Research on sustainability in higher education has tended to focus on environmental management of university estates and operations, and case studies and examples of good practice, without presenting the coherent theoretical or methodological approaches required to look at the change processes of universities seeking to embed sustainability. Although the value and contribution of university initiatives has been articulated, little holistic and structural transformation of universities has been achieved so far. This doctoral research aimed to examine organisational learning and change processes to build education for sustainability into the university curriculum by developing its theoretical basis, and by developing qualitative methodology. The original contributions to knowledge of this doctoral thesis are the exploration of organisational learning processes towards sustainability in higher education, the exploration of action research as a research method to foster organisational learning towards sustainability, and the development of an evidence-based model on how to embed education for sustainability in the undergraduate curriculum at the University of Southampton. The integration of different theoretical approaches to organisational learning such as organisational learning theory, the idea of expansive learning at work, the learning organisation ideal and transformative learning theory provide the theoretical foundations for this study. Therefore contributing to the understanding of how individuals in organisations can transform their mental models in order to change current practice leading to organisational learning towards sustainability in higher education. At a methodological level, an action research approach guided by participatory and emancipatory approaches was used. The researcher aimed to learn from real practice through acting as a facilitator for curriculum development in education for sustainability within an interdisciplinary group of academic staff members. A critical friend position was acquired within a community of practice to implement a programme which attempted to embed sustainability within the student experience. An evidence-based model (the I3E Model) has been developed with four overarching components that can support the University of Southampton in its aim to embed education for sustainability within the undergraduate curriculum. These integrated components are: Inform the university community about sustainability; Engage the different university stakeholders in the change process towards sustainability; Empower individuals and groups to make change happen within their sphere of influence and action; and Embed sustainability within existing university structures.

Government policy emphasises the role higher education is expected to play in the era of the "information society" and the benefits the increasing use of new technology in teaching and learning within the university will bring. Accordingly, the purpose of this research was to explore the influence of the WWW in teaching and learning in universities. The study was designed in response to a rejection of technological deterministic approaches and the call for more empirically grounded study of the relationships between society and technology. It examines the use of the WWW in six case study modules in two universities in England from a staff, student and institutional perspective, located within the national context. A case study design, utilising a communications framework, was adopted to guide the research process. The methods utilised were: literature review, analysis of national and university policy documents, semi structured interviews with staff and students, two student questionnaires, focus groups with students and analysis of the case study websites. The cases explored here provide a rather different picture to that painted by the dominant discourses about ICTs and higher education. The use of the web in teaching and learning neither appears to be radically transforming the university, nor to be providing (or even regarded as) a ready solution to the problems the sector currently encounters. Yet, the technology is, in places, adding to the experiences of staff and students in a variety of complex ways. Through exploring practical instances of educational innovation this research has indicated the mesh of interrelating factors that are at work when using the web in teaching and learning, and the importance of considering the full range of experiences of the individuals involved, the variable purposes of using the technology, and the influence of the social contexts that surround initiatives. The benefits of the use of a communications model in further research is highlighted, and the use of mixed model studies promoted to gain greater understanding, aid with generalizability, and provide arguments to counter techno deterministic accounts prevalent in this area.

