1st Global Conference
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Monday 12th February - Wednesday 14th February
2007
Sydney, Australia
Conference Programme, Abstract and Papers
Session 1: Issues of Teaching and Learning
Chair: Mira Crouch
Human Flourishing and Education in a Market Society
Megan
Poore
Academic Skills and Learning Centre, Division of Registrar
and Student Services,
The Australian National University, Australia
What do we value in education today, and what does this tell us about how we understand the purpose of education in the modern world? In an age of what Ronald Barnett calls 'super-complexity,' where knowing a lot about a little is seen as a marketplace survival tactic, the essentially humane and humanising nature of education is being suffocated; what is gaining dominance, instead, is a scientistic, technicist distortion of what it means to know, and of what it means to educate. In this paper, I posit that the contemporary focus on education as techne (that is, as Aristotle's efficiency and effectiveness) rather than as phroenesis (as practical wisdom) has led us to a point where many in society hold a quasi-deontic understanding of what it means to educate. Education is no longer primarily about the development of the person as a total course - about what Paulo Freire famously called our ontological vocation to become more fully human. Rather, education is fast becoming (and perhaps has already become) chiefly focused on 'the learner' and their need to survive in the marketplace. Our focus on rules and obligations in education, on preparing students to meet the needs of a market society rather than the needs of the total person, denies the essentially virtue-ethical nature of education. The upshot of all this, I argue, is that a neo-liberal ethics of the market can exact nothing other than the anaesthetising domestication of the student, which goes against the philosophical, virtue-ethical notion that education should be entirely about human flourishing.
A Personalised Curriculum?
Richard
Allen
Self-Access Learning Centre (SALC),
Kanda University of International Studies (KUIS), Chiba, Japan
In a
world which is offering more and more individuality and choice from
the customized music we download to TV scheduling that allows you to
choose what, when and where you watch even from the other side of the
world, is there a responsibility for higher education to fit in with
the trend of offering increasing individuality and choice?
With a world-class
Self-Access Learning Centre that has received a Centre of Learning
award from the Japanese Ministry of Education as an ‘outstanding
distinctive program,’ the English Language
Institute (ELI) at KUIS is investing time and money into exploring
this.
The presenter describes the emergence of the SALC at KUIS
and explain how it is playing a key role in changing students’ attitudes
with regard to what, where, when and how they learn.
He explores issues
relating to how effective the SALC has been in altering the way that
students learn. He then discusses the role of the SALC in helping the
ELI move towards its goal of a personalized curriculum for each student.
As
the SALC offers a ‘new’ environment for students to
learn, the presenter is also interested in discussing research into
who uses it and what they do. He will suggest reasons for usage patterns
and highlight possible initiatives for change in the future.
Finally,
he will outline the SALC curriculum, link this to current research
and suggest what implications his findings have for current and future
planning to keep the SALC pushing at the boundaries of providing ‘outstanding
and distinctive education.’
