1st Global Conference
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Monday 12th February - Wednesday 14th February
2007
Sydney, Australia
Conference Programme, Abstract and Papers
Session 6: Transformations: of Knowledge,
with Knowledge
Chair: Grant Duncan
Managing Knowledge Pluralism
Ram
Vemuri
School of Law and Business,
Charles Darwin University,
Darwin,
Australia
Knowledge is not just out there in reality for humans
to use as and when they feel like it. Decisions of either explicit
or implicit nature are made when acquiring knowledge as well as when
and how it is used. There are costs incurred, and benefits accrued,
in knowledge acquisition and use. In short, for achieving best outcomes,
however one defines these, knowledge must be managed. This paper
is about how knowledge can be best managed.
Knowledge in this paper
relates closely with what Michel Foucault stated in “The Anatomy
of Knowledge and the Order of Things” and
is therefore considered interpretative, situational and above all else
powerful. It is considered interpretative because humans are involved
in its creation and use. It is situational as it does not exist in
a vacuum. There are underlying motivational forces which make humans
pursue it. It is sought after and acquired for specific purposes. Knowledge
is therefore considered power. For some it gives rise to power, while
for others it is power itself.
This paper is organized into four sections.
The first section provides evidence of existence of knowledge pluralism.
It describes different types of knowledge that currently exist in the
popular literature. The second section examines contemporary reactions
to knowledge pluralism. It suggests that most reactions portray global
similarity and are confined to creating hybrid and integrated knowledge.
The third section of the paper makes a case for adopting managerial
directives of efficiency and effectiveness in managing knowledge pluralism.
This warrants escaping searches for hybrid and integrated systems and
adopting a more ‘process’ rather
than an ‘outcome’ based approach for integrating knowledge
pluralism. Finally, the paper concludes with a plea to move the debate
from pursuing identification of commonalities to managing differences
for enabling sustainability of knowledge pluralism.
Changing Priorities in the Japanese University
English Curriculum
Robert
Kirkpatrick
Prefectural University of Kumamoto, Japan.
This paper discusses the
increasing pressure on English departments to prioritize communicative
English skills at the expense of traditional academic literary goals.
This move is supported by the Ministry of Education (Mombusho), the
university administration, faculty outside of the English department,
and indeed by many students- all of who see English as primarily as
an tool necessary in an international economy.
As an example a new directive at the Prefectural University of Kumamoto
asks that students graduate with a high score in an international English
proficiency test. This measure is expected to: motivate students; to
be a useful ‘certificate’ when searching for employment;
and to give the Ministry of Education a means of rating university
English departments (based on students average score in the test).
The paper includes interviews with teaching staff and students and
looks at reasons for and against the new trend.
Pericles was a Plumber: Towards Resolving
the ‘Vocational’ versus ‘Liberal’ Dichotomy
in Legal Education
Craig
Collins
School of Law,
University of New England,
Armidale, New South Wales, Australia
Professor William Twining famously
represented competing objectives of legal education as a tension between
polar images of the lawyer as ‘Pericles’ or ‘the
plumber’. Reference
to Pericles, an Athenian statesman who presided over a Golden Age,
evokes the image of the lawyer as ‘the law-giver, the enlightened
policy-maker, the wise judge’. Against this sits the image
of the lawyer as a plumber – one who has mastered a category
of specialised knowledge (‘the law’) and certain technical
skills. Twining decried recourse to rigid dichotomies between ‘education’ and ‘training’; ‘academic’ and ‘practical’; ‘theory’ and ‘practice’; ‘liberal’ and ‘vocational’;
and ‘law’ and ‘other disciplines’. He
called for rappraochement, and this beyond any ‘uneasy
patched-up affair’.
This paper argues that ‘Pericles [though
not the historical figure] was a plumber’. The missing
link between these two images of ‘the lawyer’ is the dimension
of time. Within
that dimension, one might begin to notice the significance of developmental
stages and life experience. When this is recognised, legal education
becomes concerned not so much with teaching students ‘to be’ Pericles,
nor a plumber – nor for that matter any hybrid creature - but
rather with providing a secure foundation of knowledge from which these
various things might become possible. In other words, legal education
is but one common and discrete stage towards realising technical legal
proficiency which, in turn, becomes a necessary stage for potential
transformation into an ‘enlightened policy-maker’ or ‘wise
judge’.
In pursuing this argument, the paper uses as a case-study
the life of a judge who arguably most closely resembles a modern, Australian
Pericles. Sir Owen Dixon was a justice of the High Court of Australia
(1929-1964; Chief Justice from 1952). Many contemporaries considered
Dixon to be ‘the greatest judicial lawyer in the English-speaking
world’. He also combined roles as a diplomat and mediator
on the international stage. Yet all of this was underpinned by
his marked proficiency in exercising doctrinal knowledge and ‘high
technique’, and an earlier university education directed towards
grasping core legal principles and the classics.