Barnett Knowing and Becoming in the Higher Education Curriculum

7/28/2019 Barnett Knowing and Becoming in the Higher Education Curriculum

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Studies in Higher Education

Vol. 34, No. 4, June 2009, 429440

Knowing and becoming in the higher education curriculum

Ronald Barnett*

Emeritus Professor of Higher Education, Institute of Education, London, UKTaylorandFrancisLtdCSHE_A_377367.sgm10.1080/03075070902771978StudiesinHigherEducation0307-5079 (print)/1470-174X (online)Original Article2009Taylor&[email protected]

If a curriculum in higher education is understood to be an educational vehicle topromote a students development, and if a curriculum in higher education is alsounderstood to be built in large part around a project of knowledge, then the issuearises as to the links between knowledge and student being and becoming. Adistinction is made here between knowing as such andcoming to know, with thefocus on the latter. It is argued that the process of coming to know can be edifying:through the challenges of engaging over time with disciplines and their embeddedstandards, worthwhile dispositions and qualities may develop, the worthwhilenessarising through the formation of epistemic virtues. Examples of suchdispositions and qualities are identified, with differences between dispositions, onthe one hand, and qualities, on the other hand, being observed. Educationalimplications of understanding the nurturing of student being in this way aresketched, with a set of 10 principles offered for curricula and pedagogy. It issuggested, finally, that the clarifying of the relationship between knowing and

being is not only a value-laden but also a pressing matter.

Introduction

We may take a curriculum in higher education to be a pedagogic vehicle for effectingchanges in human beings through particular kinds of encounter with knowledge.

Straightaway, such a statement invites questions as to: (1) the kinds of changes in

human beings that might characteristically be sought in an educational process termed

higher education, and (2) the particular kinds of encounter with knowledge thatmight engender the sought-for changes in (1). In this identification of these two issues,

issue (1) is prior to issue (2): we cannot determine the particular kinds of encounter

with knowledge that are likely to be effective until we have determined the kinds of

changes that we might be seeking to engender.These matters may seem formal and even abstract, yet they raise perhaps the most

profound issues facing higher education today. Putting the matter crudely, these two

issues may be restated in the form of questions: what should we teach? and how

should we teach? However, such reformulations would be crude: these questions

would both point us towards specific kinds of cognitive material on the one hand andtowards particular kinds of teaching method on the other hand. That the issues in front

of us can be reduced to such mundane dimensions is to be avoided.

Indeed, our task is none other than beginning to develop an educational theory of

perhaps the fundamental challenge in higher education. By educational theory, I meanit here in its former sense of an attempt to provide a coherent set of high-level ideas

as to the ends that educational processes should be serving and the general character

*Email: [email protected]


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430 R. Barnett

of the educational processes oriented towards fulfilling those ends (Long 2008). In

other words, I am not attempting to undertake a quasi-empirical inquiry. This articleis not, therefore, situated as such in the sociology of education and the work (associated

especially with that of Bernstein) charting the de facto constitution of, and the rules

governing, pedagogy and curriculum and their boundaries, significant as that field is.

Rather, the task before us is essentially a philosophical task, and it takes the form of

social philosophy. At its heart lies an attempt to specify educational goals and to deter-mine the necessary implications if any for pedagogical and curricula processes.

This article, accordingly, alights on a number of concepts and makes some concep-

tual distinctions, and it goes on on that basis to offer a number of educational

principles to assist the shaping of curricula that might help positively to encouragestudents becoming. The extent to which these concepts and ideas hold water and

provide resources for action would have to be judged partly through empirical

research. It is likely that the concepts and principles developed here would play out

differently in different countries, and across different institutions and disciplines.

Prospects of knowledge

Young has recently urged a research agenda of recovering knowledge (2008). That

such a proposal holds water anywhere in educational settings should surely be anoccasion for at least one raised eyebrow, but Youngs plea has much on its side. More

than that, in the context of our story here, we can observe that such a move is needed

even in relation to higher education. This should be felt to be strange for surely

higher education, at least, has to be ineradicably tied to knowledge? It is the case,

however, that knowledge has been increasingly absent of late in debate over higher

education. The Dearing Report (National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education1997), for example, contains little mention of knowledge as a major component within

the curriculum.

