecting upon what we gathered during the interviews, we sorted the accounts provided by the teachers in four broad categories. In their educational labor practices, the teachers enacted the relationship (i) by including scientifically published papers in their teaching; (ii) by promoting a scientific ‘attitude’ and critical thinking; (iii) by including one’s own research in teaching; and (iv) by relying on formal competence. Let us now explore these in more detail.

Using scientific articles

Unsurprisingly to us, publications in peer-reviewed journals were seen by nearly all teachers we interviewed as a guarantee of high-quality research. When including such publications in course syllabuses, this was understood to be a way of including high-quality research in teaching. One teacher even suggested that the inclusion of ahead-of-print or just recently published papers in the teaching material was a way to create both ‘relevance’ and ‘anchorage’ of the course content. Another teacher echoed this when arguing that scientific papers often convey ‘a mindset’ that one wants to expose the students to.

I use mainly journal articles, with which I try to capture the ideas I want students to be exposed to. It can also be your own empirical studies that can constitute a case or illustration, when different theoretical concepts or models are applied to ‘reality’.

Although some teachers argued that traditional textbooks could be used to enact the relationship, one added that that those books must have a clear ‘scientific grounding’. Substantiating this view, he argued that on the undergraduate level, primarily on the introductory courses, textbooks could be of value, as the aim (or ‘the intended learning outcomes’) of those courses are geared to offer an introduction to a specific field of knowledge. However, at graduate level, i.e. at master’s level or above, the ambition is often to include scientific papers in the teaching materials, which, then, contribute to establishing a relationship between research and teaching. Somewhat unreflectively, we thought, several of the teachers stated that the inclusion of research papers published in scientific journals in the teaching materials exposed students to scientific knowledge production. Why, or in what way, was unclear. Critical reflections also emerged. One teacher in particular reasoned that he thought his colleagues had a ‘naive belief in scientific journal papers’. The peer-review processes, he argued, is no guarantee of high-quality research, not least for many newer journals. Occasionally, reviewers only pay lip-service to thorough peer-review processes. Another university teacher echoed this. She told us that there was an ‘uncritical attitude’ among her colleagues toward using peer-reviewed scientific papers as teaching materials.

Cultivating a scientific attitude

We have already touched upon this, but many teachers wanted to encourage students to obtain ‘a scientific attitude’. One university teacher believed that teaching the students ‘the right’ attitude and thinking, would make it easier for the students to apply and relate to research, and thereby familiarize themselves with the intellectual process involved in scientific knowledge production. Another teacher argued that students should learn how to critically evaluate and assess the validity of the results presented in published scientific papers, not least by scrutinizing the method and the theory used to produce the results.

All teaching must be built on a scientific basis, the new research that is generated must be included in the teaching as soon as possible. In practice, this means that the courses must be focused on what will be practice tomorrow, not today, and that it is largely based on scientific articles and materials. (italics added)

The higher up in the education system the students are, the more imperative becomes the relationship between research and education, according to the teachers. One teacher told us that, while courses at the graduate level always include references and influences from one’s own or close colleagues’ research, this was not always the case at the undergraduate level. Learning students to obtain a ‘scientific attitude’ was closely linked to the idea of including scientific peer-reviwed papers in the teaching materials. But several of the teachers also considered ‘scientific attitude’ to be something that students learned by writing essays, especially as the students then have to refer to, and integrate, arguments from earlier studies.

We were also told that one way of learning the students how to obtain a ‘scientific’ or ‘critical attitude’ was by reviewing the history of the discipline, or a particular field within the discipline. This could be achieved by collectively reading and referring to influential and oft-quoted scientific papers. One teacher used precisely this approach to introduce the students to ‘the theoretical traditions’ within the sub-discipline. Students were then trained in critically discussing the different traditions, as well as the validity of the results coming from these traditions.

Drawing on personal research experience

Besides using scientific papers and teaching students about a ‘scientific attitude’, a third way to enact the relationship between teaching and research emerged namely by using one’s own research in teaching. After all, many teachers, but not everyone, stated that exposing students to the personal experience of conducting research was a good way to integrate research and teaching. One respondent believed this to be an accessible method for students to learn about knowledge production. By drawing upon such personal experiences, it was possible to ‘create relevance and anchorage and, moreover, credibility’, we were informed by one teacher. The same teacher said that ‘I use (empirical) examples from Swedish healthcare, where I have a good understanding of the operations and processes.’ This understanding was shared by another teacher who suggested that ‘in method courses, it is good to link to studies that you have done [yourself] to exemplify [what you mean].’ Although the personal research experience was highly valued by many teachers, critique emerged. Enacting the relationship by using one’s own personal experience was too narrow, two teachers explained.

