HIGHER EDUCATION AS IF THE WORLD MATTERED
A symposium on 25 and 26 April 2013 organised by the Higher Education Research
Group (Institute for Education, Community and Society, The University of Edinburgh)
in partnership with the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE)
Becoming Worldly: Why Universities Matter
Jon Nixon
Abstract
The world, which as infants we receive as objective reality, becomes a world of intersubjective reality as we increasingly engage with it. One of the ways in which we engage
with it is through our understanding of it: our understanding becomes constitutive of the
shared world we inhabit. Understanding takes different forms. But, in an increasingly
complex, interconnected and diverse world, one particular form of understanding has become
particularly important. We commonly refer to this form of understanding, which Aristotle
termed phronesis, as ‘deliberation’ or ‘reasoning together’. Universities matter, and will
matter increasingly, because they are one of the prime institutional spaces within which
successive generations learn to deliberate and reason together; one of the spaces, that is, in
which we become worldly and thereby contribute to the making of our common world of
difference.
Biography
Jon Nixon has held chairs at four UK universities and is currently a Senior Research Fellow
within the Centre for Lifelong Learning Research and Development at the Hong Kong
Institute of Education. He is the author of Interpretive Pedagogies for Higher Education:
Arendt, Berger, Said, Nussbaum and their Legacies (Continuum, 2012), Higher Education
and the Public Good: Imagining the University (Continuum, 2011) and Towards the Virtuous
University: The Moral Bases of Academic Practice (Routledge, 2008). He has also recently
edited (with Adamson and Su) The Reorientation of Higher Education: Challenging the East
West Dichotomy (Springer/CERC, 2012). He is currently writing a book entitled Hannah
Arendt and the Politics of Friendship to be published by Bloomsbury in 2014.
‘Something at stake’: pedagogies of risk in a globalised world
Professor Ray Land, Durham University
Abstract
In the 21st century our civilisation is facing challenges of a scale and nature that are
unprecedented in history and for which there are no models (Giddens 2012). Our time is one
determined by increasing risk, uncertainty, complexity, and most of all, speed. The space of
higher education, traditionally characterised as cloistered, set apart, a reflective space of slow
time and deliberation, is now being transformed by digital culture and fast time, and reorganised by New Public Management practices. The state we are in, however, also provides
opportunities for universities to establish new roles in preparing their students for such a
complex future. This will involve curricula which take them into uncertain places, states of
liminality in which they encounter, and are transformed by, troublesome knowledge. This
incurs a degree of risk. ‘Without a certain amount of anxiety and risk, there's a limit to how
much learning occurs. One must have something at stake. No emotional investment, no
intellectual or formational yield’ (Shulman 2005). Drawing on the recent notion of PsyCap
(psychological capital) this session will explore the qualities which seem to enable students
successfully to negotiate liminal states, and the implications for the ways in which we design
learning environments.
Biography
Ray Land is Professor of Higher Education at Durham University and Director of Durham’s
Centre for Academic Practice. He previously held similar positions at the Universities of
Strathclyde, Coventry and Edinburgh. He has been a higher education consultant for the
OECD and the European Commission and is currently involved in two EC higher education
projects in Europe and Latin America. He has published widely in the field of educational
research, including a seminal work on educational development, Educational Development:
Discourse, Identity and Practice (OUP 2004), and two co-edited books on learning
technology – Education in Cyberspace (RoutledgeFalmer 2005) and Digital Difference:
perspectives on online learning (Sense 2011). He has also co-edited several volumes on the
theme of threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge, including the most recent
Threshold Concepts and Transformational Learning (Sense 2010). His latest book Enhancing
Quality in Higher Education: International Perspectives (co-edited with George Gordon) is
published by Routledge International in June 2013.
The formation of public-good professionals in universities: a capabilities approach
Melanie Walker and Monica Mclean
Abstract
We first outline the theoretical basis for the generation of a capabilities-based approach to
professional education in universities aimed at a contribution to the public good and wider
social transformation. The importance of understanding what Amartya Sen and Martha
Nussbaum describe as ‘capability failure’ for people living precarious lives is explored, and
following from this, how professionals can and ought to contribute by virtue of their
university education and hence privilege to making people’s lives go better. The key criterion
in developing and evaluating professional education is whether professionals themselves are
educated for capabilities which expand the scope of effective freedoms of their client groups.
We explain our process for drafting a multi-dimensional list of eight public-good professional
capabilities with reference to the empirical basis for them. Finally, we touch on how
constructing durable social change pathways might be possible if universities were to educate
in this way.
Biographies
Melanie Walker is Senior Research Professor and South African Research Chair in higher education
and human development at the University of the Free State in South Africa. She was previously chair
in higher education at the University of Nottingham. She is a Fellow of the Human Development and
Capability Association, and currently also director of research training and a senior researcher in the
EU-funded Marie Curie EDUWEL project. Among others, she has led or participated in research
projects funded by the NRF (South Africa), the Higher Education Academy, HEFCE, EU, ESRC, the
British Council and the Mellon Foundation. She is co-editor with Alejandro Boni of Human
development and capabilities. Reimagining the university of the twenty-first century (Routledge 2012)
and co-author with Monica McLean of Professional Education, Capabilities and the Public Good: the
role of universities in promoting human development (Routledge, 2013)
Monica McLean is Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham. Recent projects
investigated the relevance of the capability approach to professional education in South
Africa; and quality and inequality in UK universities. Her approach is outlined in ‘Pedagogy
and the University: Critical Theory and Practice’ (Continuum, 2008)