Visualising tensions in undergraduate education: Clark’s triangle revisited

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a new visualisation of tensions in developing and delivering undergraduate higher education. It links qualitative research on academics’ perceptions of education in one English research-intensive university to known models of knowledge, curricula, pedagogies, student engagement and identities to propose a new conceptual framework. Reworking the 1980s Clark triangle, with its apices of academic oligarchy, state authority and market denoting system tensions, a common apex now merges state and market agendas, and societal pulls are introduced at the third. The paper acknowledges today’s complex higher education environment and responds to critiques about the original triangle’s static nature, recognising oscillation within the space and adding a fourth apex representing students’ identities. The adapted model, supported through academics’ lived experiences, makes explicit the spectrum of choices and desired educational outcomes. It offers an important aid to debates on the purpose of higher education and learning and teaching policy and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Undergraduate education
• knowledge
• curriculum
• pedagogy
• student identity

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Kathryn Ecclestone for rich discussions and guidance in the formative stages of this research, and to Queensland University of Technology (QUT) for assistance received through the ‘Women in Research’ Editing Support Scheme.

Disclosure statement

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

Ethics statement

Ethical approval (including participant information and consent processes) to undertake data collection through interviews for this research, was gained from the University of Sheffield Research Ethics Committee Research – Reference Number 000562.