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Integration and Integrity in Academic Enquiry
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL)Symposium
University of Glasgow
27th March 2008
Stephen Rowland
Professor of Higher Education
Institute of Education and University College London
Integration and Integrity in Academic Enquiry
Scholarship of Learning and Teaching (SOTL)Symposium
University of Glasgow
27th March 2008
Stephen Rowland
University College London
The argument of this paper is developed in detail in:
Rowland, S. (2006) The Enquiring University: Compliance and Contestation in
Higher Education. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill
Introduction
I want to start this Enquiry by suggesting that we need to develop
a more integrated concept of academic enquiry: one that
integrates the various kinds of academic work including teaching,
learning, learning about teaching, research, research about
learning, scholarship, the scholarship of teaching and learning and
so on. Indeed the very list of such terms indicates the first problem
we have. This is that academic enquiry has become fragmented or
disintegrated. I will suggest that we need a more integrated
understanding of enquiry if we are to conduct our academic work
with integrity. This will, I hope, help us to think about how we can
stimulate learning which is based on enquiry, for the word
“enquiry” suggests an approach which is at the heart of
scholarship and involves, or is at least like, research in some way.
The very idea of a university presupposes that teaching and
research gain from being conducted in the same institution and
largely by the same people. But is this assumption valid or is it, as
some have claimed, no more than a myth?
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Some Questions
Are good teachers usually also good researchers?
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Does doing research improve your teaching?
Can teaching stimulate your research?
Is teaching better in an environment which is enthused by research?
Do students like to be taught be good researchers?
etc
A number of quantitative research studies have sought to show
whether or not academics who are good at research are also good
at teaching and vice versa; or whether teaching that takes place in
research intensive institutions is better as a consequence; or
whether research can be enhanced or stimulated by teaching; and
so on. A wide range of such studies has been analysed and the
conclusion was reached that there was no significant correlation
between teaching performance and research performance (Qamar
uz Zaman 2004). In fact, I had a discussion with Charles Clarke,
who was then the Minister of State for Education, about the policy
implications of his 2003 White Paper The Future of Higher
Education (DfES 2003), which cited this lack of correlation
between teaching and research as a basis for the further
separation between those universities that are research intensive
and those that concentrate on teaching. His argument seemed to
be that if those people who are good at teaching are often not the
same people as those who are good at research, and if doing
research doesn’t improve your teaching, then why insist that
academics do both? Wouldn’t it just be better if they concentrated
on what they are good at?
But there is also a large research literature which has considered
the circumstances in which teaching and research can be more
mutually supportive. Certain approaches to teaching (and certain
approaches to research) appear to be associated with a closer
relationship between the two. One general finding of a lot of these
studies has been that teaching which is enquiry based relates
more closely to research. The claim here is, perhaps, not
surprising: that if we teach our students in a way which is like
doing research – in which they have to think and experiment like
researchers do – then our own research can more readily have a
bearing on, and benefit from, our teaching. The business of
teaching a group of students would then be more like the business
of leading a research team.
There is an ongoing group of academics, centred in UK but now
involving colleagues from many countries, who have, over the last
ten years, sought to develop a better understanding of how
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teaching and research might be more mutually supportive, rather
than pull us in opposite directions like so often seems to be the
case.
An international colloquium was held at Marwell by this group in
2004 and again in 2007. In their discussions aimed at exploring
closer links between teaching and research, participants at the
2004 Marwell Colloquium, drawing upon the latest research,
indicated a strong preference for forms of higher education that are
enquiry based.
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Some conclusions of Marwell 2004
‘a preference for forms of higher education that are enquiry based’
‘a strong doubt as to whether higher education that is not enquiry based can even be
regarded as ‘higher education.’
Report on the International Colloquium
Research and Teaching: Closing the Divide.
Marwell, March 2004
Paragraph 46 v
It was doubted whether higher education that is not enquiry based
can even be regarded as ‘higher education’ (Brown 2004: 46 v).
