Impact/Impasse: Revaluing University Classroom Life

Impact/Impasse argues for the value of everyday life in college classrooms. Quantifiable categories such as high-impact practice, student engagement, and integrative learning have captured the imagination of a generation of higher education researchers, practitioners, administrators, and policymakers. But they miss those mundane moments, or ＂impasses,＂ that resist capture by metrics while nevertheless shaping student outcomes. Impact/Impasse blends critical theories and ethnographic research--conducted before and during the COVID-19 pandemic--to argue that learning happens in ordinary moments. Indeed, in sharing anecdotes from both in-person and virtual classrooms, the coauthors show how the so-called new normal is little different from the old in its neoliberal attachment to data. Impact/Impasse provides a conceptual and practical foundation for an alternative approach to valuing impacts on their own terms, in excess of quantification.

Laura A. Smithers is Assistant Professor of Higher Education Leadership at the University of Nevada, Reno. Heidi Fischer is Content Director at Hanover Research. She is the author of Unemployment: The German Case, A Critical Analysis of Political Discourse. Faith A. Watrous is a doctoral candidate in Educational Psychology and Program Evaluation at Old Dominion University.