EXCELLENCE

1
EXCELLENCE?

• What is meant by excellence in learning and
  teaching in an enhancement-led culture?
• Professor Ray Land, University of Strathclyde

2

• Excellence as Platonic ideal
• Excellence as surpassing
• Excellence as brand
• Excellence as regulation
• Beyond Excellence proactive competence

3
1 Excellence as Platonic Ideal
4

• heavenly etymology (ex coelis)
• differentiated from the material forms of
  imperfection, time and flux
• underpins notions of re-invention and renewal
• signifies virtue, perfection
• essentially unachievable, a perpetual goal
• striving is all

5
2 Excellence as surpassing
6

• achievable though rare
• the laurels are to the few, to the winners of the
  race, the leaders.
• signifies elite performance
• unashamedly supremacist.
• the excellent do something, whatever it is,
  better than all the rest do it, and this is
  recognised by common consent, and by an external
  referent

7
3 Excellence as brand
8

• becomes a norm
• operates as a mystic signifier (Grierson), ie
  signifying nothing precise but imparting an
  indefinable attribute which functions in the
  fiercely competitive global market as a brand.
• a response to global competitiveness
• Google 500,000 excellent institutions
• all have to be world class
• entirely self-referential (Readings)
• risks becoming an empty referent

9

• Excellence, like a brand, a label, becomes
  another marketable commodity drawing attention to
  itself through stylistic designs and catchy
  slogans. The University of Excellence rings
  with corporate currency, whereby process (input)
  is packaged and disseminated as product (output),
  and presented as a super-brand equating with
  life-style, coca-cola or jeans, and joining the
  marketplace with a post-industrial display of
  marketable self-belief
• Grierson E. M. (2004) Excellere Seeking what?
  p.2

10
(No Transcript)
11

• The idea of privileging the act of surpassing is
  curious when that very surpassing, that
  excellence, is the norm (ie made normal)
  descriptor of universities today. Universities
  claim excellence in mission statements and
  strategic plans as the terminology is repeated
  over and over again
• Curiously excellence has proliferated to the
  point where it has become today not only the
  norm-referenced standard of naming higher
  education institutions and practices, but it
  attracts a raft of new awards in its name
  Grierson E. M. (2004 p.3)

12

• the techno-bureaucratic notion of excellence
  has no content it is hence neither true nor
  false, neither ignorant nor self-conscious
• It becomes de-referentialised.
• Readings 1996 The University in Ruins p.13

13
Excellence recognized in Manitobas pork
industry Stewardship Awards presented at
AGM Manitoba Pork Council presented its annual
Swine Stewardship Awards to individuals
and organizations whose outstanding efforts
contributed to the sustainable growth and
prosperityof Manitoba.s pork industry at the
recent Annual General Meeting banquet in Brandon
onApril 7, 2004. Swine Steward Award Marg Rempel
accepted the Swine Steward Award from Marcel
Hacault on behalf of Rempelco Acres, a 500-sow
farrow-to-finish and mixed grains operation
located near Ste. Anne. First established in 1957
by Ron Rempel.s parents, Ron and Marg took over
running this family-owned farm in 1978. Ron
Rempel, who died in October of 2003, was a
trusted and loyal friend to the hog industry in
Manitoba. He served for over 15 years as both a
delegate and director at Manitoba Pork est. and
Manitoba Pork Council. The Rempels have always
been proactive about technology and always
willing to try
14
Excellence as regulation
15

• excellence used in a normative capacity
• a regulatory and disciplinary measure
• ensures performativity, maximises the educational
  transaction
• research and teaching disaggregated
• practices rendered more visible
• processes of standardisation introduced
• (Foucault 1975)

16

• 5 Beyond Excellence
• the notion of proactive competence

17
Beyond understanding (Perkins 2006)

• Possessive knowledge
• Performative Knowledge
• Proactive Knowledge

18
Possessive knowledge

• a loose bundle of rather superficial facts and
  routines
• Utilitarian
• the primary symptom is delivery on demand. Can
  you recite Ohm's law? Can you apply it to a
  simple standard circuit?

19
Performative knowledge

• Understanding rather than just getting something
  done now occupies the foreground
• Sense-making
• the primary symptom is flexible performances that
  demonstrate understanding Can you apply Ohm's
  law to predict how this novel circuit will behave
  or to design a circuit?... as when an electrical
  engineer faces the task of designing a circuit to
  specifications.

20
Proactive knowledge

• emphasizes what we do with what we know not only
  within but outside settings of formal study..
• a disposition toward inquiry and creativity
• applying Ohm's law to the design of a central
  heating system is a case of transfer that bridges
  very different contexts and disciplines, what is
  generally called far transfer

21

• cognitively hot rather than cool
• opportunistic deployment. A circumstance arises
  that could easily be missed, the person notices
  it, and follows through. Voilà, better heating
  ducts!..

22

• if you can recite Ohm's law and apply it to
  thoroughly routine problems, that demonstrates
  only knowledge as possession. However, if you can
  apply Ohm's law to novel problems within
  electronics, or outside such as to heating ducts,
  that demonstrates knowledge as flexible
  performance.