Underlying such a statement there is an appreciation of an idea
which is usually attributed to Wilhelm von Humboldt, who founded
the University of Berlin in the early 19th Century. His idea was that
university students should learn by treating all knowledge as
though it were contestable, uncertain and tentative and therefore
needed to involve exploration, discovery and enquiry. But the idea
of students learning through discovery, enquiry or research has its
roots in Enlightenment thinking of the 17th Century and arguably
links back to trends in ancient Greece. We may now wish to
include knowledge transfer and service among the list of academic
activities which could also be characterised by enquiry processes.
And perhaps higher education management itself should be
founded upon principles of enquiry.
But we need to be more clear about the nature of such enquiry and
how it might serve to integrate academic activities.
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The problem arises, however, as soon as we start to speak of
academic enquiry in terms of these ‘core activities’ of teaching,
research and scholarship. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu
observed, in 1988, that teaching and research were inappropriate
categories to describe academic activity (Bourdieu 1988). Had the
concept of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning been around
at that time, it would no doubt have presented him with the same
problem. We can see this problem clearly if we try to answer the
question “What am I engaged in now”? Am I teaching,
disseminating my research, engaging with you in enquiry based
learning. No doubt all of these thigs and more.
A number of educators, particularly the American Ernest Boyer,
developed conceptions of different forms of scholarship (Boyer
1994); others tried to articulate more clearly what is meant by
research led teaching and the scholarship of learning and teaching;
and more recently there have been debates about whether ideas
about teaching apply across all disciplines or are peculiar to
particular subjects.
Such attempts to organise our thinking about an already
complicated issue often seem to lead to yet more complexity, more
categories, more uncertainty and greater difficulties in
communicating these ideas to a wider audience. The term
‘supercomplexity’ (Barnett 2000) has been coined to describe the
fluidity of academic practices and identities amidst such
uncertainty.
In this talk I want to suggest an approach to thinking about this
complicated business of the relationships between enquiry based
learning, research and teaching by relating two rather different
uses of the term ‘integrity’. Its first meaning indicates a bringing
together, a making whole. The second meaning of the word refers
to soundness of moral principle or virtue.
A recent survey of university teachers in UK suggested that the
integrity of higher education is open to question. In that, albeit
limited, survey 72 per cent of respondents agreed with the
statement that ‘higher education has lost its role as conscience
and critic of society’ (Bone and McNay 2006: 76).
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‘higher education has lost its role as conscience and critic of society’
(Bone and McNay 2006:76)
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Conducting academic practices with integrity
by
Integrating academic practices
Such a statement might seem to have little to do with enquiry as a
basis for teaching and research. My argument, however, will
suggest that integrity is closely linked with the integration of core
academic activities. The loss of higher education’s moral integrity
is related to its loss of connectedness: its fragmentation.
My aim then is to conceive of academic enquiry, and thus enquiry
based learning, in a way that gives integrity to the conduct of
teaching, research and scholarship thereby serving to integrate
these forms of academic practice more closely. To do this I will
develop two themes.
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Aspects of academic enquiry
Dialectical relationship between
compliance and contestation
The first is the idea that academic enquiry, in any of its forms,
involves working within a tension between compliance and
contestation. Students and researchers need to learn, or comply
with, the basic knowledge and skills of their disciplinary or
professional practice; yet the ability to critique – arguably an
objective of all research and higher learning - demands that they
be prepared to subject such knowledge to reasoned contestation
at every stage. This was the insight of Humboldt: that higher
education is a process of learning in which all knowledge is seen
as being tentative or open to contestation. Such an idea of enquiry
based learning is more than simply a teaching method. It
constitutes the basis of a conception of higher learning. University
knowledge is seen to be, of its nature, contestable.
