Transformation of educational categories in higher education

António MagalhãesAmélia Veiga

Porto Summer SchoolFIGURES 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

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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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.

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Teaching, learning students, professors, classes

: from research + teaching to teaching versus research; from

knowledge to competences, from students to learners, from

professors to instructional designers, from non-academic

staff to administrative and management staff; from

amphitheaters to WWW

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’)

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Teaching, learning students, professors, classes

: from research + teaching to teaching versus research; from

knowledge to competences, from students to learners, from

professors to instructional designers, from non-academic

staff to administrative and management staff; from

amphitheaters to WWW

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)

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Bologna reforms and the re-interpretation of education

concept

• Move from policy implementation to sense-making, re-contextualization 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

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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

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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

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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.

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Bologna reforms and the re-interpretation of education

concept

Tuning project

• Knowledge - from formative processes to competences (instrumental, interpersonal and systemic)

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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)

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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

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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)

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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

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