How might we account for this near disappearance of knowledge from debateabout higher education? As with all such discursive shifts, we have to look to a combi-

nation of influences at work. On the one hand, in public policy, the student has been

constructed as an acting being rather than a cognitive being. Arguably, this has paid

off for we have seen over the last 30 years or so in the UK at least the emergence

of what might be termed the performative student (cf. Lyotard 1984). This studentis replete with transferable skills, contemplates with equanimity the prospect of

multiple careers in the lifespan, is entrepreneurial and has an eye to the main chance,and possesses a breezy self-confidence in facing the unpredictability that characterizes

contemporary life. Such a shift heralds a transformation not only in what we take astudent (and a graduate) to be but also in what students have actually become.

From knowing to doing: this move lies at the centre of this new sense of the being

of the student. In the process, knowledge has receded from the frontline of what is to

count as higher education. In an Internet age, even where it retains a presence,

knowledge as such dwindles: now what is at issue is a students ability to gaininformation from the databases and much less the students own mastery of a knowl-

edge field. The mantra of learning how to learn arises (National Committee of

Inquiry into Higher Education 1997). Knowledge recedes from view.

If the rise of the performative student in rhetoric and in fact heralds a diminu-tion of the place of knowledge as an educational interest, a separate diminution of the


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Studies in Higher Education 431

Here, again, a complex of views comes into play. There is, firstly, a sense that knowl-

edge is obscure and strange and its possession difficult and, thereby, somehow elitist.Such a view contains two illicit moves: firstly, a conflation of the felt strangeness of

knowledge and its acquisition; and secondly, the conflation of the attainment of under-

standing (of knowledge) and the value placed on that understanding (as elitist). Still,

despite its muddle-headedness, such a view is surely readily apparent. It lurks in the

view that knowledge is socially constructed, a view that often carries the silentonly or merely before the socially constructed. And it lurks in the antipathy at

least in the UK towards intellectuals. As Isaiah Berlin observed, the British have

never had an intelligentsia. Knowledge and sheer knowing have come to be seen as a

barrier to social cohesion and equity. In his explorations of knowledge and power,Foucault (1980) was in effect exploring the public aphorism precisely that knowledge

is power. And so knowledge as a public project has come to be repudiated in the UK

at least.

Here, knowledge once furnished a grand narrative, offering ways forward to a

social enlightenment and progress. Now, after various technological disasters andissues such as the intrusion of the pharmaceutical companies into academic knowl-

edge production and fears about nuclear energy, climate change and the harming of

ecological systems the public value of science itself is doubted. Again, there are

weaknesses in the argument, in particular, in the elision of science and technology.But the perceptions are real enough for all that. For formal backing for these views,

those unlikely partners, Habermas and Foucault, have both been called into the lists.

Knowledge, then, has come in for a hard time, both as an educational aim and as

a matter of public enterprise. As a result, both higher education and the wider society

have come to downplay knowledge. Forty years ago, the American sociologist, Nisbet

(1971), noted the decline of the academic dogma, where the dogma in question wasindeed knowledge. So the attack on knowledge is far from new; it goes back at least

several hundred years to Galileo (who was forced by the religious authorities to recant

his scientific findings) if not two thousand years to Socrates (who was obliged by theauthorities to consume hemlock). Yet, perhaps the form of the contemporary vulner-

ability of science is new. On the one hand, in a technologically rich and changing

world, a sense emerges that knowledge cannot provide much in the way of the core of

a sound education for a world of incessant unpredictability; instead, a much wider

form of human being is called for. On the other hand, a sense arises that academicknowledge is suspect, if not in its form, then at least in its internal interests.