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Aspects of academic enquiry
Dialectical relationship between
compliance and contestation
maintained by
Intellectual love
The second theme concerns the way in which academic staff
relate to their subject matter. Despite feelings of demoralisation
and stress, there is evidence to support the apparently obvious
claim that most academics enjoy intellectual work (Kinman and
Jones 2004). Many factors, as well as limited resources, may
constrain the opportunity for staff to pursue their intellectual
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engagement but, in general, the idea of teaching and research is
attractive to today’s ‘knowledge workers’. They commonly say they
love their subject, even if they don’t love the institutional conditions
in which they pursue it. But what does it mean to love one’s
subject?
I hope to show how the concept of intellectual love enables a
dialectical, rather than fragmented, relationship between different
forms of academic enquiry, including teaching and research, that
are involved in enquiry based learning. My conception of
‘intellectual love’ draws upon the ideas of Spinoza, who was a
prominent Enlightenment philosopher of the seventeenth century.
The tension between compliance and contestation
Let me start, then, with the first theme: that academic enquiry
involves working within the tension between compliance and
contestation. This tension expresses itself in academic learning by
setting up a dichotomy between instruction and exploration.
Instruction demands compliance; exploration requires contestation.
Does learning follow better from the instruction of teachers or from
the exploration of learners?
Since the earliest educational writings there has been dispute
between those who wanted to emphasise instruction and those
who would emphasise exploration. Through a brief historical
sketch I want to indicate how this tension relates to more
contemporary themes about higher learning. In order not to dwell
too long on the historical details, I will proceed in a loose and
rather unscholarly fashion.
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Some historical notes
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Contestation and Compliance
350 BC
Plato’s Socrates
learning is innate
maieutic method
critical dialogue
exploration
student centred
reflective practice
risky
Plato – writing through the voice of his teacher, Socrates - is
perhaps the earliest exponent of the importance of an exploratory
approach to learning. The Socratic Method, as it came to be
known, was based upon the teacher posing questions, rather than
solutions, in order to lead the student towards a better
understanding. Much of Socrates’ questioning led his students to
confront their own ignorance. That’s important. For acknowledging
one’s ignorance is often a precondition for entertaining a new idea.
It creates the space for new knowledge.
The Socratic Method was based upon Plato’s belief that life has a
pre-bodily form in which the individual is fully acquainted with
knowledge. Thus learning, for Plato, was not so much a matter of
teaching as of being reminded, or brought to an awareness, of this
innate knowledge. The teacher’s task is then to prompt
reminiscence through a process that is dialectical and exploratory:
learning is, as it were, born through a process of argument. The
term ‘maieutic’ (from the Greek maievtikos, meaning midwifery) is
sometimes used to describe this Socratic Method, in which innate
wisdom is elicited through critical questioning.
While Plato’s ideas about pre-bodily life seem odd today, there are
some interesting parallels with modern thinking. The American
linguist and psychologist Chomsky claimed, 25 years ago, that the
brain is genetically programmed with the ability to learn languages
(Chomsky 1983). This contains the Platonic idea of innateness,
which has implications for teaching. Carl Rogers, a
psychotherapist who was perhaps the first to coin the term ‘student
or client centred learning’, emphasized the role of teacher as
facilitator of the learner’s critical explorations (Rogers 1969). This
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also owes much to Socrates’ maieutic method. And today there is
much talk, in relation to professional learning, of ‘reflective
practice’, which draws upon Plato’s idea that knowledge and
understanding are gained by questioning and thinking about what
we know, rather than by being presented with new facts. Enquiry
based learning certainly draws upon such insights.
At the same time as Plato lived Isocrates, who was also a pupil of
Socrates. Isocrates was interested not so much in encouraging
learners to explore for themselves as in persuasion or rhetoric.
Rhetoric - a persuasive argument designed to bring an audience
over to the speaker's point of view - was a central part of the
Ancient Greek curriculum.
