ABSTRACT

There can be little doubt that in contemporary higher education, the time available for teaching, research and other academic tasks is inadequate and that this pressured work environment is mostly related to new requirements for compliance and administration. In this chapter, the author examines the overloading of both academic and student life. He argues that true scholarship survives despite the time pressures experienced, but that it has also been marginalised to the detriment of higher education’s knowledge project, for both teachers and students. He then presents ideas about creating the time and space necessary for high-quality work by drawing on concepts from the slow movement (that originated in Italy in relation to ‘slow food’). The author uses these to explore ‘slow pedagogy’ and ‘slow scholarship’.