Transformation of educational categories in
higher education
António Magalhães
Amélia Veiga
Porto Summer School
FIGURES ON THE HIGHER EDUCATION LANDSCAPE
29 June – 3 July 2015
• The research agenda on higher education
• Transformations of education categories in
higher education
• Bologna reforms and the re-interpretation of
education concepts
• Concluding remarks
1
The research agenda on higher education
The educational role of higher education has been
hindered by the focus on governance and management
of higher education systems and institutions
•
In US and Europe massification of higher education and concerns about
the quality of its provision became a major financial and political issue
driving the focus on the political and financial management (archeologic
layer of ‘higher educationism’)
•
Higher education assumed a vital role for the economic and social
development of countries and regions.
•
The managerial, the consulting and the social sciences approaches have
been the main HE research rationales.
2
The research agenda on higher education
• The pressure for increased relevance/applicability of
research and the influence of policy agendas on the
agenda of higher education research tends to result into a
mixture of some ‘grand narratives’ (for example,
‘knowledge society’, globalisation’) and ‘empirical
analysis’ = largely quantitative studies shaped by policy
concerns.
• The growing public awareness of the interrelationships
between education and economic growth, social mobility,
reforms and, more recently, the implementation of the
Bologna process.
3
The research agenda on higher education
What about education in higher education?
Why there is a need to re-focus the research agenda
on education?
4
Transformations of education categories in higher education
• The modern idea of education (Newman, Humboldt, …) assumed that
the exposure of students to knowledge potentially provides
emancipatory and transformational features for the individuals
providing society better citizens and specialized workers.
• Teaching, learning, students, professors, classes, etc., were
linked together by both the modern knowledge narrative and the
consolidation of the nation-state.
• Educational categories derived their significance from the
formative potential attributed to knowledge: professors and
students met in amphitheaters and laboratories and lived in
campuses in the framework of an educational relationship
mediated by the ‘enlightening’ function of knowledge.
5
Transformations of education categories in higher education
• Research moved from the ‘ivory tower’ to the terrain of
‘social relevance’ and increasingly separated from
teaching.
• The focus on competences - the capacity to acquire
knowledge, experiences and attitudes to deal with
specific social and professional contexts - is potentially
reconfiguring education and educational categories in
higher education.
6
Transformations of education categories in higher education
• Barnett (2000): the university is dissolving into
organizational segments and Knowledge into knowledges
• Rothblatt (1995): ‘disappearing university’, university
boundaries are blurring
• Cowen: the ‘attenuation’ (1996) of the university at the
level of
•
•
•
•
space (via its international dimension and its connection to the economy);
financial (increasing clientelisation of students and their families);
quality assurance (academics replaced by managerial expertise in quality
judgements relating to the activities and outcomes carried out in institutions)
pedagogic (massification of higher education and teachers mutating into
‘instructional designers’)
7
Bologna reforms and the re-interpretation of education concept
• These processes have been driven by the policy agendas of
transnational institutions such as the World Bank, UNESCO,
the OECD and the European Union that are capable [using
soft law mechanisms] of producing change and contribute to
transforming the face of education.
“European higher education systems have been going through a
process of major historical disorientation, and this has been brought
about by the confluence of several simultaneous cultural and
intellectual, as well as economic and political forces” (Nybom, 2012:
179)
8
Bologna reforms and the re-interpretation of education
concept
• Move from policy implementation to sense-making, recontextualization and policy enactment realised in and
through practice
•
•
•
•
credit system based on the student workload,
the Tuning project
the European Qualifications Framework
the Feasibility Study for the Assessment of Higher
Education Learning Outcomes
9
Bologna reforms and the re-interpretation of education concept
Credit system
• Its adoption underlined the idea of an accumulation system,
flexibility and lifelong learning reasserting the primacy of the
vocational interpretation advocated by the European
Commission.
• The credit system brought to the fore the contradiction
between input and output driven approaches to learning.
