Calling Flexibility to Account: Pitfalls and Possibilities

Ronald Barnett, Institute of Education, LondonHEA Wales conference: Global Graduates – enabling flexible learning, 2-3 April 2014

Centre for Higher Education Studies

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Who could not be in favour of flexibility?

Who could not be in favour of flexibility? Who would want to be felt to be inflexible? Which institution would want to be felt to be inflexible? ‘Flexibility’ – everyone is in favour of it, it seems.

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Implications

But then, if everyone is in favour of it: There will be rival ideas as to what flexibility might mean (even conflicting

accounts) Those rival ideas may point toward radically different and incommensurable

policies and practices. Flexibility cannot mean everything to everyone at the same time. Some tough

choices have to be made. That is my thesis – and I shall argue as to the direction in which I would

make choices.

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Levels of flexibility

• F has meaning at different levels – the sector as a whole, institution, course (both curriculum and pedagogy), and student.• And interests that register at one level may clash with another level• Not merely that say • a national interest in CAT clashes with an institution’s interests in its own admissions policy, • or that an institutional modular scheme may cut across a course team’s interests in building up a course as

such • or that a student may wish – in a internet-delivered system – for more support than a course team can give

• But different stances on flexibility itself may conflict across the levels: • a course team may want forms of flexibility that are not poss in an institution’s modular scheme; • a student may prefer to study by him/herself on-line while the new on-line programme – begun in the name of

flexibility – may require students to engage on-line with each other• The EU may want to develop an EU-wide CATS scheme but some UK IHEs may want to preserve their own F

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Pedagogical paradox

2 Paradoxes:

1 A curriculum may exhibit flexibility-It may offer choice of modules; students may be able to vary their mode of study; or intercalate periods ‘out’; or even vary their assessment

BUT the pedagogy may be fixed and rigid and even didactic.

2 A pedagogical relationship may offer all manner of openness/ flexibility

But that openness (‘loose framing’) may be contained in a closed curriculum.

(Dimensions of time and space criss-cross these situations.)

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A pedagogy of openness

‘(beginning the student journey) is [an entry into] a scary, exciting and fascinating world … We need … self-belief to survive and prosper … I remember thinking … this is amazing, exciting, exhilarating and downright terrifying … Working with a complex world is … about … not giving up when you feel overwhelmed …’

‘… What’s fascinating about Alison’s courses is the amount of panic, you know, that surrounds the essays and I felt it personally … It was a very, very scary thing to do because … there were no right answers.’

- Pedagogical openness/ F; but disc/ curric standards.

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Two rival ideas of flexibility

Alongside/ underneath differences of levels, forms, time, space are two ideas of flexibility that are fundamentally different and rivalrous:

- Systems flexibility (all those that we have looked at)- regions/ country/ IHEs/ programmes of study

- Personal flexibility

NB: the lure of technology; the lure of the market.

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The idea of personal flexibility

• The twenty-first century – an age of challenge; a ‘supercomplex age’• Calls for personal flexibility (not a matter of reinventiveness but of making

one’s way in a turbulent contested and fluid (‘liquid’) world)• Extraordinary thing: a higher education can offer much of what is required• Disciplines (incl professional fields) impart discipline!• - educational/ epistemic virtues• Ds and Qs• Capacities to keep going forward in a situation of continuing strangeness• ie, personal flexibility

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The linguist’s tale

I’ve always had a huge passion for languages. But coming to [x university], I found the French and the Italian departments very different, and I did start to feel a bit bitter towards French. I wasn’t enjoying that any more. I loved it at school more than Italian. I found the French department very rigid … I did feel like I was back in school, but not in the sixth form … I didn’t feel very free to express myself in the lessons. With the Italian department, we all sit around a big table or chairs without tables in front. There would be a lot more interaction … It was more friendly, just a liberating atmosphere.’

Ped F; curricula stability

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Always becoming

• Being – ‘being possible’• Yes, but ‘always becoming’• Struggle amid conflict/ negating negations/ combating distortions/ purpose

amid antagonisms• ie, an educational idea as to what it is to be a person in the twenty-first

century

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Conditions of personal flexibility – initial questions• In order that a higher education promote personal flexibility, its educational

situations should themselves contain some degree of flexibility• In curricula? - probably• In pedagogies? – certainly

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Reflections on our initial conditions

• The questions seem inocuous but are themselves profound• For their answering implies:

– That the questions are worth asking (forms of flexibility are not good in themselves but become good under certain conditions)

– That professional judgement is called for – and indeed a lot of hard work lies ahead in determining just how such personal flexibility is going to be developed (or have a good chance of being developed). NB: it’s happening all the time; it’s not fanciful. (We have just been

tolerably good at it as educators for hundreds of years – but we’ve had no theory as to how we have been doing it.)

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Coming out of oneself

‘I had no … awareness of my own ability, so when you get an inspiring teacher that has faith in you, or helps you understand a topic then you know, it’s amazing.

You get excited … you want to go and know more about it, you want to find more … if a teacher inspires you in a subject then are you are going to a lot more attention, feel that drive to get involved in a way.’

‘I have always lacked self-confidence … You worry what other people think, and are they going to read this and completely disagree? … I was afraid of saying the wrong answer.’

Personal journey; voyaging; ped of/ for risk; cf ped of safety

Personal F; becoming anew

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‘Global Graduates: Enabling Flexible Learning’• The idea of the global graduate – contains the idea of a person who has an

interest in the world and is able to see themselves as a citizen of the world• Helping it to go forward, to improve it, to contest it, to work for a better world• Ie, flexibility plus a value orientation, but concerned to understand the world• All this points both to F in ped and curricula (for students to become

themselves)• But also to boundaries, discipline(s), standards• ie, F can be driven neither entirely by systems considerations or market

considerations • There are limits to F.

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Conclusions

Flexibility is an empty concept – it gets filled up by rival ideas and ideas whose implementation cuts across each other

Flexibility is not an end in itself When pleas for F are heard, the q has to be asked: which

F? In whose interests? With what educational consequences?

Educational interests in F may be undermined by systems interests in F

ie, F requires value choices to be made An education for the C21 desperately needs to look to

helping to develop students/ graduates who are ‘flexible’ but not entirely plastic.

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