"Fixing" the "Facts": flexible learning as policy invention

Citation

Nicoll K (1998) "Fixing" the "Facts": flexible learning as policy invention. Higher Education Research and Development, 17 (3), pp. 291-304. https://doi.org/10.1080/0729436980170303

Abstract
This article examines the contemporary move within the Australian university context towards flexible learning. Drawing on the notions of policy as text and discourse, it is suggested that policies seek to provide authoritative meanings for practices they promote - to fix the facts about which they speak. The article explores the emergence of discourses of flexible learning as effects of policy texts and changes within the social formation. These discourses resonate with those already operating within the social formation, and in this may have effects other than those immediately apparent. An initial analysis of Australian higher education policy texts indicates a contemporary diversification of the use of the metaphor of flexibility as a discursive strategy through which mechanisms of governance can be intensified.

Journal
Higher Education Research and Development: Volume 17, Issue 3