This paper explores relationships between environment and education after the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of philosophy of education in a new key developed by Michael Peters and the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia (PESA). The paper is collectively written by 15 authors who responded to the question: Who remembers Greta Thunberg? Their answers are classified into four main themes and corresponding sections. The first section, 'As we bake the earth, let's try and bake it from scratch', gathers wider philosophical considerations about the intersection between environment, education, and the pandemic. The second section, 'Bump in the road or a catalyst for structural change?', looks more closely into issues pertaining to education. The third section, 'If you choose to fail us, we will never forgive you', focuses to Greta Thunberg's messages and their responses. The last section, 'Towards a new (educational) normal', explores future scenarios and develops recommendations for critical emancipatory action. The concluding part brings these insights together, showing that resulting synergy between the answers offers much more then the sum of articles' parts. With its ethos of collectivity, interconnectedness, and solidarity, philosophy of education in a new key is a crucial tool for development of post-pandemic (philosophy of) education.
Technology has dominated discourse on the future university and how digital technologies disrupting wider societal activities can be leveraged in higher education.To gain an insight into UK institutional perspective on technology adoption in teaching and learning and visions for the future, two corpora of text are analysed: Teaching Excellence Framework statements (n=88) and university strategy documents (n=88), totalling 1, 129, 736 words. Quantitative empirical analysis reveals that institutions write about technology in education activities and how they 'use' technology.Interpretative analysis found that technology is 'used' as an end in itself as well as a means for specific ends (such as assessment and feedback and flexible learning). Using concepts from science and technology studies and philosophy of technology, these perspectives are theorised as instrumental and essentialist and problematised when viewing technology in education as apolitical, neutral and inevitable. A perceived neutrality ignores the many competing ideologies and interests at play. In this context, a dichotomy of 'pedagogy first' or 'technology-led' design is explored. Critical theory of technology is used to bridge these binary discourses which are described as reductive in a complex sociotechnical university assemblage.
A challenge for higher education, in the context of the 'Fourth Industrial Age', is to prepare students for uncertain futures. Proposed is a model of integrated scholarship drawing on, and developing, Boyer's scholarship (discovery, teaching, integration and application). We argue that such a model provides a connecting thread between the idea of a university as conceptualised in the 19th century, making links between the university of the past, present and future. Through reference of a case study example of the links between teaching and research presented in the 2017 UK Teaching Excellence Framework, we draw upon Boyer's scholarship as a conceptual lens to examine institutional texts which articulate teaching excellence. Our findings indicate that current judgements about effective linkages between teaching and research vary greatly with few examples or evidence. Our integrated scholarship model joins together institutional learning communities to discover, communicate and apply new knowledge across disciplines.
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Digital technologies for learning and teaching have promised much in higher education (HE). There has become, however, a dualism between digital and non-digital and a technological determinism which in some cases promotes digital technologies as being innately superior to the non-digital. There is pressure on universities to provide learning and teaching in new ways in the face of regulation, as well as increased numbers and diversity of students. The postdigital perspective allows for the appropriate approaches and tools to be used. Design for learning and teaching in HE has developed interventions which promote use of digital resources, but for some have not yet met the promise of 'enhancing' learning. Moving outside of education, approaches from design as a discipline are sketched out, including design thinking and the epistemology of design. All of these show how designers (in general) go about their work. How designs come about can be analysed by using the framework of people (epistemology), processes (praxeology) and products (phenomenology) in design. Actor-network theory is used as an approach across each stage of this framework, and those designing in HE are encouraged to be bricoleurs, using a variety of tools for the job at hand and to think of the designs as assemblages. The ideas described here are useful for the practices of those involved in the design of learning and teaching.
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