UNIVERSITY AUTONOMY SOCIAL CAPITAL AND PEDAGOGICAL INNOVATION

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UNIVERSITY AUTONOMY SOCIAL CAPITAL AND
PEDAGOGICAL INNOVATION

• James Campbell
• Deakin University

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Institutional arrangements and pedagogy

• University autonomy directly relates both to the
  specific relationships and interactions
  universities have with broader social
  institutions, and the competencies of the
  students produced in such institutions

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Malaysia and the Triple Helix

• The needs of the knowledge economy and the
  changing role of university education in a triple
  helix environment are clearly recognized and
  accepted by the Malaysian government.
• There is an overwhelming understanding and
  acceptance of the importance of structural change
  to Malaysia educational system and a very deep
  understanding of the relationship between
  structural change and innovation. Put another way
  the arguments of Malaysian policy workers and
  government directly grasp the relationship
  between structural reform and pedagogical reform
  to move Malaysia into the knowledge economy.
• The clarity of the direction of Malaysian
  education and in our case universities and the
  need for interconnection between the private and
  public spheres as well as the correlation of this
  with pedagogical reform points to the clear
  recognition of Malaysian political authority for
  pedagogical reform.

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Triple Helix of Relationships
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Thesis

• My basic argument is that an overly reductive
  helix based simply on the state-market-academia
  model, without a fourth strand of public or civil
  society involvement, will not provide the proper
  institutional support and values legitimacy to
  the types of pedagogy that are needed for
  innovation to prosper in universities.

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Fourth Strand

• Forms of social capital underpin the ability of
  Malaysian universities to successfully reform
  pedagogically and structurally and that these
  factors are reflexive to each other. The types of
  social capital and interrelations that
  characterise university structures and practices
  can add or detract from the legitimacy of reform
• A fourth strand is needed in the helix metaphor
  to balance and give grounding to the debate over
  university reform
• This strand we can call the public or civil
  society strand. In the Malaysian context, the
  growing salience of civil society, associations,
  clubs and social movements is acting as a
  propellant for democratic reform and social
  legitimacy. It also recognizes and includes
  practical and lived cultural practices from
  civil society in ways that are neither beholden
  to state or market power. University practice in
  ways that are authentic and lived rather than
  static and imposed.

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Legitimacy of Pedagogy Pedagogy of Legitimacy

• Including the fourth strand balances out the
  problems of university relations with business
  and government and provides an important
  institutional pillar to support the kinds of
  pedagogy that is both cooperative and dialogical.
  
• This fourth strand also provided institutional
  support for the kinds of cooperative democratic
  pedagogies that are necessary for a knowledge
  economy to prosper.
• The fusion of a fourth strand of civic
  associations, social groups and civil society
  more directly into the institutional and
  structural activities of the university, provides
  an arena or incubator for the values legitimacy
  of the Deweyan pedagogy that lays at the heart of
  pedagogical reform in knowledge society theory
• Deweyan socially constructivist pedagogy
  exemplifies forms of interaction that that are
  dialogical and participatory. Such pedagogy is
  productive and articulates forms of social
  capital that are not merely technical abilities
  or strictly technical competencies but rather
  deeper forms of social interaction.
• Socially constructive pedagogy produces not
  simply technical ability in students but is also
  representative of values and forms of social
  interaction that are not simply possessive
  individualistic nor traditionally authoritarian.

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Civil society and reform legitimacy

• A failure to include the fourth strand in the
  discussion of university functioning will lead to
  unintended consequences both in the legitimacy of
  the university in Malaysian society and in the
  legitimacy of forms of pedagogy necessary for the
  knowledge society.
• A corollary of this argument is that any reform
  to Malaysian education must take into account the
  specific cultural and national traditions of the
  host society.
• A simplistic notion of easy transference between
  pedagogical and structural models from the West
  to Malaysian conditions is bound to lead to
  difficulty.
• Deepening Malaysian universities connection and
  engagement with civil society and connecting them
  more intrinsically to the public good (not as
  state provision and direction nor as market
  driven individualism) provides both a way to
  frame autonomy as neither beholden to the state
  or the market and by inference not beholden to
  those constituencies that are seen to dominate
  these arenas.

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• Such a dynamic shift in the interconnectivity and
  engagements of universities provides legitimacy
  to collaborative non-hierarchical and innovative
  social practices, which are the basic supports
  for innovative pedagogy.
• Why is this so? Essentially much of what passes
  for pedagogical theory reduces our ideas of
  pedagogy to technique. How to teach? What
  approach to use. Properly understood however,
  pedagogy is not simply technique. Pedagogy is a
  form of social practice. It involves social
  capital and draws on cultural traditions.
• Understood in this way pedagogical practice
  within a university are forms of social
  interaction and expressions of cultural values.
  The legitimacy or otherwise of forms of social
  interaction depends in large measure on the value
  given differing forms of social practice. This
  issue connects back to the structure and nature
  of institutional practices within a university.