This dissertation addresses the university student as a figure of mental health and illness. Drawing on the methods and theories of disability studies, interpretive sociology, critical, feminist and queer theory, as well as hermeneutically oriented phenomenology, my work explores the social production of this student figure or type – variously depicted as ‘ invisible’, ‘maladjusted’, ‘stressed’, ‘difficult’, sensitive’, ‘resilient’, ‘narcissistic’, and extraordinarily ‘ordinary’. This figure is addressed as a means of revealing contradictory understandings of the relationship between success and survival, as this relationship appears in the ordinary daily life of the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The social and historical significance of the contemporary University’s Student Life Programs and Services is analyzed with a view to reveal the Western cultural values and practices which organize consciousness of success as a necessary condition of contemporary existence. Special attention is paid to the cultural production of knowledge concerning university student ‘mental life’, the appearance of which is located at the interstices of colonialism, global health policy, institutional ‘best practices’, cultural mores and folkways, and embodied experiences. I dwell with this appearance as an occasion to engage the materiality of Western mythologies of resilience, and with them the meaning of human agency under neoliberal governance. This engagement examines the productive power of the disciplinary and institutionalized ‘language of mental illness’ through a genealogy of the University of Toronto, a textual analyses of the University’s Student Life Programs and Services literature, and a discursive analysis of open-ended interviews with student services representatives which seeks both to understand and transgress conventional interpretations of the structure of Student Life. I demonstrate how University presentations of student bodies, minds and senses perceived to be lacking in ‘ordinary order’, can be reconceived as sites to reflect on the paramount presence of psychiatric knowledge in interpretations and responses to embodied difference within the university setting. Overall, this dissertation seeks to disrupt unexamined relations to the meaning of student types; and in the process, display how normative relations to the student as a figure of mental health and illness needs is currently and historically organized and socially achieved.

This dissertation addresses the university student as a figure of mental health and illness. Drawing on the methods and theories of disability studies, interpretive sociology, critical, feminist and queer theory, as well as hermeneutically oriented phenomenology, my work explores the social production of this student figure or type – variously depicted as ‘ invisible’, ‘maladjusted’, ‘stressed’, ‘difficult’, sensitive’, ‘resilient’, ‘narcissistic’, and extraordinarily ‘ordinary’. This figure is addressed as a means of revealing contradictory understandings of the relationship between success and survival, as this relationship appears in the ordinary daily life of the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The social and historical significance of the contemporary University’s Student Life Programs and Services is analyzed with a view to reveal the Western cultural values and practices which organize consciousness of success as a necessary condition of contemporary existence. Special attention is paid to the cultural production of knowledge concerning university student ‘mental life’, the appearance of which is located at the interstices of colonialism, global health policy, institutional ‘best practices’, cultural mores and folkways, and embodied experiences. I dwell with this appearance as an occasion to engage the materiality of Western mythologies of resilience, and with them the meaning of human agency under neoliberal governance. This engagement examines the productive power of the disciplinary and institutionalized ‘language of mental illness’ through a genealogy of the University of Toronto, a textual analyses of the University’s Student Life Programs and Services literature, and a discursive analysis of open-ended interviews with student services representatives which seeks both to understand and transgress conventional interpretations of the structure of Student Life. I demonstrate how University presentations of student bodies, minds and senses perceived to be lacking in ‘ordinary order’, can be reconceived as sites to reflect on the paramount presence of psychiatric knowledge in interpretations and responses to embodied difference within the university setting. Overall, this dissertation seeks to disrupt unexamined relations to the meaning of student types; and in the process, display how normative relations to the student as a figure of mental health and illness needs is currently and historically organized and socially achieved.

