Office of the Vice-President for Teaching & Learning - Journal Articles
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Item Helping them along: Astroturf, public opinion, and Nixon's Vietnam War(Univerity of Nottingham; University of Birmingham, 2015-11) Thelen, Sarah J.With the successful mobilisation of the Silent Majority in November 1969, President Richard Nixon and his aides embarked on an ambitious attempt to reshape domestic public opinion on the Vietnam War. Utilising internal White House documents, this article explores the way in which these projects combined grassroots activism and Administration-coordinated astroturf campaigns to rally supporters. The successful creation of Americans for Winning the Peace marked the apex of these efforts, but this article demonstrates that unexpected costs let to the quick return to less elaborate, but still carefully coordinated, appeals to special interest groups by 1971.Item (Re-)designing higher education curricula in times of systemic dysfunction: a responsible research and innovation perspective(Springer Verlag, 2017-11) Tassone, Valentina C.; O'Mahony, Catherine; McKenna, Emma; Eppink, Hansje J.; Wals, Arjen E. J.; Horizon 2020There is an urgent need to address the grand sustainability challenges of our time, and to explore new and more responsible ways of operating, researching, and innovating that enable society to respond to these challenges. The emergent Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) policy agenda can act as a catalyst towards the development of new and more responsible research and innovation efforts. Inevitably, higher education needs to be closely attuned to this need and agenda, by preparing students to engage in RRI efforts. This paper makes a first step towards guiding the embedding of RRI within higher education. It does so by bringing together academic knowledge with phronesis or practical knowledge about what should be done in an ethical, political, and practical sense. It draws on a literature review and on the reflective practices of partners in the European Commission funded project EnRRICH (Enhancing Responsible Research and Innovation through Curricula in Higher Education), as well as on interviews and case studies gathered as part of the project. The paper suggests elements, especially design principles and a competence framework, for (re)designing curricula and pedagogies to equip higher education students to be and to become responsible actors, researchers, and innovators in a complex world, and to address grand sustainability challenges. In addition, this paper proposes that contemporary higher education teaching and learning policies and strategies, especially those promoting neoliberal agendas and marketized practices, need to adopt a more responsible and responsive ethos to foster the renewal of higher education in times of systemic dysfunction.