Title:
Visualising tensions in undergraduate education: Clark’s triangle revisited
Author:
Deanna Meth
Learning and Teaching Unit, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia
Published:
Teaching in Higher Education, 6 August 2022
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.