Plato’s Socrates
learning is innate
maieutic method
critical dialogue
exploration
student centred
reflective practice
risky
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Contestation and Compliance
350 BC
Isocrates
socially determined
rhetorical method
persuasion
instruction
the lecture
discipline
predictable
Rhetoricians were not so much scholars as powerful lawyers,
diplomats and advisers. Their ‘learners’ were often those in
positions of political power whom they persuaded through their
smooth talk. Perhaps more akin to the many political advisers who
advise government about education, rather than those who
actually teach and research. Their rhetoric was primarily practical
and competitive – like in a court of law - rather than reflective or
contemplative. In contrast to opening up questions through
dialectical critique, as Plato recommended, rhetoric was concerned
to conclude the argument. It was oriented towards instruction and
decision making rather than exploration.
Again, the present day context is very different, but we can see
how rhetoric also plays an important role in teaching today. A
lecture, like this one I am giving now, is primarily a rhetorical
device. I am not being ‘learner centred’. I’m not helping you
explore or discover something for yourself in a maieutic fashion.
Rather I’m attempting to persuade you concerning the subject
matter at hand. In initiating this enquiry, my own role appears to be
quite didactic. Taking this further, the idea of a discipline can be
seen as a structure of thinking formulated through persuasive
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rhetorical argument. If the scholarship of teaching and learning is
conceived as a discipline, then it will have its own rhetorical and
persuasive forms.
Returning to the ancient Greeks, we can see that there was a
conflict of views between those who emphasised exploration
through critical dialogue and those for whom practical needs are
best served by instruction and rhetoric. This dispute has many
parallels with the modern debates. On the one hand are those who
value a curriculum which involves exploration which, though
potentially critical, is inevitably somewhat risky and unpredictable.
On the other, are those who think a curriculum has to be
conceived in terms of outcomes to be defined at the start. We see
this same tension in relation to the learning that is a consequence
of research. Researchers complain that Research Councils and
other funding agencies require the outcomes to be identified in
detail, as a condition of funding, before the research has even
started. This encourages safe predictability rather than risky work
at the frontiers of knowledge. In this way the quality of research is
being undermined by the very procedures which are intended to
ensure that the best research is funded.
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Contestation and Compliance
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427-347BC
Plato
1533-1592
Montaigne
1679-1778
Rousseau
1859-1952
Dewey
all spoke out against those social forces that could not tolerate the risky and often
subversive nature of exploration
Two thousand years later, in the sixteenth century, we see a
similar debate. The French writer Montaigne came from a wealthy
family and, lucky man, could afford to retire at 37. He then devoted
his life to scholarship (Robertson 1935). At that time in Europe
formal education was highly structured by doctrinaire scholastic
approaches. Students recited passages from ancient texts and
learnt their grammar and logic by memorising rules. Classics had
become the subject of drill and conformity.
Now Montaigne loved classical texts. He adorned his library by
carving quotations from ancient writers all over its wooden beams.
But he was appalled by the way teaching had become little more
than drill which killed the love of Classics or anything else.
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Montaigne reacted against this, rather as Plato reacted against the
rhetoricians and Sophists of classical times. Scholastic education,
Montaigne said, produced people who knew a lot but didn’t know
how to use their knowledge wisely. He put forward a radically
different view in which the learner’s interests and activity were the
starting point of the curriculum. This looked very much like what
we now call problem or enquiry based learning (Montaigne 1935:
142-178).
The theme is taken up in the early eighteenth century, when the
philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that students should
learn to think for themselves and teachers should not just hand
down inherited orthodoxies. Again, this sounds very much like the
kind of criticism that has been made of so-called ‘traditional’
methods of instruction in present day universities.
A hundred years ago James Dewey developed the point further.
