Abstract
This paper begins from the assumption that knowledge specialisation and differentiation will continue to increase, and that these features of contemporary STEM knowledge will increasingly pose questions which science and engineering education must address. Two typical responses are outlined. The first response, the default position, has come to be known as traditionalism, a minimal response that attempts to shore up a high-selectivity, low curriculum change elite template by means of repair services, which is where Academic Development in the universities began. The second response, a ‘progressive’ one reacting to traditionalism, strove to put the learner and the act of learning in the spotlight, inadvertently thereby foregrounding skills and backgrounding the knowledge to be taught and learnt. The paper goes on to discuss de-differentiating features of this second response and argues that this will over time undermine the capacity of the university to deal effectively with rapidly evolving specialisation and differentiation. The paper concludes by considering a third way to address the issue.
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Notes
Academic Development, also referred to in the literature as Education Development, is concerned with staff development, curriculum development and, in South Africa, student development.
Confusingly, ‘procedural knowledge’ is usually the name given to inferential knowledge that is coded into an algorithm, a piece of software, a routine. What it means in this sense is a set of relations that have been tested so often in so many situations that they can be taken as a reliable shortcut—until they no longer work. Following Winch, I am using it in a broader sense here.
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This work is based on research supported in part by the National Research Foundation of South Africa (UID 85813). The Grantholder acknowledges that opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the author, and that the NRF accepts no liability whatsoever in this regard.
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Muller, J. The future of knowledge and skills in science and technology higher education. High Educ 70, 409–416 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-014-9842-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-014-9842-x