Kenny, John, Bird, Michael, Blackmore, Jill, Brandenburg, Robyn, Nicol, Dianne, Seemann, Kurt, Wang, Bing, and Wilmshurst, Trevor (2024) Putting a stake in the ground: the development of a Professional Ethical Framework for Australian Academics. Higher Education Research & Development, 90. pp. 1199-1218.

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Abstract

Despite significant research on the impact of neoliberal strategies of marketisation, managerialism, privatisation and metrics in higher education contexts globally over more than four decades, the academic profession has shown an inability or unwillingness to define its role in a more accountable higher education environment and the managerial university. An extensive search of the literature identified four universal ‘foundational principles’ related to defining academic work. Following system thinking approach, in this paper we applied these to the Australian higher education. Systems thinking suggests in each country, higher education operates within its own historical, economic, legal and political environment, so these ‘foundational principles’ need to be translated into a corresponding set of ‘enabling principles’ to define the academic role within a given context. This paper reports on a case study, which began three and a half years ago, by a working party of the Australian Association of University Professors (AAUP), to develop a set of enabling principles to define academic work in the Australian higher education context. These enabling principles were then incorporated into a Professional Ethical Framework for Australian Academics (The Framework). During this time, The Framework went through several iterations with the current version now put forward, as part of an on-going research project, for feedback from a broader base of academic colleagues around the globe to further its development. While designed for the Australian context, we offer The Framework as a potential model for academics wishing to explore these ideas in other higher education systems.

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