Some colleagues seem to think that their own research should be used in courses. Personally, I believe that it is our task to show as much breadth in research as possible. Not just the research conducted at your own department.

Readings and teachings materials should not only be confined to the research outputs by the individual teacher/researcher. Teaching, if based primarily on one’s own research or originating from one’s own department, is not always preferable for the students’ learning process, especially when the research is too focused on a small niche, or located in the margins of the research field, we were told.

Invoking formal competence

Something we did not expect to hear was the significance ascribed to formal competence. Emerging during our interviews was a picture where either a completed doctoral educational or a track-record of published papers in peer-reviewed journals were seen as prerequisites for being able to enact the relationship. One teacher even stated that he thought that teachers with a PhD had a ‘comparative advantage’, in so far teaching in higher education ought to be carried out by people with post-graduate degrees. Practice-oriented skills and applied knowledge, on the other hand, was better taught by practitioners. He continued by stating that higher education teaching and learning should primarily engage in theoretical and methodological knowledge and that should be the core, not vocational skills training. In many of the statements we received, the notion of formal competence was ostensibly underwriting the idea that only qualified teachers could ensure high-quality education. This belief in formal competence as a hallmark of quality was coupled to the understanding that teachers who had obtained a PhD, were more socialized into the research community than adjunct teachers. Becoming a professional academic is a matter of learning the ‘disciplined reasoning’ (Hylmö 2018), therefore we did not find it surprising that formal competence was equated with quality.

Interpretations of policy discussed

Given these accounts of how the teachers enacted the policy in their educational labor practices, we will now turn to discussing these practices in relation to earlier studies.

While the university teachers described in detail how they enacted the relationship, none of them discussed the official policy, at least not as it has been formalized in the legislation and in the statues of higher education. Instead, the relationship was understood more as akin to the meaning of higher education than a policy. As such, it was embedded in the bildung-concept and seen as an inherent part of what kind of education a university should offer. By echoing the Humboldtian ideal, the generalized meaning ascribed to higher education was that of teaching entangled with research (Bienenstock et al. 2014; Tight 2016).

Summarizing the narrative accounts, we would argue that the teachers thought of the research and teaching relationship as one of the key characteristics of higher education. After all, the research and teaching relationship was considered key to both the educational labor practices and the generalized meaning ascribed to higher education. This gap between the lack of reflection on the formal policy on the one hand and the enactment of it on the other hand is bridged with what we term the policy unconscious. We will discuss this further below, but for now we suggest that the policy unconscious is informing the enactment of policy. As such, the policy unconscious must be understood in relation to the particular educational labor by each teacher, and how this labor is reinscribed in the general meaning of higher education. Before discussing the notion of the policy unconscious further, we will lay the groundwork for this by first elaborating on how educational labor is particular to each teacher, operating at an unconscious level, but, at the same time, building on the general meaning ascribed to higher education.

Representing particular educational labor

When representing their own educational labor, the teachers suggested that the relationship between research and teaching was static over time and hierarchical, in the sense that research was not valued as equally important as teaching, but actually valued higher. Unlike previous studies, where the relationship has been described as ‘complementary’, or as ‘independent constructs’ or even as ‘antagonistic’ (e.g. when teaching is taking time from research) (Elken and Wollscheid 2016; Marsh and Hattie 2002), our study indicate that it is not primarily the relationship between research and teaching that is ‘antagonistic’, but the relationship between this policy and other policies. Policies on employability, for example, were believed to obstruct the establishment of a close relationship between research and teaching. Especially teaching and learning activities that included training of vocational skills was in conflict with learning the students a scientific-critical ‘attitude’ (see also Macheridis, Paulsson, and Pihl 2020)

Like much previous studies, the teachers saw potential benefits for the students’ learning process if there was a close relationship between research and teaching (Robertson and Bond 2005; Else et.al. 2016; Marsh and Hattie 2002; Robertson and Bond 2005). Yet, the teachers emphasized the relationship only when discussing the subject-matter of teaching, while scholarship on teaching and learning was not touched upon. While the teachers enacted the policy in their educational labor practices without much conscious reflection, it was enacted in four particular ways, as we described in the accounts above. This indicates a multiplicity of interpretations (Elken and Wollscheid 2016). That no teacher referred to, or mentioned, the policy, yet enacted it in their labor practices, could be understood, we argue, as an unconscious enactment of the policy (cf. Griffiths (2004).

