The Limits Of Competence: Knowledge, Higher Education And Society (society For Research Into Higher Education)

Competence is a term which is making its entrance in the university. How might it be understood at this level? "The Limits of Competence" takes an uncompromising line, providing a sustained critique of the notion of competence as wholly inadequate for higher education. Currently, we are seeing the displacement of one limited version of competence by another even more limited interpretation. In the older definition - one of academic competence - notions of disciplines, objectivity and truth have been central. In the new version, competence is given an operational twist and is marked out by know-how, competence and skills. In this operationalism, the key question is not 'What do students understand?' but 'What can students do?' The book develops an alternative view, suggesting that, for our universities, a third and heretical conception of human being is worth considering. Our curricula might, instead, offer an education for life. This book is an exploration of the changing definitions of knowledge competence held to be valuable in universities. The central argument is that one ideology, that of academic competence, is being displaced with another ideology, that of operational competence. The book begins by considering the relationships among higher education, knowledge, and society. It examines ideas that constitute the dominant ideology of curriculum, such as competence and capability. It then focuses on some ideas either disappearing from public debate or defunct as apparently unworthy of serious attention, including understanding, critical thought, interdisciplinarity, and wisdom. The final section places the two ideologies of competence--operational and academic--against each other and sketches an alternative definition of human being. This idea of human being is relatively unconstrained by sectional interests, contains a sense of knowing not derived from mere instrumentality, and looks to promote human beings in situations and conditions unimaginable because the human beings concerned will be doing the imagining. (Contains approximately 180 references.) (JDD) Pt. 1. Knowledge, Higher Education And Society. 1. The Learning Society? 2. A Certain Way Of Knowing? 3. We Are All Clerks Now -- Pt. 2. The New Vocabulary. 4. 'skills' And 'vocationalism'. 5. 'competence' And 'outcomes'. 6. 'capability' And 'enterprise' -- Pt. 3. The Lost Vocabulary. 7. Understanding. 8. Critique. 9. Interdisciplinarity. 10. Wisdom -- Pt. 4. Competence Reconsidered. 11. Two Rival Versions Of Competence. 12. Beyond Competence -- The Society For Research Into Higher Education. Ronald Barnett. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [194]-200) And Index. In the new version of "competence" in higher education, the key question is not: "What do students understand?", but "What can students do?". This book develops an alternative view, suggesting that the university curricula might, instead, offer an education for life