Beyond the Pandemic Pedagogy of Managerialism: Exploring the Limits of Online Teaching and Learning

This book analyses how growing managerialism and the marketisation of higher education has undermined educational standards and pedagogical integrity. Specifically, it provides a thorough critique of how the pandemic, and the move to online learning and MOOCs, has reinforced these developments. The book outlines the limits of new managerialism, which is replacing critical mass with a culture of compliance in higher education.

Employing an ethnographic approach, the book explores the impact of the sudden shift in teaching delivery from in-person to online for example, the changing role of the PhD supervisor during the pandemic, and the impact on students’ willingness to engage and their (in)visibility in the classroom, and further considers how these impact class interactions, social relationships and learning. Ultimately, this book argues that the COVID-19 pandemic exposed the limits of marketisation of education and revealed the distorted managerial response to acrisis.

Prof. Bhabani Shankar Nayak is Professor of Business Management and Programme Director of Strategic Business and Management at the University for the Creative Arts, UK. He is a political economist and the author of Political Economy of Gender and Development in Africa (2023), Creative Business Education (2022), Political Economy of Development and Business (2022), Modern Corporations and Strategies at Work (2022), China: The Bankable State (2021), all published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Dr Katherine Appleford is a Senior Lecturer in Consumer Behaviour at the University for the Creative Arts, UK.  Her research bridges Sociology, Cultural Studies, Human Geography and Fashion Theory. More recently her work has considered young women’s shifting attitudes around body image and beauty ideals, and the role of celebrity and social media in cultivating new body image standards.