He would have been familiar with the caricature of Mr Gradgrind,
from Dickens’ Hard Times, for whom the disciplines of knowledge
were intimately related to the brutal discipline of a rigidly
hierarchical society. In contrast, Dewey argued, education should
serve to enhance democracy. For him, forms of learning which
emphasised enquiry, exploration and discovery were not simply
better ways of learning the subject matter, but better ways of
inculcating democratic values in students. In the present context,
we might say that the agenda for citizenship is, from Dewey’s
perspective, not just about teaching students a particular subject
matter, or even using a particular teaching method, but about
developing a learning environment in which the values of
democratic citizenship - choice, debate, contestation rational
argument and respect for our fellows – underpin all academic
enquiry.
Of course there were great differences between these thinkers: the
idealism of Plato, the romanticism of Rousseau, the pragmatism of
Dewey; and they were the products of very different cultures. But
underneath these differences lies a similar concern to free
students from cramped didactic instruction and create the space to
explore through shared critical participation.
The conclusion to be drawn from these thinkers is that academic
learning – whether from teaching or research - involves contesting
knowledge as well as complying with its demands. These writers
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all spoke out against those social forces that sought to exercise
control over knowledge and could not tolerate the risky and often
subversive nature of exploration. This was the problem Galileo
faced when control was exercised by the Church. We are in
danger of facing the same problem as the market takes the place
that the church once had as the dominant force upon higher
education.
Holding together compliance and contestation
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Contestation AND Compliance
I have so far used the word ‘exploration’ rather than discovery, for
exploration does not always lead to discoveries which are new to
society nor even to the individual. That is the nature of its risk.
Courage is needed to entertain the possibility of failure. Discovery
can never be assured.
Contesting the limits of knowledge is a necessary but not a
sufficient condition of academic enquiry. Not everything is, as it
were, discovered anew, for the novice student or even the most
specialized researcher. Having argued for the importance of
exploration in academic enquiry, I now want to extend the concept
of enquiry to incorporate the need for compliance and instruction.
Enquiry - from the Latin, quaere – means to seek. Perhaps the
most important attribute for the learner, teacher or researcher is
curiosity. Like in the Socratic dialogue, enquiry leads to the
generation of questions as we become aware of what we don’t
know, but need to know. This need might be met by instruction
from a web site, demonstration or even a lecture like this one. Or it
may lead to experimentation and discovery. Or enquiry may simply
lead to further open questioning. The important issue here is not
so much the old question of whether instruction or discovery best
promotes learning, but that either should emerge from genuine
seeking. Even rhetoric plays a valuable part in such an
environment of enquiry.
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Contestation AND Compliance
a context of enquiry gives the instructional or rhetorical performance significance for the
learner
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Many have argued that university teaching is too limited by the
lecture as the dominant mode of teaching. There is much truth in
this; and many lectures are, no doubt, poor examples of the
rhetorical art. But the problem is not simply one of addressing the
performance of lecturing. Nor one of doing away with this tradition.
What needs to be developed is a context of enquiry which gives
the instructional or rhetorical performance significance for the
learner. And this is not possible unless the learner’s curiosity is
engaged.
But what stimulates and sustains curiosity? Why do researchers
and students enquire and is it reasonable to expect them to do so?
What is so attractive about enquiry? How can we hold together
both the compliance demanded by disciplinary instruction and with
the requirement for critical contestation that is an essential feature
of exploration?
I want to suggest that intellectual love might function as the ‘glue’
which holds compliance and contestation together in tension and
forms the core of enquiry based learning.
Intellectual love
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Intellectual Love
(1632-1677 Spinoza)
A dentist colleague of mine wrote about how his aim in teaching
was to inspire a love of dentistry (Carrotte 1994). Now as someone
for whom the pleasures of the dentist’s surgery are little short of
masochistic, his love of the subject was intriguing. But it was soon
clear to me that this was no different from the love of the historian
or physicist, with which I find it easier to identify. Such love
characterizes their enquiry, whether that enquiry be directed at
discovering new knowledge, or becoming more acquainted with
what is already known, or imparting that knowledge to students.
