Learning, Teaching & Research Conference 2010
Wednesday 6th July
Keynote Address
Dr Deborah Osberg - Director of Professional Doctoral Studies in the
Graduate School of Education at the University of Exeter
Authoritative Knowledge & the Public Role of the University: How complexity
challenges our assumptions & opens alternate possibilities
Abstract
In this paper I explore ways in which the emergentist logic underlying
complexity theory and other relational frameworks may be used to understand the
civic role of the university when, on the one hand, globalization and
postmodernisation have exposed the colonizing impetus of Western claims to
authority through “critical reason” and, on the other hand, shifts in the production and
legitimation of knowledge have brought about a situation in which the boundaries
between the university and the rest of society are becoming increasingly blurred as
“society at large” takes over some of the functions of the university and as the
university takes on some of the concerns of “the rest of society.” Because it is no
longer clear what constitutes the university itself, the question arises as to whether
the university still has a civic role in society, as distinct from a purely economic role,
and as distinct from the economic role of other knowledge producing organisations. I
approach the topic by examining the university’s relationship with authoritative
knowledge. In particular, I show how complexity and other emergentist frameworks
open an alternative view of the concept of authoritative knowledge and how this
understanding enables us to understand the university as an open ended “societal
laboratory” in which the ethos is a tentative experimentation with what we do not
yet know is possible, rather than a striving towards that which we already know to be
possible (and which always reflects someone’s version of what is desirable to work
towards). I argue that with an emergentist understanding of authoritative knowledge,
the university may again be considered as an institution that offers an orientation for
society rather than being merely another institution that is orientated by society’s
particular (and economic) needs, and competing with other private institutions to
serve these needs, and in a way that does not fall back on old “Enlightenment”
values.
Biography
Dr Deborah Osberg is Director of Professional Doctoral Studies in the Graduate
School of Education at the University of Exeter, UK and Editor-in-chief of the journal
Complicity: An Internatinal Journal of Complexity and Education. Her research is
primarily conceptual and she is has published a number of articles on complexity and
education in international journals and most recently an edited book (with Gert
Biesta): Complexity Theory and the Politics of Education (Sense, 2010).