These two charges against knowledge the one pedagogical and the other ethical have been brought together in a way, in the critique mounted by Gibbons and his

associates (Gibbons et al. 1994) over the past decade. This is the critique that hasspawned the well-known mode 2 conception of knowledge, the argument being that

alongside conventional academic propositional knowledge (mode 1) the contemporary

world is bringing forth a new kind of knowledge that is interdisciplinary, team-based

and short-lived (with the multidisciplinary teams somewhat ephemeral), and that

engages directly with practical problems in the field. There are also hints of a morevalue-laden view to the effect that not only is mode 2 knowledge supplanting mode 1

knowledge in its significance for knowledge production but that this is a desirable

situation: for mode 1 read stuffiness; for mode 2, read avant-garde and glitzy.

We do not have to delve into the intrinsic validity of the mode 2 thesis here. Whatwe can note, though, are two things. Firstly, driving up mode 2 knowledge as especially


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432 R. Barnett

world, there is neither just one mode nor even just two modes of knowledge. Even in

the literature of the West, there are extensive references to tacit knowledge, processknowledge, knowing-how and practical knowledge. Additionally, categories such as

the mysterious, the spiritual and the magical remind us of categories of knowledge

embedded in Eastern and African cultures. But we are just beginning perhaps to see

boundaries dissolve between these ideas of knowledge across cultures: witness the

reaffirmation of wisdom as a worthwhile concept, and the identification of mysticalanthropology (McIntosh 1998) as a form of knowing in the West.

So the mode 2 thesis is at best a partial view of knowledge. Further, we can say

that it is educationally unhelpful, since any undue attention that it receives will be

liable to reduce the forms of student beingthat come into view as pedagogic goals. Itis not so much a matter of the intrinsic validity of the mode 2 thesis but more a matter

of the idea that there could be just two modes of knowledge. If, as might fairly be

contended, there are numerous ways of coming into a valid relationship with the

world, and so of knowing the world, then there are multiple bases on which the forma-

tion of students might be built.

Knowing, not just knowledge

This is not the occasion to attempt a classification of valid ways of knowing the world.What we need to observe for the argument here are two distinctions. Firstly, we should

distinguish between knowledge and knowing. Knowledge inhabits what Popper called

World III, independent of things in the world (World I) and ideas about the world that

furnish peoples minds (World II). For Popper (1975), it was World III that was

important in understanding the world, for it was that that constitutes objective knowl-

edge. Wanting to drive up the significance and substance of Knowledge with acapital K, as it were, Popper implicitly downgraded the mind and ideas developed and

held in the mind. But from a pedagogical point of view, it is precisely the mind, and

ideas in the mind, that the educator is wanting to see develop, not knowledge as such.Here, then, lies our first distinction at this point, between knowledge (existing as a

collectively attested set of understandings in the world) and knowing (an individuals

personal hold on the world).

The second distinction to be made here is that between knowledge of the truth and

coming to know the truth. Again, this is crucial from a pedagogical point of view.Bothcognitive situations are important to the educator, but they raise quite different consid-

erations. On the one hand, there is the issue as to what a student knows and the relatedissue of the grounds for the students claim to know. It is these cognitive situations

that characteristically form the basis for assessment, especially summative assess-ment. On the other hand, there is the issue as to how the student reaches that state of

knowing. How is it that a student comes to know the truth? By what pedagogical

processes might a student whose initial state of understanding might be rudimentary

or even opinionated be brought into a state of forming well-founded claims about

the world? These latter considerations are precisely the matters that come into play sofar as pedagogy is concerned, for pedagogy may be construed as the formation of a set

of principles upon which teachers can assist students in moving effectively and

efficiently from a relative state of ignorance to a state of well-found knowing.

On the basis of these two distinctions, we can make a further set of observations.Firstly, it has long been held from the Greeks onwards that knowing (as a cognitive


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the nature of coming to know the world. That is to say, coming to know the world is

uplifting; the process of knowing brings forward personally worthwhile attributes.Knowing has ethical properties. It is in this relationship between knowing and being

that much of the force of the idea of liberal education lies.

The idea of liberal education is notoriously ambiguous; and two of its senses are

relevant to our story here. On the one hand, liberal education contains the idea that the

attainment of true knowledge brings a freeing from the world. Through knowledgeone is no longer subject to the world and its dogmas, but now has achieved some kind

of distancing from and even control over the world. In Marxist and neo-Marxist

versions, this view goes further, claiming that knowledge brings a freeing from

illusion, from ideology. This set of claims has been important in education for out ofit has arisen the suggestion that education pursued with these ideas in view may have

emancipatory properties.

