5th Global Conference
Thursday 8th May - Saturday 10th May 2008
Budapest, Hungary
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Session 7: Questioning the University
Chair: Seth Agbo
Developing a New Curriculum: ‘Chartered Street’ or ‘Valley Wild’?
Karen Gomoluch & Gill Whittaker
School of Arts, Media & Education, University of Bolton, Bolton, United Kingdom
The paper discusses the development of a common ‘philosophy’ agreed upon by academic staff in the Education department at an English university, and examines whether this philosophy can be maintained whilst lecturers are involved in the complex process of developing a curriculum for post-compulsory initial teacher training. Currently, the latter is subject to the particular demands and constraints imposed by external agencies including the Quality Assurance Agency; Standards Verification UK; Lifelong Learning UK; OfSTED and also the department’s partner colleges.
Data analysis suggests that the external restrictions placed upon the group have resulted in a strengthening of the relationship between creativity, autonomy and confidence. This prompted the examination of the idea that conformity can co-exist with creativity in teaching and learning, although in this case study the latter appears to be of a more ‘subversive’ and individual kind. There is also a more complex and interesting relationship between individual and collective growth and the capacity for creativity: why did the group feel it necessary to develop the ‘philosophy’ when they did, and how could it continue to foster creativity in teaching and learning? It appears that the opportunity for creativity, in this instance at least, came about through co-operation and shared needs, in the face of increasing bureaucracy, managerialism and loss of autonomy within the HE sector.
Brown (1998) suggests that creativity is aligned with opportunity and ability for critical thought. ‘If we become governed by the rules of academic disciplines or by the emphasis on ‘innumerable skills or criteria of thought’ (p.38), he suggests, then critical thinking and, hence, creativity may be stilted. However, our research indicates that, while this may initially appear to be the case, closer investigation shows a level of individual and collective creativity running in conjunction with external prescription and restriction.
From Endless Frontier to Endless Transition: Changing Roles of the University
Tom Claes
Department of Philosophy,
Ghent University, Gent,
Belgium
No abstract is presently available
Questioning the Idea of The University
Sanja Petkovska
Lazarevac, Serbia
During educational reforms in the XX and XXI century one vision of University has been promoted - usable knowledge and relation to the surviving are putted as main goals to be pursue for. World transformed by modern technologies seeks for different human beings, and University as main subject of higher education should produce them with maximum of effectiveness. But, original idea of University is something completely different, and in the book The idea of The University from 1949, Karl Jaspers reminding us that main purpose of The University is not to solve social and economical problems. Pressure putted on educational system is something that push University a bit far away from accomplishing it’s basic presupposition, looking for the truth at final instance. Also, many other authors such as Derrida pointed that modern university is hardly to be seen as independent institution for gaining and revising facts, what philosophers had been called knowledge.
Despite many theories issued due knowledge society, intercultural education, lifelong learning and similar tools of achieving necessary skills for living in world we live in, there is no many really critical analysis how double bind relationship between society and university has to be solved: on the one hand, university is there to fulfill social and economical, often political purposes, on the other hand that is obviously destruction of main idea that should be unquestionable – that University should be independent. Through few critical analysis, this paper intends to point some basic questions that challenge educational reforms, and to suggest how educational theorists and practices and educational politicians should deal with them in the future.
