Search for a command to run...
Unsettling teacher autonomy in the university<br/>While universities face an increasing range of cross-pressures from multiple external stakeholders, not only students struggle to gain a firm footing within higher education systems, but teachers do too. Recent studies argue that while higher education programmes have to, at the same time, foster and develop generic competences and transferrable skills for the job market, providing a strong and specialised knowledge base, and enabling criticality and self-formation in students, the role of the university teacher has come under severe pressure (Carvalho & Videira, 2019; Davids, 2023). Teachers struggle to navigate their own teacher autonomy amidst a range of political and institutional demands regarding the notion of free speech, instrumentalization of the higher education curriculum, and the hope and vision for student being and becoming (Oleksiyenko & Jackson, 2021). <br/><br/>Zarathustra as the ‘great’ teacher<br/>Through a study of selected speeches in Nietzsche’s work Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Nietzsche, 2024), we apply the character of Zarathustra as a philosophical lens and pedagogical metaphor to probe and critically discuss the notion of the ‘great’ teacher in higher education today. As Higgins (2010) and Strauss (2020) argue, Zarathustra’s being and becoming as a teacher is flawed, comical, confused, and uncertain, while also being courageous, hopeful, caring, and creative. Perhaps therefore, Zarathustra is an excellent model for students’ own learning and development journeys as they undergo higher education. We will argue that Zarathustra is a ‘great’ teacher because despite his own struggles, self-doubt, and inner chaos, he never abandons his pedagogical project, and his main reason for moving forward is due to the hope that his students will someday surpass him into a better future. We place particular emphasis on the central tension that Nietzsche creates between humour, comedy, and utopianism on the one hand and satire, tragedy, and despair on the other. Through containing the paradoxes and wide-ranging emotional and existential scales of existence, Zarathustra enables his students to contain the often paradoxical and uncertain process of critical and creative formation (Jonas & Yacek, 2019). <br/><br/>Implications for higher education<br/>Building on Nietzsche-inspired theories of the will to learn in higher education (Barnett, 2007) and chaos as pedagogical force in the university (Bengtsen, 2025), we argue that Nietzsche’s transformative project is, perhaps in contrast to the mainstream view, deeply relational, highly dialogical, and fostering a form of collective agency but without a unifying and hegemonic centre of authority. We argue that Nietzsche’s Zarathustra is exactly a great teacher because he is ‘great’ – meaning that Zarahustra is showing that pedagogical leadership can only take place through a denouncing of one's own social and political power and a playfulness towards one’s formal pedagogical authority. Zarathustra’s own journey concludes by letting go of his own grand narrative and enabling his students to become who they are through the exploration of diversity and otherness and a celebration of life. <br/>