Re/conceptualising time and temporality: an exploration of time in higher education

ABSTRACT

In this paper we deconstruct hegemonic conceptions of time in higher education. Drawing on a recent project, we argue that limiting assumptions about time dominate notions of student capability and prospects of success. The paper reveals how the conceptualisation of time is constituted within a framework that individualises and decontextualises difficulties. Within this frame, socio-cultural elitism is left largely unchallenged, with many students left out and misrecognised as purely lacking capability and commitment. Rethinking simple distinctions between ‘time’ and ‘temporality’, we consider ways to broaden understandings to enable a more inclusive and ‘inventive’ system. We apply a Foucauldian analysis to argue that we co-construct the future in the very ways that we react to the present and think about the past. We must recognise that the way we work in the present is how we create the future. Our everyday actions, assumptions and reactions re/produce our futures.

KEYWORDS:

• Higher education
• widening participation
• time
• temporality
• trajectories
• equity
• capability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Our work is different in focus to the increasing amount of literature about the ‘capability approach’ inspired by Amartya Sen’s work (see e.g. Gale & Molla, 2015). The work influenced by Sen is concerned with a macro-structural analysis of the outcomes, approaches, values and instrumental roles of education: ‘that is, it duly recognizes that education generates economic and non-economic returns, promotes agency and supports social mobility of disadvantaged groups in society’ (Gale & Molla, 2015, p. 825). Instead, our work is focused on how relational actors experience and negotiate their ways into and through higher education. In particular, it explores how ‘capability’ is considered by social actors within the everyday.

2 The university offers open access ‘enabling’ pathways programs, which are free of tuition fees, and enable students to gain a university access score to all degrees at the institution, except medicine, and to a wide variety of programs at other universities across the country.

Additional information

Funding

We wish to thank the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education (NCSEHE) at Curtin University, WA, Australia, for funding the project Capability, belonging and equity in higher education: developing inclusive approaches (2015). We would also like to acknowledge the Centre of Excellence for Research in Higher Education (CEEHE) at the University of Newcastle, NSW Australia, for seed funding (2014), which produced the extant data drawn on for the project.