On the other hand, liberal education may separately point to the processes by

which one achieves this state of emancipated nirvana in coming to live by the light of

truth. In this view, the pedagogical process becomes crucial, for here the claim is thatthe acts of and processes necessarily required in coming into a secure relationship

with knowledge themselves have educational effects. A key issue then arises: how

might it be that the processes of attaining knowledge can have such desirable and

profound effects? Coming to know brings forward desirable human qualities asdistinct from knowing itself. It is as if the journey is at least if not more important

than the arrival. It is this set of ideas on which I want to focus in the rest of this

article; the idea that the processes of coming to know can have worthwhile educa-

tional effects in themselves.

Dispositions and qualities

If the claims that we have just been looking at are to hold water, we would need to

give some kind of account of the aspects of human being that are likely to come intoplay in such processes of coming-to-know. I want to come at this matter by distin-

guishing between dispositions and qualities (Barnett 2007).

Dispositions

I take dispositions to be those tendencies of human beings to engage in some way with

the world around them. Dispositions do not merely supply energy; they are forms ofenergy. Dispositions furnish a will of various kinds. Here are some dispositions that

efforts to come to know the world may call for:

a will to learn; a will to engage; a preparedness to listen;

a preparedness to explore, to hold oneself out to new experiences;

a determination to keep going forward.

Qualities

Qualities are the manifestations of dispositions in the world. They give colour and


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434 R. Barnett

their dispositions, so they exhibit various qualities. The qualities characterize an indi-

vidual; they are the individuals character. Here are some qualities that may especiallybe engendered through ones efforts to come seriously to know the world: courage,

resilience, carefulness, integrity, self-discipline, restraint, respect for others, openness,

generosity, authenticity.

Dispositions and qualities compared

As stated, dispositions form human beings in a fundamental way. They provide the

modes in which human beings each take up intentional stances towards the world.

They supply the possibilities for going forward, for engaging with the world. They

generate a dynamic relationship between human beings and the world. They not onlymerely mark off human beings from inert substances, but also from animals (so far as

we know). Through their dispositions, human beings orient themselves to, and engage

with, the world in particular ways. Through their dispositions, human beings take on

human beingas such.If dispositions provide being, qualities provide character; literally so, in a sense,

for qualities provide character to a persons dispositions. A student has a will to learn,

but how do they exemplify this will? Do they exemplify it carefully, with respect for

others encountered on the way and with resilience when things get tough, or is their

will to learn exhibited in a cavalier way, is this will impervious to others (who mayeven be trying to help), and does it turn out to be fragile under pressure?

On this view, therefore, dispositions are fundamental in that it is they that supply

the energy, the wherewithal to press on and to keep going; to engage with the world

in some way. Qualities are secondary, in that it is they that characterize the actual form

taken by the dispositions as they are carried into the world with all its challenges. Evenso, dispositions cannot show themselves in the world unless they are accompanied by

qualities; to that extent, the two aspects of human being take in each others washing.

While there are such differences between dispositions and qualities, they have in

common that they are both facets of human being that are necessarily implicated in apedagogical relationship in higher education. For higher education calls for an authen-

tic appropriation of knowledge on the part of the learner; the learner has to own his or

her own encounters with knowledge. This is what is meant, in part, by the idea of

understanding. This apparently simple term is full of challenges to the educator inhigher education, for it raises profound issues as to the forms of human being that a

genuine understanding calls for.Just what are the dispositions and qualities that are required in order to attain a

proper understanding? The short answer to this question is: those dispositions and

qualities that are themselves characteristic of the student field(s) of study. In otherwords, we may hypothesize that different intellectual and professional fields call for

particular mixes of dispositions and qualities. That in turn raises empirical questions

that we cannot pursue. But there are more general matters that have to claim our

attention here.

