Knowledge is now central to national economic competitiveness and to socio-economic endeavours concerned with inequalities and social exclusion, and in this context higher education is recognized as a core sector of national policy and strategy.

1. Introduction.  Monika Nerland, Lyn Yates and Peter Maassen.- 2. The Changing Fortunes of Intermediary Agencies: Reconfiguring Higher Education Policy in Norway and Australia. Jens Jungblut and Peter Woelert .- 3. From Disciplinary Excellence to Interdisciplinary Collaboration: How Australian Academics Negotiate Competing Knowledge Agendas. Lyn Yates, Peter Woelert, Victoria Millar and Kate O'Connor.-  4. Multiple Institutional Logics in National Curricula: The Introduction of Learning Outcomes in Teacher Education and Engineering Education in Norway. Jennifer Olson, Hilde Afdal and Mari Elken.-  5. Shifting Knowledge Forms in the University Physics Curriculum: Academics’ Perceptions. Victoria Millar.- 6. The Role of Shadow Organizing in Dealing with Overflows of Knowledge and Ambition in Higher Education. Karen Jensen.- 7.  MOOC-ing the Discipline: Tensions in the Development and Enactment of a Massive Open Online Course. Kate O'Connor .-  8. Research-Based Education: An Exploration of Interpretations in two Professional Higher Education Programmes. Hilde Afdal and Crina Damşa.- 9. Research and Development Tasks in Teacher Education: Institutional Framing and Student Experiences. Crina Damşa.- 10. Learning to Teach and Teaching to Learn: Exploring Microteaching as a Site for Knowledge Integration in Teacher Education. Thomas de Lange and Monika Nerland .- 11. Reconfiguring Knowledge in Higher Education: Emerging Themes and Research Avenues. Peter Maassen, Monika Nerland and Lyn Yates.

Knowledge is now central to national economic competitiveness and to socio-economic endeavours concerned with inequalities and social exclusion, and in this context higher education is recognized as a core sector of national policy and strategy. Yet the changing pressures, directions and practices in relation to knowledge pose many challenges for higher education itself. How can and how should research and study programs within higher education align with wider knowledge dynamics? How can higher education prepare students in professional fields for different kinds of knowledge-intensive work practices?  How can short term economic objectives for higher education be aligned with other kinds of knowledge objectives that have characterized universities and colleges, and with the intensified impact of global rankings? This book takes as its focus the core interest of higher education in knowledge, and takes as its object of inquiry the kinds of reconfiguration of knowledge evident in national policies and governance; and in the redevelopment and practices of a range of professional and academic study programs in higher education institutions in Norway and Australia. From these detailed accounts, the book demonstrates the complexity of knowledge as an object of policy and practice; the competing logics that may be evident within and between study programs and policies; and the different kinds of agents and drivers that are part of knowledge reconfiguration in higher education and that need further attention going forward.

Unpacks ‘knowledge’ as a complex object of national policy, and in institutional practices in higher education Detailed empirical attention to conceptions and practices of knowledge in HE today Both ‘top down’ and ‘bottom up’ – that is, enables attention both to the governance reconfigurations and the reconfigurations of practice - and their interactions and slippages Based on two major national research studies (Norway and Australia) both framed in context of global changes today Sets up a new kind of agenda for further research on the practices of change in higher education.