À la croisée des sociologies des sciences, de l’éducation et du travail, cette thèse présente, à partir d’une analyse de l’ensemble des disciplines de l’enseignement supérieur, une série de processus qui contribuent à la perpétuelle remise en cause de la légitimité scientifique des sciences sociales dans la recherche française contemporaine. Cette analyse en trois temps, historique, statistique puis par enquête par questionnaire et entretiens met en évidence un phénomène de désavantages cumulatifs de ces domaines. Institutionnalisées dans les facultés de lettres et de droit dans une période d’ascension forte de la légitimité de celle des sciences, les sciences sociales occupent une position inconfortable d’altérité et d’infériorité scientifiques, que l’enseignement secondaire contemporain contribue à entretenir. Situées à l’intersection des pratiques des sciences humaines, biologiques et mathématiques, ces disciplines se voient fréquemment accusées de ne pas répondre au modèle des sciences physiques. Scindées en deux facultés, les profils scolaires et sociaux de leurs étudiants et de carrières de leurs chercheurs sont plus hétérogènes que dans les sciences non sociales, ce qui affaiblit leur cohérence. Intériorisant leur position dominée, ces disciplines naturalisent la faiblesse des moyens qui leurs sont accordés en les justifiant par des besoins temporels spécifiques et une imprévisibilité indépassable. / Combining the sociology of science, of education and of professions, this thesis analyses the field of academic disciplines to present a series of social process contributing to the constant questionings regarding the scientificity of the social sciences in contemporary France. This three steps analysis (historical, statistical, and through surveys and interviews) unveils a phenomenon of cumulative disadvantages for these disciplines. Institutionalized in the Facultés of law and literature in a period of important rise to power of the scientific one, social sciences have been considered as “other” and “inferior” in terms of scientificity from the beginning, a situation that is strongly maintained today through the implicit hierarchies of fields taught in high school. At the crossroad of humanities, biological and mathematical sciences, the scientific practices of the social sciences are frequently evaluated and denigrated through the criteria of the physical sciences. Divided into two facultés, students and faculties in those fields have more heterogeneous social and educational backgrounds then those in other sciences, contributing to a social image of dissensus. Interiorizing their subordinated position, social scientists tend to justify the small share of resources that they receive through the valorization of specific temporal needs and unpredictability of their research.

La littérature montre que plusieurs aspects du travail d’universitaire sont influencés tant par la discipline et l’organisation, que par les caractéristiques individuelles des professeurs. Cette recherche vise à explorer l’impact de ces deux premiers facteurs sur l’utilisation des technologies de l’information et des communications (TIC) par les professeurs d’une université de recherche. Les données, recueillies par sondage, ont été analysées à l’aide d’un modèle hiérarchique comprenant deux niveaux, dans lequel 350 professeurs sont nichés dans 42 départements. Le statut professoral, le profil d’adoption des innovations technologiques et la perception de la compétence technologique ont été placés au niveau 1 (individus), alors que le secteur disciplinaire et quatre facteurs organisationnels liés à l’enseignement et à la recherche, ont été placés au niveau 2 (départements). Les résultats montrent que ces variables indépendantes n’influencent pas de la même façon l’utilisation des différentes technologies. Une plus grande partie des différences d’utilisation se situe entre les départements lorsqu’on considère l’utilisation du projecteur en salle de classe. L’utilisation d’équipements en salle de classe relève davantage de facteurs organisationnels que celle des environnements numériques d’apprentissage (ENA). Les résultats montrent par ailleurs que la perception de la compétence technologique et le profil d’adoption des innovations technologiques mesurent des choses différentes. Alors que le profil d’adoption influence dans une plus ou moins grande mesure toutes les utilisations, la perception de la compétence n’a d’impact que sur l’utilisation plus poussée des ressources, soit l’utilisation d’une page web personnelle ou d’une plateforme autre que WebCT. Un clivage entre disciplines molles pures et disciplines dures pures existe, mais seulement lorsqu’on considère l’utilisation des ENA et de la page web personnelle. La plateforme WebCT est associée au secteur des sciences humaines alors que l’utilisation de la page web ou d’ENA autre que WebCT est liée au secteur des sciences pures. Dans les deux cas, l’utilisation des ENA est liée à l’enseignement de premier cycle, c’est à dire à un enseignement de masse. / Literature shows that discipline and institution, as well as individual characteristics, influence the way faculty members work. This research aims at exploring the impact of those two first elements on use of information and communication technologies (ICT) by professors of a public research university. Data, collected by survey, have been analysed through a two-level hierarchical model, in which 350 teachers were nested in 42 departments. Technologies studied are WebCT, the personal web site or other learning environments, and the projector. The results showed the individual factors, discipline and institutional factors have different impacts on the use of these technologies. A more substantial part of the variance stays at the departmental level when the output is use of a projector in the classroom. Factors at the departmental level have a more substantial impact on the use of a numerical environment. Disciplinary differences appear in relation with the use of personal web sites and learning environments. Undergraduate teaching is the only factor positively related to the use of these resources, while research income is the only factor positively related to projector use.

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