Knowing and becoming

If there is any substance in what I have said, the prospect opens that there is a rela-tionship between knowledge and being. Or, rather, to pick up an earlier distinction, the


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the other hand. For the suggestion it is no more than that at present is that the

process of coming to know has person-forming properties. So the prospect openingbefore us, more strictly, is that knowing has implications for becoming. And the

specific suggestion here has been that those implications may be understood in terms

of the formation of the dispositions and qualities characteristic of the practices in the

different fields of knowledge.

To put it in another way, my suggestion is that coming to know has a propensityto encourage the formation of epistemic virtues (Brady and Pritchard 2003). The

dispositions and qualities that we encountered earlier may be seen as examples of

epistemic virtues. A deep and personal encounter with knowledge calls for and helps

to nourish certain ethically worthwhile forms of human being. In turn, a programmeof study in higher education may be seen as an educational device for bringing on

these epistemic virtues in an effective and efficient way. That is to say, an individual

could effect such self-transformations as an autodidact; but a well-orchestrated course

of study in higher education at least has this prospect before it: that it can engender

the formation of epistemic virtue; which is to say virtue itself.We may note that it is not unusual, on the occasion of a university graduation cere-

mony, for the proud graduate to say to her or his equally proud parents in front of a

key tutor that this course has changed my life. They do not characteristically say that

I acquired lots of knowledge on this course or I gained many new skills. We canonly make sense of such an observation on the part of the student if we invoke

concepts such as being and becoming: through the students course of study, their

being was transformed. Indeed, we might even say that they became a new self. Their

knowing endeavours brought forth a process of becoming, of epistemic becoming.

And so there is this extraordinary and intimate relationship between knowing and

becoming.We are entitled to use the term extraordinary since, despite the idea having been

present for two thousand years, and its having formed much of the basis of the idea of

liberal education, still we have little insight into this relationship. I am not aware ofthe matter having been of serious interest in studies on higher education; and it has

barely seen the light in the philosophy of education literature (discussions in the

literature over the concept of Bildung are perhaps a rare example: e.g. Lvlie,

Mortensen, and Nordenbo [2003], but, even there, my sense is that the precise matter

that I am raising has seldom been raised).The matter is simply this: how can it be that a serious encounter with knowledge

can have implications for human being itself? How, in this sense, is it that epistemol-ogy has ontological implications? To what extent is this a philosophical matter and to

what extent might it be an empirical matter? Certainly, there are empirical aspectsworthy of examination: for example, characteristically, how might the fields of study

across disciplines and vocational areas differ as to the set and weight of dispositions

and qualities that they are likely to engender? But there remain major philosophical

issues as to what is to count as an epistemic virtue, and the relationships between any

such epistemic virtues so identified. For example, to return to our earlier lists, whatmight be the relationship between the dispositions of having a will to learn and

having a will to engage? And what, too, might be the relationships between the qual-

ities of courage and resilience, or, say, between self-discipline and restraint?

But then the further question arises: are the lists put up earlier complete? Forexample, so far as the dispositions are concerned, perhaps a will to speak might be


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436 R. Barnett

has a willingness to speak, her (or his) becoming may be unduly limited. Students

should not be permitted to construct themselves into an easy rider mode, riding onthe back, so to speak, of the engagements and happenings opened up by other more

adventurous souls in the class. And, so far as the qualities are concerned, it might be

felt that, say, intellectual humility should be added to the qualities in the earlier list.

Through intellectual humility, one is as severe on ones own intellectual efforts as

those of others. Through intellectual humility, too, one allows ones intellectualefforts to speak for themselves rather than unduly promoting them for and by oneself.

These possibilities and questions serve merely to indicate that the specification of

worthwhile dispositions and qualities is inherently controversial. One reason for this

situation, to return to our main theme, is that the identification of worthwhile disposi-tions and qualities raises both ethical and epistemological issues; which is to say that

the matter is fundamentally philosophical in character. On the one hand, there is the

issue as to which dispositions and qualities are worthwhile. In turn, this raises issues

as to the concept of worthwhileness in the context of higher education. On the other

hand, there is the issue touched on earlier as to the conceptual relationshipsbetween knowledge and knowing on the one side, and student formation on the other

side.

