Being a Graduate in the Twenty-first Century
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Being a Graduate in the
Twenty-first Century
Ronald Barnett, Institute of Education, London
University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
12 April, 2011
Centre for Higher
Education Studies
Context – and Emma’s tale
A present context: the unemployed graduate
‘Last year, I created a new society for the University, for my course. That
involved quite a lot of responsibility and taking control and I’ve never been in
that, sort of, leadership position before. … the society stuff definitely helped my
degree – if no other reason than just feeling more accessible to the lecturers
and the tutors.
‘I’m [also] an artist .. I tend to do [large] landscapes in acrylics.
Q Do you see that as something quite separate or do you think it spills over in any
way?
‘Yeah, I think it does in a way because I was thinking about how long it takes me
to do the paintings, I think that’s, kind of, patience and the motivation to do it
because there’s times when I think, I just want to give up.’
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Beginning questions
So from these two starting points:
Just what is it to be a graduate in the C21?
Just what might we hope for from our students?
What might they want of themselves?
How might we understand ‘career’ now (eg amid
(worldwide) recession)
What is it to learn in a university? What are the
responsibilities of a university towards its students?
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Changing answers
Higher education - built successively around the themes of:
- knowledge/ understanding (‘initiation’)
- skills (‘employability’)
And now emerging?
- wellbeing (‘therapy’)
- citizenship (‘the global citizen’)
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The twenty-first century
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Challenge
Change
Uncertainty
Complexity/ supercomplexity
Division – differences – of values, of resources, of
perspectives
• Global dimension
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A student’s story
‘ … I had no … awareness of my own ability, so when you get an inspiring
teacher that has faith in you, or helps you understand a topic, then, you know,
it’s amazing
‘… you get excited … it makes you want to know, say, if it’s about a
particular topic, then you want to go and know more about it, you want to find
more … and that way you end up learning more.
‘… if a teacher inspires you in a subject, then you are going to pay a lot more
attention, feel that drive to get involved in a way.’
(4th yr student, post 92 university)
- A continuing pedagogical challenge
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Students as Global Citizens
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A care/ concern for the world
A sense of interconnectedness
Not living in one’s own world
Helping to bring about a better world (cf ‘wisdom’)
A project of ‘engagement’
Implies first-handedness; genuine (critical) thought & action
Impact on curricula
And on opportunities while a student
Forms of learning
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Sense that learning takes place in multiple sites
Even for the student
Is anything special about the student’s academic learning?
Lifewide learning – horizontal learning
Lifelong learning – learning through time
(We’ll come back to these matters in a moment.)
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Moving on
‘ Overall, the four years I spent at [university] have been
tiring and frustrating at times but mainly exciting, challenging
and immensely rewarding … I have graduated a different
person from who I was when I entered … better equipped for
all aspects of life’. (female engineering student)
‘It’s been a huge learning curve and building process as a
person. I am completely different from how I was in the first
place.’
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The ideas of ‘graduate attributes’ &
‘graduateness’
• (So) the world presents human being with considerable
challenges – technical, social, communicative, personal
• We look to graduates esp to be human beings who can live
purposively in the face of these challenges
• Even to be exemplary human beings
• Such a world requires, in the first place, neither knowledge
nor skills but dispositions and qualities of certain kinds
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Dispositions for a world of challenge
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A will to learn
A will to engage
A preparedness to listen
A preparedness to explore
A willingness to hold oneself open to experiences
A determination to keep going forward
Qualities for a world of challenge
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Carefulness
Courage
Resilience
Self-discipline
Integrity
Restraint
Respect for others
Openness
Dispositions and qualities compared
• The dispositions are necessary; the qualities have a degree
of optionality in them
• Hence, just a few dispositions; but many qualities
• The dispositions enable one to go forward
• The qualities colour that forward movement; give it
‘character’
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The (higher) educational significance of
the dispositions and qualities
• The dispositions and qualities are concomitants of a
genuine higher education
• Curricula and pedagogies could nurture them
• But often fall short
• Students are denied curricula space, and pedagogical
affirmation
• But the dispositions and qualities (above) are logically
implied in a ‘higher’ education.
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Nurturing the dispositions and qualities –
the linguist’s tale
I’ve always had a huge passion for languages. But coming to [x
university], I found the French and the Italian departments very different,
and I did start to feel a bit bitter towards French. I wasn’t enjoying that
any more. I loved it at school more than Italian. I found the French
department very rigid … I did feel like I was back in school, but not in the
sixth form … I didn’t feel very free to express myself in the lessons. With
the Italian department, we all sit around a big table or chairs without tables
in front. There would be a lot more interaction … It was more friendly, just
a liberating atmosphere.’
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The idea of a career
• The idea of ‘career’ implied steady progression in a particular (and challenging)
field of work
• And that there were clear boundaries between work and non-work
• Both of those axioms have to be ditched
• Against the considerations here, a ‘career’ becomes the continuous public
working out of one’s possibilities in an uncertain world
• It is the sedimentation of the dispositions and the widening and strengthening of
the qualities
• In particular, the will to learn (disposition) and courage and openness (qualities)
are paramount
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Coping with complexity
‘(beginning the student journey) is [an entry into] a scary, exciting and
fascinating world … We need … self-belief to survive and prosper … I
remember thinking … this is amazing, exciting, exhilarating and downright
terrifying … Working with a complex world is … about … not giving up
when you feel overwhelmed …’
‘… What’s fascinating about Alison’s courses is the amount of panic,
you know, that surrounds the essays and I felt it personally … It was a
very, very scary thing to do because … there were no right answers.’
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Conclusions
Becoming clearer about being a graduate in the C21 calls
for a sense of the world in which graduates find themselves
& of the responsibilities graduates have in the world
- to themselves and to others and even to the world itself
In turn, the idea of ‘career’ diminishes
But there arises larger questions as to the relationship
between graduates and the wider world
In turn, arise profound issues over curriculum & pedagogy
& in turn, arise qs as to the responsibilities of universities
And so arises the question of the university in the C21
It is that, no less, that lies before us in these considerations.
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