This paper contributes to the debate on the changing nature of the academic ethos discussing how the interweaving of evaluation politics and digitalization of HE governance affects the academics’ identity formation. Empirically, the article presents a deconstructive analysis of the principal online evaluative platforms used by Italian academics as: CINECA, IRIS, ANVUR, ASN, VQR and AVA. The analysis covers three dimensions. First, we look at the configuration of the academic digital space and analyze the kind of reason according to which the academic is made as a subject through the experience of inhabiting such a space. Second, we consider the temporal sequencing and pace of the digital experience and relate this to its teleological features. Third, we look at the kind of norms through which academic subject(s) are classified and given value, and overall difference is produced. We show how it is possible to observe a paradoxical kind of ethical academic subject that we term ‘functional, flexible and proactive’, whose ethos is inspired by the ethical imperatives of excellence, social impact, strategic action and accelerationism and is configured within an epistemological space demarcated by the tensions between competitive and collaborative behaviors, mobility and reflexivity, accountability and utilitarianism, control and uncertainty.

The Morphing of Academic Ethos between Evaluation and Digitalisation. Functionality, Flexibility and Proactivity / Grimaldi, E.; Lumino, R.; Gambardella, D.. - In: SCUOLA DEMOCRATICA. - ISSN 1129-731X. - 2020:3(2020), pp. 437-457. [10.12828/99898]

The Morphing of Academic Ethos between Evaluation and Digitalisation. Functionality, Flexibility and Proactivity

E. Grimaldi
;
R. Lumino;D. Gambardella
2020

Abstract

This paper contributes to the debate on the changing nature of the academic ethos discussing how the interweaving of evaluation politics and digitalization of HE governance affects the academics’ identity formation. Empirically, the article presents a deconstructive analysis of the principal online evaluative platforms used by Italian academics as: CINECA, IRIS, ANVUR, ASN, VQR and AVA. The analysis covers three dimensions. First, we look at the configuration of the academic digital space and analyze the kind of reason according to which the academic is made as a subject through the experience of inhabiting such a space. Second, we consider the temporal sequencing and pace of the digital experience and relate this to its teleological features. Third, we look at the kind of norms through which academic subject(s) are classified and given value, and overall difference is produced. We show how it is possible to observe a paradoxical kind of ethical academic subject that we term ‘functional, flexible and proactive’, whose ethos is inspired by the ethical imperatives of excellence, social impact, strategic action and accelerationism and is configured within an epistemological space demarcated by the tensions between competitive and collaborative behaviors, mobility and reflexivity, accountability and utilitarianism, control and uncertainty.
2020
The Morphing of Academic Ethos between Evaluation and Digitalisation. Functionality, Flexibility and Proactivity / Grimaldi, E.; Lumino, R.; Gambardella, D.. - In: SCUOLA DEMOCRATICA. - ISSN 1129-731X. - 2020:3(2020), pp. 437-457. [10.12828/99898]
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11588/843044
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