Title: The inner game of higher education
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2The inner game of higher education
- Professor Sir David Watson
- University of Bristol 8 January 2008
Centre for Higher Education Studies
3Outline
- The student estate
- Three metaphors
- Learning and teaching in the modern university
4Teaching, learning and the student estate
5Percentage change in enrolments by subject area,
1996/7 to 2005/06
6UK HE student numbers by mode and level, 1979 -
2005
7Frand, the information age mind-set (2000)
- Computers arent technology
- Internet better than TV
- Reality no longer real
- Doing rather than knowing
- Nintendo over Logic
- Multitasking way of life
- Typing rather than handwriting
- Staying connected
- Zero tolerance for delays
- Consumer/Creator blurring
8Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
(Simon Schuster 1998).
- Students these days are, in general, nice. I
choose the word carefully. They are not
particularly moral or noble. Such niceness is a
facet of democratic character when times are
good. Neither war nor tyranny nor want has
hardened them or made demands upon them. The
wounds and rivalries caused by class distinction
have disappeared along with any strong sense of
class..Students these days are pleasant,
friendly and if not great-souled, at least not
particularly mean-spirited. Their primary
preoccupation is themselves, understood in the
narrowest sense (Bloom, 1998 82-83).
9Learning teaching metaphors
10W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Tennis,
(Jonathan Cape, 1975)
- Winning is overcoming obstacles to reach a goal,
but the value in winning is only as great as the
goal itself..So we arrive at the startling
conclusion that true competition is identical
with true cooperation.In true competition no
person is defeated.
11Richard Sennett, Respect the formation of
character in an age of inequality, (Allen Lane,
2003.)
-
- Part of what makes both men rare performers is
that they have achieved mutuality many musicians
have the cooperative impulse, but few manage to
translate it into sound. Even more is this true
of social life an enormous gap exists between
wanting to act well toward others and doing
so..I argue that in social life as in art,
mutuality requires expressive work. It must be
enacted, performed.
12Richard Sennett, The culture of the new
capitalism, (Yale U. Press, 2006.)
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- A person can use the words correct or right in
describing how well something is done only if he
or she believes in an objective standard outside
his or her own desires, indeed outside the sphere
of rewards from others. Getting something right,
even though it may get you nothing, is the spirit
of true craftsmanship.
13William Miller, Conversation a history of a
declining art, (Yale U Press, 2006).
-
- Quotes Michael Oakshott Conversation is an
unrehearsed intellectual adventure, as with
gambling, its significance lies neither in
winning or losing, but in wagering.
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15Is this the reinvention of liberal HE?
- Soft citizenship
- Values
- Worked examples
- Dearing on breadth (recommendation 16)
- The Harvard core
- The Melbourne model
- The Russell Groups balanced meal
16Contexts for learning teaching
- Research and scholarship
- Employability and professional formation
- Instrumental and liberal values
- Academic careers
17Discussion
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