On the general meaning of higher education

As the teachers were unconsciously enacting the policy in their particular educational labor practices, how were these practices shaped in turn? We recognize that policy enactment is highly context-dependent and contingent on the interpretations and translations by the policy-takers, in our case the teachers and their educational labor (Braun, Ball, and Maguire 2011). That the policy on the research and teaching relationship has been codified in The Swedish Higher Education Act and reproduced in official policy documents at university and faculty levels, sends a strong signal about prioritization by the policy-maker: the national government. At the same time, the teachers communicated that they endorsed the idea behind the policy, which spoke to the Humboldtian-ideal of bildung, but they did so without reflecting upon the fact that there was an official policy in the first place. Since neither policy instruments nor measures to ensure its compliance were in place, the university teachers’ educational labor practices were deeply rooted in the general meaning ascribed to higher education.

Follwing, Yanow’s (2015, p 409) four step procedure for tracing and deconstructing the ‘architecture of meaning’, we would argue that the policy was in short of categories as no categorial language was in use by the policy-maker. Yet, the mere fact that the official policy existed, indicates that there was a perceived risk of lower quality. In the early 1990ʹs, at the same time as the research and teaching relationship became codified into official policy, many new university colleges were established in Sweden. From the point of view of the policy-maker, the policy problem would then be that this expansion could potentially lead to lower quality in higher education, while the policy solution was to codify the research and teaching relationship into official policy. When tracing and ‘reading’ the linkages between policy solution and policy problem as text (Yanow 2015; Ball, 2015), we learned that these linkages were not only tacit, but enacted based on a deep-rooted and therefore unquestioned meaning ascribed to higher education.

While previous studies on policy in higher education often emphasize formal processes and procedures (e.g. Elken and Wollscheid 2016; Elsen et al. 2009), this study has unpacked the particular educational labor in which this policy was enacted. In fact, none of the teachers referred to formal decisions, university guidelines, or the official policy. That the university teachers came from two different universities, yet expressed similar views and accounted for much the same labor practices, suggest that the policy enactments here transcended the formal institutional boundaries and so signified the occurrence of a general meaning ascribed to higher education (e.g. Brew 2010; deLeon and deLeon 2001).¹ This strengthens our interpretation of the significance of the socialization processes (as expressed in the emphasis on formal competence) that was, and still is, involved in becoming a professional academic (as expressed in publishing and reading scientific papers, and through teaching students critical think as well as teaching them about a ‘scientific attitude’).

Towards the policy unconscious

We now want to introduce the policy unconscious. This concept adds to the understanding of how policy is enacted. Not only was the teaching and research relationship enacted in educational labor practices, but its enactment was based on a deep-rooted and shared understanding of what higher education entails, an understanding operating at an unconscious level. Although much of the research using the concept of policy enactment discusses quotidian practices, ordinary language-use and discourses (e.g. Braun, Ball, and Maguire 2011; Ball, 2015), only little attention has been paid to the unconscious. The concept of policy unconscious provides a potentially creative way of understanding how policy is enacted in particular practices, shaped by deep-rooted generalized understandings (e.g. Halton 1994, see also Jameson, 1981). As such, it does not claim to offer a complete analytical framework or a comprehensive explanation of policy enactment, but conceptualize our interpretations.

Inspired by Jung’s (1934/1981, 3) work on the collective unconscious (which he developed partly in opposition to Freud’s understanding of the unconscious as something personal), we propose that the policy unconscious is a collective process and pivotal to understanding how general meanings (archetypes in Jung’s language) operate on a personal level (Jung, 1936/1981, 12). In our open-ended questions, we asked the teachers how they enacted the teaching and research relationship as part of their educational labor. This relationship happens to be an official policy, but none of the people we interviewed referred to the policy. What they did refer to was the general meaning ascribed to higher education, which we understand as akin toward how the collective unconscious is operating, following Jung. When enacting the policy, the teachers implied that their educational labor, was, after all, in tune with the general meaning and also aligned with the Humboldtian ideal of higher education. Based on this, we suggest that the policy unconscious is shaped by the general meaning of higher education and expressed in particular forms educational labor, namely practices involving the use scientific articles, the will to learn students a ‘critical attitude’ and by referring to formal competence.