I shall avoid the first issue here and instead will offer a brief comment on the

second issue. My observation here concerns the nature of disciplines. Here, I use theterm discipline with a small d as it were; that is to say, in the spirit of Bourdieu

(1998), as denoting broad fields of intellectual and/or professional endeavour. These

fields have been built up over time through epistemic communities and, characteristi-

cally where they appear in higher education, have an underpinning in a research liter-

ature. Such fields are identifiable in their having their own key concepts, truth criteria

and forms of life, for example, in their modes of reason and judgement. This is to saythat they have their own standards embedded in them. In turn, such fields produce a

measure of strangeness; they offer perspectives on the world not ordinarily available.

Seen in this way, disciplines are aptly named. They call for discipline on the partof those who are trying to work within them. An engagement with and in a discipline

requires the formation of a mode of life characterized by an attention to certain rules

of going on. This is in other words to observe that disciplines have standards

written into them, the relevant standards appertaining to the practices and their

realization that mark out each field.It is here, through the standards that characterize each discipline, that the forma-

tion of dispositions and qualities comes about. There is, though, a fundamental differ-ence here between dispositions and qualities (which is additional to the differences

that we observed earlier). The dispositions are universal. That is to say they arecharacteristic of any disciplinary field. Each and every disciplinary field if a student

is to make progress requires the formation of dispositions, such as a will to learn, a

will to engage, a preparedness to listen, a preparedness to explore and to hold oneself

out to new experiences, and a determination to keep going forward. Unless disposi-

tions such as these come to be formed in the student, the student cannot makesustained and significant progress. There is a tight logic at work here, therefore.

With qualities, however, matters are slightly different. Qualities are more singular

in character. We can still say that dispositions call for the qualities that we identified

earlier, such as those of courage, resilience, carefulness, integrity, self-discipline,restraint, respect for others, openness and generosity. However, the extent to which


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collective field of endeavour, itself developed over time through critical engagement

both with the world and across teams and individuals, will I think call for all ofthe qualities just evinced. But their force and their priority will differ, discipline by

discipline. Also, even within a single disciplinary formation, individuals will vary as

to the inflexions with which they interpret the encouragements to take on different

qualities. So there is a logic at work here, but it is a somewhat loose logic, as we may

term it.We have here, it may just be, the beginnings of an explanation for that phenome-

non of the graduate remarking that this course has changed my life. For the process

of coming to know in a serious way not in a dilettante way through an encounter

with one or more disciplines (which may be more or less practical and/or theoretical)encourages the formation of what I have been terming epistemic virtues, namely

certain dispositions and qualities. What is before us, therefore, is none other than the

formation of human being itself. And this formation arises out of there being standards

embedded in the forms of life into which students are being invited to enter. There are

differences across the disciplines in that they characteristically invite a particular mixof qualities, for the different forms of knowing in question call for different forms of

engagement on the part of the would-be knower. The dispositions, on the other hand,

are universal. Any discipline worth its presence in higher education calls for each

student to form the wherewithal to keep going, to keep pressing on and to have adynamic structure of being.

This being, this becoming, comes about, it will be noticed, through the process of

coming to know and to understand. That is to say, to pick up an earlier distinction, the

very process of coming to know has educational properties irrespective of actually

reaching a position of knowing itself. The latter itself will doubtless also have educa-

tional properties, but in this article I am concerned to unravel the structure of comingto know itself. The pedagogical process itself has virtuous possibilities, independently

of any endpoint that the student may reach.

Curricula and pedagogical implications

In broad terms, what might be the implications of these reflections for curricula and

pedagogy in higher education? Clearly, from the account given here, especially as to

the disciplinary wearing of qualities (as distinct from dispositions), only some generalprinciples can be essayed.

