1. A Curriculum for an
Uncertain World
Ronald Barnett, Institute of Education, London
Annual conference on Learning and Teaching
University of Liverpool, 23 June 2010
Centre for Higher
Education Studies
Sub-brand to go here

2. 2
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 acylics.
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.’

3. 3
Beginning questions
So from this starting point:
 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?
 Employability? Career?
 But, NB,
 global recession,
 graduate unemployment,
 weak and fluid patters of transition from HE-world of work,
 successively shorter periods of employment in any one area,
 ‘portfolio’ work patterns
 Being a citizen, contributing to the social, political and cultural fabric
 So, what is it to learn in a university? What are the responsibilities of a university towards
its students?

4. 4
Changing answers
Built successively around the themes of:
- knowledge/ understanding (‘initiation’)
- skills (‘employability’)
Problems:
- Neither my knowledge nor my skills may be adequate tomorrow
- I may have all the knowledge or skills in the world but (a) I many not be inclined
to use them; (b) I may use them inappropriately and may even harm the world.

5. 5
The twenty-first century
• Challenge
• Change
• Uncertainty – of/in the world; in one’s very being
• Complexity/ supercomplexity
• Division – differences – of values, of resources, of
perspectives
• Global dimension

6. 6
Employability – an inadequate concept
• ‘Employability’ – a concept that denotes the transition from higher
education to the wider world
• Inadequate concept, a thin concept
• But the ‘world of work’ is a troublesome concept
• Not merely graduate unemployment
• Or rapid transitions – from accountancy to primary school teacher – a
fluid world
• But implies the wider world & the world of work are coterminous
• But there is a wider world beyond wld of work that exerts its calling

7. 7
Being in the world
• Not just being in the world but being in the world;
• What is it to be in the world?
• In a world that is changing and contestable at that?
• We have to be in certain kinds of way;
• Persons of a certain kind
• So is emerging a (renewed) concern with students as
persons

8. 8
A schema
• Acting
• Being
• Knowing
NB: even knowledge and action require engagement,
ultimately; they cannot be inert.

9. 9
Forms of inquiry (Liu)
• Intellectual inquiry
• Practical inquiry
• Emotional inquiry
– Being oneself; placing one’s being into the inquiry
(cf the personal pronoun (‘I’) in PhD theses)

10. 10
Crossing the disciplines
- The weightings of the three dimensions vary
- Characteristically, one is dominant
- Compare sciences/ humanities/ professional/ creative arts fields
- Other dimensions (Bigland; Becher; Liu):
- Hard/soft (quantitative/ qualitative)
- Academic/ professional

11. 11
Reclaiming the student
• Both knowledge and skills are exterior
• Now, the student as person is being called forth
• Reflective logs; attitudes; values; ‘global citizen’; personality
structure; group projects
• Sense in post-modernity that the individual has to give of
herself; always remaking herself
• A heavy burden (that is too much for some)

12. 12
The re-birth of breadth
• Formerly, breadth – a matter of breadth across disciplines
• Then a mix of knowledge and skills
• Now: the insertion of the student into the process of inquiry
– ‘Personalisation’
• But unduly technologicised, eg:
– Personal tutoring systems;
– Problem-based inquiry;
– Interactive WLEs

13. 13
Lifewide learning
• Distinguish lifelong learning/ lifewide learning
– And the C21 calls for both
• Lifewide learning – explicitly connects with the life-world of the student
• Many students are lifewide learners
• - with learning experiences that are demanding
• - and are contributing to their learning within the U (Emma’s tale) – thro
the formation of their Ds and Qs
• And LW lng is also helping their formation as global citizens
• So: what is special about the student’s academic learning?
• How are universities to respond?

14. 14
Students as Global Citizens
• 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

15. 15
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
human beings of certain kinds
• Searching for a language – ‘graduate attributes’; ‘graduateness’
• My own suggestion: ‘dispositions’ and ‘qualities’

16. 16
Dispositions for a world of challenge
• 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

17. 17
Qualities for a world of challenge
• Carefulness
• Courage
• Resilience
• Self-discipline
• Integrity
• Restraint
• Respect for others
• Openness
(Qs are extendable; & offer a palette of pathways to a worthwhile identity)

18. 18
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 and encouragement
• But the dispositions and qualities (above) are logically
implied in a ‘higher’ education.

19. 19
The ecological curriculum
Promotes:
•Being in the world
•Sensitive to its interconnectedness
•Not inert but engaged
•- in its sustainability and even its improvement
•A care for the world
•The student as global citizen
•An active empathy for the world
Contains
•Spaces for reflection; critical self-reflection
•And spaces for engagement, with self, society and the world (problems)
• Multidisciplinary
- a demanding set of experiences

20. 20
The ecological graduate
• Self-sustaining, yes, but
• a self-understanding on different levels – global/ local; personal/ professional;
systems/ ideas/ persons;
• Different ecological registers (networks & nodes)
• - and having a care/ concern towards them and their wellbeing
• Recognizing the call of responsibilities towards not merely their sustainability
(including one’s own sustainability) but also their improvement
• (cf the financial crisis and the banking ‘industry’ – devoid of an ‘ecological’
perspective – business as usual)
• The Ec G works in and for the interests of the world.

21. 21
Conclusions: conditions of a
contemporary curriculum
 Spaces for K/ A and B; and their interconnections
 Encourages the student to K/ A and B on different levels
 Including the global context
 Encourages student to reflect on his/ her LWL
 Includes the language of ‘responsibility/ responsibilities’
 Nurtures the Ds and opens spaces for the flourishing of the
student’s own Qs
 Not just matters for the curriculum
 - but also crucially for pedagogy, for the student-teacher relationship
 But also raises qs as to what we take a university to be in the
modern age – can the university identity and live out its
responsibilities in the world?
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