It’s difficult to speak of love. Poetry seems more appropriate than
definition. Sometimes the word means no more than a positive
sentiment. At others it represents the most significant form of
human commitment. Its meaning is highly context dependent. But
the readiness with which many academics speak of their love of
their subject might suggest that we take it seriously.
The seventeenth century philosopher Spinoza (1955) wrote much
about intellectual love. For him, it combined what modern-day
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psychologists would call the cognitive and the affective: both
intellectual thought and emotion. Spinoza disagreed with the
Puritans at the time, who scorned the passions as being the
source of human evil. He did, however, distinguish between
passions which are active (such as compassion) and those in
relation to which we are passive (such as lust).
My colleague’s love of dentistry was of the former, active, sort.
Indeed, it would have seemed very peculiar to say ‘he just can’t
help loving dentistry’, like one might say ‘he just can’t help loving
cream buns’! Loving dentistry is conceivable – just! Lusting after it
isn’t.
Spinoza’s intellectual love is the desire for knowledge of God. He
was a pantheist and so for him ‘God’ meant all that exists. Thus,
the desire to know more about dentistry is, from Spinoza’s point of
view, a desire to know more about these aspects of God. Since
God is infinite, this search for knowledge is never complete. The
more we know, however, the closer we come to God. And the
closer we come to God, the more we become identified with Him
and take on His characteristics, in particular, His capacity for
intellectual love. Intellectual love therefore gives rise, in principle,
to a virtuous cycle of increasing knowledge of God leading to
increasing intellectual love. Intellectual love breeds intellectual love.
An excellent basis, indeed, for lifelong learning.
Let’s put Spinoza’s thoughts into secular terms. This is easy to do,
and some modern scholars, like his contemporaries who expelled
him from his Jewish community in Holland, consider that atheism
rather than pantheism more aptly describes Spinoza’s philosophy.
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Intellectual Love
(1632-1677 Spinoza)
Implies:
desire for more intimate knowledge
knowledge open to reinterpretation
knowledge is social, inclusive and collaborative
desire to share knowledge
The object of intellectual love’s desire – dentistry, history or
whatever - is never fully known. We may come to know better, but
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we can never know completely; we can find out what we wanted,
but this leaves further questions for enquiry, further knowledge
desired. Just as lovers desire greater intimacy with their beloved,
so intellectual love always wants a more intimate acquaintance
with its subject matter. Intellectual love, like personal love, is
strengthened, rather than exhausted, by being expressed.
It thus provides an excellent basis for enquiry based learning.
Unlike other forms of enquiry (such as criminal investigation) it
suggests a developing interest rather than one which concludes
once an objective has been met. It continually focuses attention on
what has yet to be learnt. It emphasises learning that is ongoing
rather than outcomes based.
Knowledge from such enquiry always remains open to further
interpretation, further questioning and new ways of knowing. The
philosopher Karl Popper adopts this view of the progress of
science as the asking of ever more significant questions. He calls
this his Searchlight Theory of Science and contrasts it with the
Bucket Theory which views research as the cumulative addition of
truths (Popper 1979). A parallel distinction was made by Paolo
Freire (1972), who contrasted a questioning approach with the
more traditional ‘banking theory’ of learning. Our metaphors for
enquiry based learning should be quests and searchlights rather
than buckets and banks.
For Spinoza, intellectual love is necessarily inclusive: it seeks to
share rather than hoard. Collaboration, from this point of view, is
not merely a technique to improve the effectiveness of learning. It
is built into its very fabric: it conceives of learning to be essentially
social rather than individual.
The idea of academics loving their subject but not wanting to share
it with others would be incongruous. Of course, many are, like
Isaac Newton, shy people (Gleick 2004) and many don’t like
talking about their work in large lecture halls - indeed, I feel a little
intrepid even talking to a friendly group like this - but it is
inconceivable to imagine that, in circumstances of their choosing,
they would not want to share their knowledge with others.
