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‘In’ or ‘For’ the Learning Society?
Author(s) -
Barnett Ronald
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
higher education quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.976
H-Index - 42
eISSN - 1468-2273
pISSN - 0951-5224
DOI - 10.1111/1468-2273.00079
Subject(s) - learning society , reflexivity , higher education , context (archaeology) , knowledge society , sociology , contemporary society , environmental ethics , political science , engineering ethics , pedagogy , lifelong learning , social science , law , history , engineering , philosophy , archaeology
The Dearing Report on higher education in the UK places itself in the context of ‘he learning society’ It notes a world of change and unpredictability and looks to higher education to assist in the development of the ‘nation’s people’ so as ‘to sustain a competitive economy’. To this end, the Report places significance upon ‘learning’and the need for learners to be ‘enthused’ However, the Report also places a heavy emphasis on the need to develop a range of ‘skills’ thereby falling back onto assumptions of stability – of situations and human responses – which an unpredictable world denies. The Report offers a view of higher education ‘in’ a learning society, responding to given and understood parameters of change. It could, instead, have offered a vision of higher education developing human dispositions capable of creatively helping to generate an uncertain but reflexive world. That would have been a higher education ‘or’a learning society.