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Reinventing Liberal Higher Education Open University Partnership conference

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Title: Reinventing Liberal Higher Education Open University Partnership conference


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Reinventing Liberal Higher EducationOpen
University Partnership conference
  • Professor Sir David Watson
  • 3 March 2008

Centre for Higher Education Studies
3
Outline
  • What does HE do? Create capital.
  • For whom? The student estate.
  • How? Metaphors for learning and teaching in the
    modern university.
  • Reinventing liberal HE. The significance of
    the arts and humanities

4
Types of intellectual capital
  • Human capital (Becker)
  • Social capital (Putnam)
  • Creative capital (Florida)
  • Identity capital (Coté)
  • Mental capital (HMG)
  • Capital capital

5
Analysing intellectual capital
  • Mode of production
  • Values
  • Performance indicators
  • Objectives
  • Trust and mutuality

6
Human capital
  • Individual agent
  • Economic rationality
  • Education duration/qualifications
  • Individuality income/productivity
  • Calculative trust

7
Social capital
  • Networks and relationships
  • Shared norms and values
  • Mutual obligation/civic engagement
  • Quality of life
  • Normative trust

8
Creative capital
  • Clusters of creative people
  • Diversity and tolerance
  • Low entry barriers
  • Rates of innovation
  • Affective trust

9
The US class structure, 1900-1999
Source Florida 2002
10
Teaching, learning and the student estate
11
Percentage change in enrolments by subject area,
1996/7 to 2005/06
12
UK HE student numbers by mode and level, 1979 -
2005
13
Percentage of young full-time first degree
entrants from Socio-Economic Classification
classes 4, 5, 6 and 7, 2005/06
14
Frand, the information age mind-set (2000)
  • Computers arent technology
  • Internet better than TV
  • Reality no longer real
  • Doing rather than knowing
  • Nintendo over Logic
  • Multitasking way of life
  • Typing rather than handwriting
  • Staying connected
  • Zero tolerance for delays
  • Consumer/Creator blurring

15
Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
(Simon Schuster 1998).
  • Students these days are, in general, nice. I
    choose the word carefully. They are not
    particularly moral or noble. Such niceness is a
    facet of democratic character when times are
    good. Neither war nor tyranny nor want has
    hardened them or made demands upon them. The
    wounds and rivalries caused by class distinction
    have disappeared along with any strong sense of
    class..Students these days are pleasant,
    friendly and if not great-souled, at least not
    particularly mean-spirited. Their primary
    preoccupation is themselves, understood in the
    narrowest sense (82-83).

16
Learning teaching metaphors
  • Games
  • Craft
  • Conversation

17
W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis,
(Jonathan Cape, 1975)
  • Winning is overcoming obstacles to reach a
    goal, but the value in winning is only as great
    as the goal itself..So we arrive at the
    startling conclusion that true competition is
    identical with true cooperation.In true
    competition no person is defeated (111).

18
Richard Sennett, Respect the formation of
character in an age of inequality, (Allen Lane,
2003.)
  • Part of what makes both men rare performers is
    that they have achieved mutuality many musicians
    have the cooperative impulse, but few manage to
    translate it into sound. Even more is this true
    of social life an enormous gap exists between
    wanting to act well toward others and doing
    so..I argue that in social life as in art,
    mutuality requires expressive work. It must be
    enacted, performed (59).

19
Richard Sennett, The culture of the new
capitalism, (Yale U. Press, 2006.)
  • A person can use the words correct or right in
    describing how well something is done only if he
    or she believes in an objective standard outside
    his or her own desires, indeed outside the sphere
    of rewards from others. Getting something right,
    even though it may get you nothing, is the spirit
    of true craftsmanship (195).

20
Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (Allen Lane 2008)
  • The modern era is often described as a skills
    economy, but what eaxctly is a skill? The
    generic answer is that skill is a trained
    practice (37).
  • Embodied knowledge is a currently fashionable
    phrase in the social sciences, but thinking like
    a craftsman is more than a state of mind it has
    a sharp social edge (44).
  • To do good work means to be curious about, to
    investigate and to learn from ambiguity (48).

21
William Miller, Conversation a history of a
declining art, (Yale U Press, 2006).
  • Quotes Michael Oakshott Conversation is an
    unrehearsed intellectual adventure, as with
    gambling, its significance lies neither in
    winning or losing, but in wagering.

22
Academic membership the deal
  • Honesty (inc. scientific procedure)
  • Reciprocity
  • Manners
  • Self-motivation
  • Discipline
  • Respect for the environment
  • Collective agreement

23
Ed Husain, The Islamist (Penguin, 2007)
  • I loved my time at university. My understanding
    of my subject had hitherto been blinkered by the
    arguments of Mawdudi, Qutb and Nabhani that
    history was a conflict between Islam and the rest
    of the world. But I was determined to open up my
    worldview and slowly, independently, question
    some of the concepts and tenets I had once held
    dear (156-7).
  • Another of my tutors was Professor John Tosh,
    author of The Pursuit of History. His lectures
    caused me to question my approach to history.
    One thing history was not was an idle
    intellectual pastime. Professor Tosh argued that
    the past created the present, and that the past
    was open to multiple interpretations. What
    seemed like blasphemy at first slowly began to
    make sense (159).

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Is this the reinvention of liberal HE?
  • Soft citizenship
  • Values
  • Worked examples
  • Dearing on breadth (recommendation 16)
  • The Harvard core
  • The Melbourne model
  • The Russell Groups balanced meal

26
Sources of liberal revival
  • Breadth as well as depth
  • The ethical turn
  • Student mutuality
  • Civil society before the state
  • Professional formation at the second cycle

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Contexts for learning teaching
  • Research and scholarship
  • Employability and professional formation
  • Instrumental and liberal values
  • Academic careers

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The role of the arts and humanities
  • In several of these respects, it is arguable that
    the arts and humanities have already arrived.
    The research and teaching agenda for these
    perennially popular subjects are inextricably
    inter-twined. As Cary Nelson and Stephen Watt
    declare in their Academic Keywords a Devils
    Dictionary for Higher Education, research and
    writing together produce the contemporary
    intelligibility of the humanities (Nelson and
    Watt, 1999 221).
  • Watson, Managing Civic and Community Engagement,
    p. 100

29
Discussion
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_at_ioe.ac.uk Web www.ioe.ac.uk
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