Scotland’s Colleges held their Next Practice and Innovation annual conference today in Glasgow. It was entitled “Moving on up” and, yes, they had the song to guide and motivate us in and out of the conference hall.
The aim of the conference was to look at the impact of colleges in the community and in the economic spheres.
It was an odd conference in a way as it seemed, on arrival and in the early stages of the day, to be aimed at people working at higher levels of management both within the college context and associated bodies.
There were lots of suits.
A quick glance at the delegate list revealed that there were very few lecturers present. Strange indeed for a conference on “Next Practice” – where were the practitioners?
Anyway, the community bit, which came first, ended up sounding very economic as there was a lot of talk about how colleges can, or should, put an economic measure on their impact on society.
The Principal from Perth College talked about the promotion of Public Value Principles and how these principles have beneficial outcomes for business. These principles, it was claimed, should reflect the core values of colleges. We did ask the question about who had control of defining these principles. However, the answer didn’t quite synchronise with the question.
I have to say that sentences emanating from the platform such as “There are financials associated with values” made me scratch my head and shudder at the same time.
The economic bit of the conference was very employer-focussed and there were lots of references to the “employer voice”.
Government officials popped up at various points to add to the gloom by reminding us that things will get worse in terms of public service funding.
At this stage, to be honest, I was a bit depressed as I thought that the Scotland’s Colleges was, through this conference, reaffirming the primacy of the business model of further education in Scotland. There was little mention of learning – never mind teaching.
Of course, myself and Karen did our best to overturn a cart and gave our perspective on things when we facilitated a round-table discussion on the College’s Learner Engagement project. That, if I say so myself, seemed to go quite well and there may be some other colleges interested in getting involved.
After refreshments, we went back to the conference hall for the keynote speech from Sandy Shugart, President of Valencia Community College in Florida.
We had high hopes that Sandy from the Sunshine State would guide us out of the gloom.
He did not disappoint us.
Sandy started his talk with a song. The gloom started to lift. As he put down his guitar, he seamlessly entered into a discussion about the differences and tensions between institutions which, he claimed, are rooted in modernist ideals and students, who, he argued, inhabit post-modern ideological spaces.
His general point on this was, I think, that the hard edges of institutional thinking and processes is not a good match to the less rationalist perspectives of post-modern learners.
This was interesting, but there was more of interest to come. Sandy talked about the business model of education. “The consumer is dead”, he said and added that it was an “impoverished model of learning”. It was refreshing to hear such thoughts coming from the man in charge of one of the largest and most successful community colleges in America.
This keynote speech, it was turning out, was adopting a very different tone and position to everything else that came before it in the day.
Sandy went on to talk about the importance of students developing their own stories. He talked about the importance, above all else, of the personal and the social dimensions of learning. He argued that institutions are not configured to deal adequately with the highly personalised relationships which represent learning.
Sandy left us with a song and as we headed out into the dark, wet Glasgow evening our spirits had been lifted again by the thought that the consumer may indeed be dead.
Long live the learner!
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3 comments:
I think there was a moment of jubilation when Sandy pronounced the death of the customer. Here was someone who struck a chord (and not just with his guitar) with many of the feelings we had been struggling with all day. He talked about trying to understand the student or learner. He seemed authentic in his quest to try to enter the world of modern, or 'post-modern' young people, with their multiple identities, different sense of communities, and an ability to write their own script for life. He posed questions and ideas that, we may not have totally agreed with, but they made us think, and led us to question what on earth had the rest of the day been about.
Jerry, I would be very interested in any transcript of his speech or references he made to changes in his own education system - I think this throws up an interesting 'tention' between funding council policy and learner engagement.
Very interesting.
Audrey
Nice concise summary, and I do like keynote speakers that leave delegates with hopes of expression rather than repression. It is an interesting comment on how many sharp end practitioners were there. I suspect you are both not quite ready for a corporate grey suit and a pin with a wee fox on it just yet!
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