My basic claim in this article has been that knowledge and more specifically theprocess of coming to know and to form an understanding (whether theoretical or

more practical) has implications for the students being. To put it more formally,epistemology and ontology are irreducible to each other but are interlinked. Here, in

this article, we have focused on the influences of knowledge on being, but, in the

context of higher education in particular, there is also a reciprocal case to be made

whereby being can affect knowing itself; the direction of travel can flow from ontol-

ogy to epistemology. But that is a separate case for another day. Seen in this way, thequestions in front of us are straightforward: what kinds of curricula and what kinds of

pedagogies are likely to elicit the formation of the kinds of (epistemologically linked)

dispositions and qualities the epistemic virtues that we identified earlier?

The questions follow naturally from the argument here, but it is worth noting thatthe very asking of the questions shapes the ground of the inquiry. For the questions


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438 R. Barnett

requisite learning is bound to be inadequate. If the kinds of epistemic virtues earlier

identified are to be fashioned, then curricula and pedagogy have to be more than amatter of an encounter with knowledge. To say here that curricula and pedagogy have

also to be concerned with skills and attitudes is by the way; what is in question here

is the formation of epistemic (that is, knowledge based) dispositions and qualities.

So far as curricula are concerned, the following principles form themselves at least

as candidates for consideration, namely that curricula should:

(1) be sufficiently demanding, such that resilience may form;

(2) offercontrasting insights and perspectives, such that openness may develop;

(3) require a continual presence and commitment (even through course regula-tions) on the part of the student, such that self-discipline may come about;

(4) contain sufficientspace and spaces, such that authenticity and integrity are

likely to unfold.

In turn, so far as pedagogy is concerned, the following principles form themselves,namely that pedagogies should:

(5) require students to engage with each other, such that respect for others,

generosity and a preparedness to listen might be engendered;(6) make explicit the relevant standards such that carefulness and restraint

might ensue;

(7) be encouraging, such that a student might develop the preparedness to keep

going forward and hold (herself) out to new experiences;

(8) enthuse the students, giving them new spirit, and so usher forth their will to

learn;(9) require students to put forward theirown profferings in order that the courage

to take up a position and stake a claim might be developed;

(10)require students togive of themselves and be active in and towards the situa-tions that they find themselves in and so develop a will to engage.

A majority of these principles focus on pedagogy as distinct from the curricula. This

isnt happenstance. It is in the immediate relationship between teacher and taught that

the aspects of human being in question here are likely to be formed, as distinct fromthe mediate relationship between a student and the curriculum which he/she experi-

ences. Certainly, the student can and should take up her (or his) own stances towardsthe curriculum and make it her (or his) own to some extent, so that there is a crucial

distinction between the curriculum as approved by the university (and other relevantauthorities) and the curriculum as experienced by the student. But it is the pedagogical

relationship that actively works (or not) to elicit the dispositions and qualities that in

turn furnish the wherewithal for the student to appropriate the curriculum in ways

meaningful to her (or him).

Reflection

We noted earlier that, for some three decades or more, there has developed an agenda

of skills in higher education. As a result, western universities have slid almost imper-ceptibly from a dogma of knowledge (as such) to a dogma of skills: the knowing


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educational project. The rationale is that, in a changing world characterized by a

global economy, a project of knowledge is insufficient as an educational ordering.Indeed, on this perception, it is not at all clear that knowledge per se has anything to

offer educationally (for knowledge is soon out of date). What are required instead

are capabilities with which the graduate can engage purposively with the world.

As I suggested, this move, which has been nothing less than a largely unnoticed

revolution in higher education, can be understood as the exchange of one dogma foranother: from knowledge to skills. Even if both moments are held together, still they

are unstable; they will topple over. A third pillar is required; and here enters the idea

which has formed the core of this article that of being.

Beingcomes into these reflections in this way. The world of change is not merelycomplex; it is supercomplex. That is to say, the world not merely presents with a

surfeit of data and entities and messages that overwhelm our systems, personal and

institutional (such is complexity), but the world is such that we can no longer be sure

how even to describe the world that faces us. It is a world that is already replete with

manifold interpretations.In turn, this world presents us with problems of being. Who we are, how we are to

live with the world and with each other, how we are even to know the world: all these

matters are contested. A world of supercomplexity permits us no way of securely

determining these matters; and this epistemological reflection has ontological impli-cations. The concept of uncertainty one of the key concepts in understanding

supercomplexity underscores this point for it looks in two directions. It is epistemo-

logical in character (pointing to limitations in our knowledge) and it is ontological

(pointing to moments of insecurity or even anxiety as being is dislocated).

