Overall the research integration in higher education is considered meaningful. It has also been argued that the inclusion of students in research through the curriculum differs between disciplines. Students of ‘hard’ disciplines are supposed to gain more seniority before the research discipline includes them, while students in ‘soft’ disciplines are invited sooner. While previous studies do confirm this trend line, also contradictoryresults have been found. Furthermore, the Biglan Framework (1973) provides more disciplinary differences than the often studied hard/soft divide. Moreover, the notion of involvement in research is more diverse than‘doing research’. Through an online survey this study systematically investigates undergraduate students’ experienced research integration for all study years of seven different faculties (N=2192). The findings indicateconfirmation of the claim that students of different disciplines are included in research at different moments in their educational track. However, this difference is not always based on the hard/soft divide.
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In this paper we examine policy texts in three European societies to consider the ways in which they construct a view of how each society ensures the production of knowledgeable professionals. Based on an analysis of national policy texts in England, Germany and the Netherlands, we argue that there are differences in the ways in which higher education is positioned as being responsible for producing knowledgeable professionals; the ways in which employment is defined, and the roles that research is expected to playin the production of professionals. These differences are related to the national structure of the higher educational system and more fundamental notions of the role of higher education in society. We argue that these differences offer helpful alternative ways of thinking about the relations between higher education and employment.
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We are now faced with numerous examples of the use of the word ‘open’ in the context of education. There are open schools, open universities, open participatory learning infrastructures (OPLI), open courseware (OCW), massive open online courses (MOOCs), open educational resources (OER), open educational practices (OEP) and so on (see, e.g., Atkins, Brown, & Hammond, 2007; Schuwer, van Genuchten, & Hatton, 2015). What these terms at face value seem to share is their reference to the removal of barriers to the access of education. Open universities have relaxed entrance requirements, open courseware and MOOCs allow for free access to courses, as do open educational resources and open educational practices at the levels of materials and practices, respectively, although the kinds of barriers removed and the extent to which they are removed differ widely (Mulder & Jansen, 2015). However, there is more to openness than this prima facie characterization in terms of the removal of barriers reveals. A brief overview of some existing definitions of openness in education can help to make this evident.
On a societal scale, the ‘problem with work’ is that everyone is exhausted, job security has been replaced by ‘flex work’ and much important work had been invisibilised. While billions of people are displaced and illegalized from work, others have physical/ mental conditions caused by work. The problem with work merits scrutiny not only from medical, corporate or legal perspectives. It needs tackling without an agenda of productivity, with an open regard and embodied, intuitive research. Artistic research has this scope. It taps into knowledges that are underused/repressed, by involving the body, harnessing intuition, experience and situatedness, and activating a plurality of voices. The aim of this research is to gain a deeper understanding of what is (not) work, who we are when we perform work, and when we don’t or are not able to work. Why are certain activities or roles called work and what happens when the term is applied to activities that are not normally deemed work, but which include comparable elements? Three research questions are addressed: 1. What can be learned about work by regarding every job, or all the work, as a performance? 2. What can be learned about performance (art) by looking at it through the lens of work? 3. What are ethical practices in collaborative and participative work processes? The research is carried out through an artistic approach that contains a particular way of making, teaching and researching which is collaborative, performative and transdisciplinary. It proposes the body as a thinking apparatus, experience as a way of gathering information and doing, writing, exchanging and performing as both method and dissemination. This research aims to contribute to a better understanding of what work is in our lives. The research has social, artistic and educational targets and target groups, which are also intertwined.
