We discussed a number of over-lapping and complimentary potential projects that would engage the university’s education styles, structures and history on different fronts. How can we understand the historical processes that have shaped our current education system, in both its form (hierarchies, bureaucratic limiting of good education) and its substantive content (the need to critically decolonise and transform the curriculum, and academic make-up of the university?
We might like to understand and engage in new pedagogical approaches to education, grasping how they differ from the current, standard models of education within the university; perhaps comparing with other current methods, historical methods, and reflect on why this will benefit us more broadly in society.
We might think about, and contest, hierarchies within learning that stratify, limit and undermine our experiences in education, and are more generally influential within the systems of higher education; and shape how we approach education in our lives more broadly.
Similarly, we might want to ask the question of ‘What is the university?’ from different perspectives (what role does it play for society more broadly? Is it an element of market capitalism or a tool for enrichment? How do we relate to it as individuals, from our distinct identities and life experiences?)
Finally, what it means to be inter-disciplinary (its benefits, limits and requirements) in the university, might be explored. We can question the history of inter-disciplinary work in the university, particularly through comparing it to other institutions (or non-institutions), understand how it currently occurs (or fails to) in the university, and reflect on the future of inter-disciplinary work in the university.
Post-it noted ideas
- Explore a new way of engaging with higher education – less assessment, more discussion based learning.
- How we create the course
- Different ways of learning, critical pedagogy; how this could be applied on a large scale to the whole university.
- Decolonising the curriculum!
- Exploring and working on new ways of organising group learning and methods of education.
- Explore new methods outside of the standard structure of seminars, tutorials and lectures.
- Get better at group work
- Hierarchies as barriers to learning (age, position, study level etc.)
- Explore and reflect on inter-disciplinary limits and structures within the university.
- Co-operation with students in the content and organisation of the courses they are involved with.
- Education that is not ‘labour market’ focused.
- Incorporating sustainability into the curriculum
- Analysing and understanding the University’s position in social history of sustainability.
- Structuring university around the needs of society, not the needs of the market.
- Critical university studies; staff and student perspectives.
How would you work on that? Would you create different subgroups that are linked?