Wanting to hoard, rather than share one’s knowledge, could not
arise from a love of the subject. It would be what Freud has called
‘epistemophilia’ or Derrida described as ‘archive fever’ (Newman
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2003): an obsessive-compulsive disorder, sometimes observed in
the collection of ever longer research publication lists; more akin to
lust than love; these days associated with a narrow compliance to
the demands of research assessment, rather than a vibrant
intellectual community.
Teaching that is driven by intellectual love does not necessarily
mean teaching one’s research, but teaching with the passion that
underlies it. Nor does it mean that the best researchers will
necessarily be the best teachers, but rather that teaching and
research are both enlivened by the intellectual love which forms
the basis of the community. It is this that makes university teaching
scholarly.
Enquiry of this sort should underpin the learning of students as
they study, the learning of teachers as they teach, and the learning
of researchers as they research. Furthermore, a community which
celebrates such learning would be managed by managers who
saw their task of one of enquiry rather than simply control. And
policies which drive higher education would be evaluated in terms
of their ability to enhance and sustain such enquiry rather than in
terms of their meeting targets.
In Conclusion
•
•
•
•
•
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Conclusions
Enquiry based learning involves contestation and compliance
Need to resist overbearing demand for compliance
Celebrate rather than squander intellectual love
Employers may welcome scholarly values
The academic community must articulate these
Knowledge gained through compliance without contestation leads
to the narrowest forms of training or closed-minded
fundamentalism; contestation without compliance leads to
meaningless disorder. Both have to be held together.
I have suggested that this tension between compliance and
contestation has been a feature of educational thinking since the
classical age. Educational thinkers at various points in history,
however, have attempted to resist the forces of compliance when
these become overbearing. We are at present at such a point.
Resistance may now be needed. And also perhaps some idealism
as we attempt to articulate the values of academic enquiry.
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I have also suggested that in order to work productively within the
tension between compliance and contestation we need to pay
attention to the academic’s love of knowledge. It is this intellectual
love that provides the basis of enquiry based learning. It motivates
and integrates, or gives integrity, to work in the diverse activities of
teaching, research and scholarship. It is significant that, at a time
when compliance has the upper hand over contestation, academic
enquiry becomes fragmented and loses its integrity. Intellectual
love is then starved. We are at present at a point where the most
valuable resource of higher education – the intellectual love of
those involved – is at risk of being squandered.
Lest it be thought that a love of knowledge may be an ideal
appropriate for students preparing for a life in academia, but not for
wider employment, it is worth considering the views of an employer
interviewed in a national magazine who spoke of the most
important outcomes of higher education in terms of ‘passion’,
‘integrity’, ‘enthusiasm’ and ‘openness’ (Miller Smith 2002:10).
Such a view also appears to be supported by a partnership of UK,
Japanese, European, Australian and American HE-Business
forums (CIHE 2003, Bok 2003) which urges universities not to
relinquish scholarly values.
Ministers of State of Education, who in UK at least appear to have
little time for the kind of idealism I have expressed, should be
challenged on their own ground. Do they know what employers
really want? Do employers? Do they all want the same thing
anyway? We need to be wary of those who claim that employers,
students or others in the wider society, want higher education to
produce something less than it can aspire to.
As I think about this in relation to enquiry based learning I wonder
about questions such as these:
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Some final questions
•
•
•
How do I manage the tension between compliance and contestation in enquiry based
learning?
What are the threats to the integrity of academic enquiry and how can I address
them?
What is the role of intellectual love in enquiry based learning and how can I foster it?
What are the implications for policy makers and managers?
•
How do I resist overbearing demands for compliance?
•
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 How do I manage the tension between compliance and
contestation in enquiry based learning?
 What are the major threats to the integrity of academic
enquiry and how can I address them?
 What is the role of intellectual love in enquiry based lerning
and how can I foster it?
 What are the implications of these ideas for policy makers
and managers?
And finally
 How should we resist overbearing demands for compliance
where these undermine enquiry based learning?
References
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