• The ECTS credit is totally input-focused (student
workload) and the learning outcomes are output-based
10
Bologna reforms and the re-interpretation of education concept
Credit system
• Knowledge - from formative processes to output centered
learning
• Students - from students to trainees/learners
• Professors - from professors/academics to designers of
curricula
• Staff - From the periphery to the centre: administrative and
management staff
11
Bologna reforms and the re-interpretation of education concept
Tuning project
• Designed to meeting students’ needs and demands
regarding the qualifications for mobility and labor market
purposes
• It sought to tune education, competences and training
structures, and identify and exchange information on
common subject-based reference points, curricula content,
learning outcomes and methods of teaching, learning and
assessment.
12
Bologna reforms and the re-interpretation of education
concept
Tuning project
• Knowledge - from formative processes to competences
(instrumental, interpersonal and systemic)
13
Bologna reforms and the re-interpretation of education concept
Tuning project
• From knowledge to competences as a dynamic
combination of knowledge, understanding, skills and
abilities.
• From knowledge to ‘cognitive abilities’
• from knowledge content as the organizer of teaching and
learning processes to competence(s) as the capacity to
mobilize knowledge to know and to act socially and
professionally
14
Bologna reforms and the re-interpretation of education
concept
European Qualification Framework
• Designed to provide common reference levels on how to
describe learning, from basic skills up to the PhD level
• In parallel with the setting up of the framework of
qualifications of the European Higher Education Area
15
Bologna reforms and the re-interpretation of education
concept
European Qualification Framework
• To guarantee a common understanding of the outcomes,
recognition of qualifications for employment and access
to continuing education and mobility to guarantee
recognition of prior learning and qualifications
16
Bologna reforms and the re-interpretation of education concept
European Qualification Framework
• Knowledge linked to the definition of learning outcomes as
expressed in ‘qualification descriptors’
• Education - from integral education to competence-based
education
• Knowledge - from knowledge to competences and
qualifications as drivers of curricular reforms
• Research - from research + teaching to teaching versus
research
• Vocational drift
17
Bologna reforms and the re-interpretation of education
concept
Learning outcomes (Feasibility Study by OECD)
• The purpose of the Feasibility Study for the Assessment
of Higher Education Learning Outcomes was to evaluate
if it is practical and scientifically possible to assess what
students in higher education know and can do upon
graduation.
•
The broad purpose is to design, develop and evaluate a robust approach
to measuring learning outcomes in higher education in ways that are
valid across cultures and languages, and across the diversity of
institutional settings and missions (OECD, 2012: 5)
18
Bologna reforms and the re-interpretation of education
concept
Learning outcomes (Feasibility Study by OECD)
• The purpose of the Feasibility Study for the Assessment
of Higher Education Learning Outcomes was to evaluate
if it is practical and scientifically possible to assess what
students in higher education know and can do upon
graduation.
•
The broad purpose is to design, develop and evaluate a robust approach
to measuring learning outcomes in higher education in ways that are
valid across cultures and languages, and across the diversity of
institutional settings and missions (OECD, 2012: 5)
19
Bologna reforms and the re-interpretation of education concept
Learning outcomes (Feasibility Study by OECD)
• Teaching - from teaching and learning to measurable outputs
• the focus on learning outcomes feeds the idea of ‘one
size fits all’.
• Students - from students to employable individuals
20
Conclusion
• Transnational discourses driving the reconfiguration of
education categories
• The emphasis on applicability of knowledge is
reconfiguring the role attributed to education in higher
education
• Competences, qualifications as learning outcomes to be
measured, are assumed to be the basis of ‘employability’ and a
common grammar for the use of higher education external
stakeholders, namely for employers.
• Educational mission and strategies of higher education
bound to economic and vocational roles
• Critical self versus corporate self (Barnett, 1997)
21
Conclusion
• Challenges into the future
The positive aspects of the competence-based and
student-centred approaches are that they have
educational potential foreseen by many educationalists
(e.g. John Dewey, Paulo Freire, Ivan Illich, among
others) to deal with the needs of post-industrial
societies and with new forms of citizenship
The importance of education in the research agenda
about higher education
22