Towards a Higher Learning for a Challenging World

1. Sub-brand to go here Towards a Higher Learning for a Challenging World Ronald Barnett, Institute of Education, London University of York, Annual Learning and Teaching Conference, June 2010 Centre for Higher Education Studies

2. Conference themes and issues • Making connections (past/future; York/outside world; students/tutors) • Interdisciplinarity • Preparing students for the broader world of work and their later life (as well as immersing students in their disciplines) • U of York as research-intensive u but also excelling in L&T; • Traditional & innovative teaching

3. 6.5 beginning questions • What is the nature of the world in which graduates will live their lives? • To what extent should a university take account of that world in educating its students? • Does ‘graduateness’ have meaning? (Being a graduate in the world.) • How might we understand ‘career’ now (eg amid (worldwide) recession) • If the world is uncertain in some ways, what implications might those considerations have for student learning? • What might students want of themselves? • How might a research-intensive university such as York orient itself in facing this set of issues?

4. The twenty-first century • Challenge • Change • Uncertainty • Complexity/ supercomplexity • Division – differences – of values, of resources, of perspectives • Global dimension

5. Changing answers • Higher education - built successively around the themes of: • knowledge/ understanding (‘initiation’) • skills (‘employability’) • And now emerging? • wellbeing (‘therapy’) • citizenship (‘the global citizen’)

6. Students as Global Citizens • A care/ concern for the world • A sense of interconnectedness • Not living in one’s own world • Helping to bring about a better world (cf ‘wisdom’) • A project of ‘engagement’ • Implies first-handedness; genuine (critical) thought & action • Impact on curricula • And on opportunities while a student

7. Forms of learning • Sense that learning takes place in multiple sites • Even for the student • Is anything special about the student’s academic learning? • Lifelong learning – learning through timeLifewide learning – horizontal learning • Lifewide learning – horizontal learning (We’ll come back to these matters in a moment.)

8. The ideas of ‘graduate attributes’ & ‘graduateness’ • (So) the world presents human being with considerable challenges – technical, social, communicative, personal • We look to graduates esp to be human beings who can live purposively in the face of these challenges • Even to be exemplary human beings • Such a world requires, in the first place, neither knowledge nor skills but dispositions and qualities of certain kinds

9. Dispositions for a world of challenge • A will to learn • A will to engage • A preparedness to listen • A preparedness to explore • A willingness to hold oneself open to experiences • A determination to keep going forward

10. Qualities for a world of challenge • Carefulness • Courage • Resilience • Self-discipline • Integrity • Restraint • Respect for others • Openness

11. Dispositions and qualities compared • The dispositions are necessary; the qualities have a degree of optionality in them • Hence, just a few dispositions; but many qualities • The dispositions enable one to go forward • The qualities colour that forward movement; give it ‘character’

12. The idea of a professional career • The idea of ‘career’ implied steady progression in a particular (and challenging) field of work • And that there were clear boundaries between work and non-work • Both of those axioms have to be ditched • Against the considerations here, a ‘career’ becomes the continuous public working out of one’s possibilities in an uncertain world • It is the sedimentation of the dispositions and the widening and strengthening of the qualities • In particular, the will to learn (disposition) and courage and openness (qualities) are paramount

13. Lifewide learning • Being a graduate (it follows) calls for both lifelong and for lifewide learning • If lifelong lng is lng through one’s lifespan, lifewide learning is learning across one’s life experiences • Implications for universities: the opening up of learning experiences outside the formal curriculum – both on and off campus. • It just may be that graduates gain as much – in the formation of the dispositions and qualities – from non-formal settings as from the formal curriculum. • So the idea of the ‘life-informed curriculum’ beckons • (We are unclear as to the relationships between the student’s manifold sites of learning; to what degree learning in one domain can assist learning in another domain. The answer may lie in Ds and Qs.)

14. The (higher) educational significance of the dispositions and qualities • The dispositions and qualities are concomitants of a genuine higher education • Curricula and pedagogies could nurture them • But often fall short • Students are denied curricula space, and pedagogical affirmation • But the dispositions and qualities (above) are logically implied in a ‘higher’ education • - and a research-led curriculum could help to nurture Ds and Qs; but that requires a careful reappraisal of the relationship between R&T.

15. Conclusions • Becoming clearer about being a graduate in the C21 calls for a sense of the world in which graduates find themselves • & of the responsibilities graduates have in the world • - to themselves and to others and even to the world itself • In turn, the idea of ‘career’ diminishes • But there arises larger questions as to the relationship between graduates and the wider world • In turn, arise profound issues over curriculum & pedagogy • & in turn, arise qs as to the responsibilities of universities • And so arises the question of the university in the C21 • It is that, no less, that lies before us in these considerations. Institute of Education University of London 20 Bedford Way London WC1H 0AL Tel +44 (0)20 7612 6000 Fax +44 (0)20 7612 6126 Email info@ioe.ac.uk Web www.ioe.ac.uk