Priorities Dictate Practice – The Operation of Power in the Teaching and Learning Environment

This paper reports on the findings from 15 academic staff interviews, coupled with related Government and institutional textual sources. This research is a subset of the findings from a larger project which explored the first-year Bachelor of Engineering (BE) teaching and learning environment at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW). A Foucauldian-inspired Discourse Analysis (FDA) of these interviews revealed that academic staff practice were impacted by Government and University policy that prioritized research over teaching. The teaching and learning environment is impacted in a negative way by the operation of these power-relations.