In such a world, in which all significant matters have become inherently disputable

(there is no retreat to a world of secure categories), a genuine higher education cannotcontent itself with a project either of knowledge or of skills, or even of both. It has to

do with being, for it is being that is fundamentally challenged in and by a world of

supercomplexity. Neither knowledge nor skills can furnish the wherewithal to formpersons adequate to such a situation: on the one hand, knowledge will not just be out

of date, but will always be insufficient to describe the novel and unstable situations

that present themselves; on the other hand, skills are always addressed to known

situations, and cannot be addressed to unforeseen (and unforeseeable) situations. So

(human) being itself has to come into view, for the fundamental problem nowbecomes: how is one to live amid supercomplexity?

Our explorations in this article suggest a particular set of considerations; namely,that the kind of discipline-based knowledge that characteristically forms the basis for

higher education could help to form dispositions and qualities that offer a form ofhuman being that just may be adequate to a situation of supercomplexity.

Conclusions

I have tried to show that it may be possible to sustain an argument to the effect thatknowing can influence being; and influence it for the better. Through ones knowing

efforts, ones being may be enhanced. It follows that the matter of the relationship

between knowledge and the curriculum (a matter taken up elsewhere in this issue) is

more than merely a matter of the relationship between knowledge and the curriculumper se. I have advanced this thesis through an argument hinged on what I have


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440 R. Barnett

indicate the curricula and pedagogical implications of such a thesis. I have ended this

article by suggesting that the thesis has wider implications than it merely suggestinga new project for higher education, for it may help to point the way towards the elic-

itation of modes of human being that may be particularly appropriate for an age of

supercomplexity.

Here, then, lie profound challenges for the curriculum, that of engaging both with

being and with a world of supercomplexity. Knowledge and skills are not redundantbut they need to be augumented with dispositions and qualities, both of which given

principled curricula and pedagogies may be enhanced through adept processes of

knowing and understanding. Knowing and being (and becoming) are linked but in

ways that we have barely begun to comprehend. This comprehension cannot itselfsimply be a technical matter, or even purely a philosophical matter, for working out

the connection between knowing and being/becoming requires a thinking through of

the kinds of human being that we want our students to become; and that is partly a

matter of our value choices. This is a profoundly difficult task. Time, however, may

not be on our side.

References

Barnett, R. 2007. A will to learn: Being a student in an age of uncertainty. Maidenhead: OpenUniversity Press.

Bourdieu, P. 1998. Practical reason. Cambridge: Polity Press.Brady, M., and D. Pritchard, eds. 2003. Moral and epistemic virtues. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Foucault, M. 1980. Power/knowledge. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf.Gibbons, M., C. Limoges, H. Nowotny, S. Schwartzman, P. Scott, and M. Trow. 1994. The

new production of knowledge. London: Sage.

Long, F. 2008. Troubled theory in the debate between Hirst and Carr. Journal of Philosophyof Education 42, no. 1: 13347.Lvlie, L., K.P. Mortensen, and S.E. Nordenbo, eds. 2003. Educating humanity: Bildung in

postmodernity. Malden, MA: Blackwell.Lyotard, J.-F. 1984. The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Manchester:

Manchester University.Masschelein, J. 2000. Can education still be critical? Journal of Philosophy of Education 34,

no. 4: 60315.McIntosh, M.A. 1998. Mystical theology: The integrity of spirituality and theology. Malden,

MA: Blackwell.National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education. 1997. Higher education in the learning

society. London: HMSO.Nisbet, R. 1971. The degradation of the academic dogma. London: Heinemann.

Popper, K. 1975. Objective knowledge: An evolutionary approach. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.

Young, M.F.D. 2008. Bringing knowledge back in: From social constructivism to social real-ism in the sociology of education. Abingdon: Routledge.


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Barnett Knowing and Becoming in the Higher Education Curriculum

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