Inspired by the free-association interview method, our open-ended questions unearthed an underlying frame of meaning while narratives were ‘accessed via links based on spontaneous association, rather than whatever consistency can be found in the told narrative’ (Hollway and Jefferson 2000, 152). Because meaning follows an unconscious logic rather than a conscious one, we coupled the open-ended questions to an openness when it came to interpreting the policy enactment. The policy unconscious, we argue, is based on three intertwined sub-concepts, following Yanow’s (1999) ‘architecture of meaning’. First, it is based on a form of distributed and collectively dispersed meaning of a phenomenon, in this case the general meaning of higher education. This requires decoding and the tracing of ideas and values in and between text and contexts (eg. Yanow 2015). Secondly, the policy unconscious is about carving out how meaning is related to and translated into practices, which in our case is the particular forms of educational labor. Third, and this is a crucial point for understanding the unconscious aspect, policy enactment is based on how general meaning and particular practices are related: If policy is enacted on the basis of a distributed and collectively dispersed sense of meaning as well as on established practices, then it is possible to speak of the unconscious enactment of a policy (cf. Halton 1994). But, if meaning is explicitly contested or self-consciously reflected upon, and if it is difficult to talk about established practices, or there is great awareness of the logic of the policy, then it is also difficult to talk about the policy unconscious.

To sum up, the policy unconscious is not a fully-fledged theoretical concept, but rather a beginning of sorts, a beginning of understanding how the unconscious operates in policy. We have outlined the contours of this, as we showed that policy, when enacted in educational labor, operates at a level of the unconscious. Yet, further work is necessary to understand this concept and develop methods for analyzing it.

Conclusion

This paper set out to investigate the way university teachers enact policy in higher education. The research and teaching relationship is an official policy in Sweden and we choose this to explore how university teachers enacted policy as part of their educational labor practices. As an integral aspect of their labor practices, they enacted the policy in four distinct ways: first, by using papers published in scientific journal as part of the teaching materials and literature; second, by teaching students how to obtain a ‘scientific attitude’; third, by including their own research experiences into their teaching; and, fourth, by emphasizing formal competence.

Employing Yanow’s (2015) approach to policy analysis, we discerned the ‘architecture of meaning’ that shaped the university teachers’ enactment of the policy. Although this policy is short of categories and guidance, it is nonetheless considered to give higher education its general meaning. Given this, the official policy is unconsciously enacted in their particular educational labor practices and this suggest, we argue, that the research and teaching relationship is enacted through what we here term the policy unconscious. This term denotes the deep-rooted and collective understanding shaping the practices that ostensibly enact the policy.

The policy unconscious bears witness to the many degrees of freedom that university teachers have in Sweden. As the official policy is not accompanied by policy instruments or formal evaluations, teachers are left to enact the policy in their own practices. But these practices are deeply rooted in an already generalized understanding of what higher education entails. However, if the meaning of higher education was to be questioned and the practices became too diverging, for example at different universities or different faculties, then the enactment of the policy would probably not remain at the level of the unconscious for so much longer.

These results add new knowledge to ongoing debates on the enactment of policy in general and in higher education in particular. Besides offering new accounts of how policy is enacted in higher education, which is increasingly subjected to policies of employability and marketization, this study has contributed with new insights of how university teachers enact policy unconsciously. The concept of the policy unconscious offers a creative way of exploring how policy is enacted in unreflected and mundane practices. While we have been visibilizing how policy is enacted, the task of exploring the full potential of the concept of the policy unconscious is left for future studies.

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank editor Laureen Elgert for valuable guidance in the review process. A special thank you is also due to the two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful feedback. We also want to thank the university teachers who took part in our study. Any shortcomings are entirely our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexander Paulsson

Alexander Paulsson is a senior lecturer at Lund University School of Economics and Management. His research interests are broadly within the areas of organization studies, ecological economics and science and technology studies. Being trained in the fields of history, politics and business, he combines the study of the urban environment, administrative devices and ecological processes with the history of economic and political concepts.

Nikos Macheridis

Nikos Macheridis is a senior lecturer at Lund University School of Economics and Management. Being engaged in higher education policy development, his research interests cover the governance and organization of higher education as well as interpretative approaches to project management and projectification. His research has been published in outlets such as International Journal of Project Management, Studies in Higher Education, Industry and Higher Education as well as Tertiary Education and Management.

Notes

¹ It is worth noting that depending on where in the educational system the teacher is teaching, the connection between research and teaching varies. At the undergraduate level, the connection is fairly weak. At the graduate level, there is generally a stronger connection between the expertise of the teacher and the topic being taught. This is also reflected in the fact that more research-experienced teachers do the teaching on that level.