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Interaction and innovation

• Interaction and innovation, is not simply
  technique. It is not divorced from social values
  and structures.
• To treat the pedagogical aspect in the knowledge
  economy equation as simply a problem of
  accumulating techniques misses the fundamental
  social aspect of pedagogy.

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Traditional PedagogyTop Down
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Progressive Pedagogy
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MIT as benchmark?

• What then would such reform look like in detail?
  MITs Teaching and Learning Laboratory Guidelines
  are an excellent example of the kind of pedagogy
  that characterises the contemporary reform agenda
  (a benchmark approach).
• MIT follows in meshing university business and
  government, and in engaging directly, the kinds
  of pedagogy necessary for Malaysian reform and
  represents a kind of best practice example of the
  directions necessary for university pedagogy in a
  Triple Helix environment.
• MITs Teaching and Learning Guidelines are an
  outstanding example, put into practice of
  progressive pedagogy serving a university that is
  realising intellectual cooperation with business
  and government (as well as community and civil
  society) in the context of autonomy properly
  understood as autonomy to do things rather than
  autonomy simply understood as autonomy from
  things.
• The MIT benchmark and other best practice
  examples must be theorized in culturally specific
  situations.

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One size fits all globalization? Or situated
reform?

• The triple helix approach and the pedagogically
  social constructivist DNA that runs through it is
  derived in large measure from two intellectual
  streams.
• First, the work of Schumpeter who outlined the
  connection between innovation and economic
  development.
• Second, Dewey who outlined the connection between
  progressive education and educational development
  in the context of democratic self growth and
  empowering participation in day to day democratic
  practices.

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• The Schumpeterian strand is techno-economic, the
  Deweyan strand is participatory-social.
• One of the basic problems with those who advocate
  the new globalised forms of pedagogy they tend to
  conflate as if they were unproblematic the
  Schumpeterian and Deweyan aspects of the reforms.
  
• They then compound this by gliding over the
  cultural specificities that characterise reform
  in differing settings.

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• There is a real possibility of a practical
  contradiction between the demands of
  globalization (the neo Schumpeter thesis outlined
  above) and the aims of pedagogy of affective
  self-realisation and expressive growth (the post
  Deweyan social constructivist pedagogy).

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Pedagogy and social frameworks

• An educational project that articulates
  universities as simply market driven entities and
  sees autonomy as simply freedom from regulation
  within a possessive individualistic frame of
  reference will correspond to a social value
  system that is individualistic competitive and
  possessive. Socially constructivist pedagogy will
  either be in severe tension with this ethos or
  identified with it as part of an assault on
  values and equity. The social values and capital
  that inform pedagogy both in its formal level as
  officially sanctioned techniques but also in its
  informal level as the implicit practices that
  characterise human interaction on campus require
  a much closer look at pedagogy and social
  structure. Yet all socially constructivist
  pedagogy is culturally situated.

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Conclusion

• I have argued that the adages of neo liberal
  economic and progressive pedagogical theory are
  espoused without adequate recognition of the
  cultural complexity and problems that
  characterise host societies. My essential
  argument is that neo liberal economic and
  structural reform to universities if carried
  through uncritically carries with it severe
  problems if it uncritically accepts a kind of
  laizzesse faire market approach to universities.
• Such approaches can be culturally blind. This is
  because marketization in extremis undercuts the
  values that inform progressive pedagogy
  especially socially constructivist pedagogy. In
  other words, pure marketization undercuts the
  social values realised through social
  constructivist pedagogy.

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• Marketization must be tempered by also connecting
  universities to civil society in such a way that
  tempers both extremes of the state and market and
  allows a more sustainable relationship between
  cooperative socially constructivist pedagogy and
  the social framework within which it operates.
• However an over simplification of our
  understanding of innovation and development means
  that fully marketized universities will place
  negative pressure on principles of collaboration
  and cooperation which are the hall marks of
  innovation.
• Here lies the tension. To defend a space for
  innovation as collaboration and non-possessive
  engagement a significant strand of university
  practice must be involved with civil society and
  civic engagement.

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• If autonomy is reduced to simple marketization
  then pedagogy based on collaboration, free
  dialogue and innovation will be under stress in
  universities.
• Local cultural norms will be subsumed under a
  need to expand market logic.
• The pressure of the neo liberal ethos will be too
  hard to resist. If on the other hand autonomy is
  understood as being protected from the market by
  the state then it is hard to see how creativity
  and innovation can take root as core values in
  the academy and by inference in the pedagogy of
  the academy.
• The effective promotion of the fourth strand to
  the helix structure situates the dynamic
  possibilities of Malaysian civil society within
  the university structure. It acts to bring
  legitimacy to universities in an era where
  suspicion of both the state and the market
  abound. It locates cultural norms back into our
  practices not as simply imposed authority but as
  constantly negotiated developing norms drawing
  legitimacy from the aspirations of a democratic
  populace.
• Finally such a restructuring provides a better
  home and support for forms of socially
  constructivist pedagogy rooted in a concern for
  democratic growth, respect of difference and
  dignity.