E- Learning and Ideology- a post modern paradigm or liberal education reborn?

Maureen Spencer, Middlesex University Business School

[email protected]

Copyright © Maureen Spencer 2004
First Published in Web Journal of Current Legal Issues

Summary

The increasing use of electronic forms of curriculum delivery in higher education brings with it a number of practical challenges for academics, such as the problem of information overload, effective cooperation with technical staff in course design and changed student expectations of teaching. A number of recent studies of higher education have also examined the impact of e-learning on the underlying theoretical framework of university teaching, some arguing that a postmodernist philosophical approach is an appropriate one. Others by contrast have called for a reaffirmation of the principles of liberal education. Drawing on recently published works on the public role of the university the article examines these two apparently conflicting theoretical stances and the implications of this pedagogic discussion for law lecturers in particular. It is argued that attention to both these philosophical currents is important in order maximize the value of electronic delivery.  Liberal educational ideals are still powerful antidotes to such anti- intellectual pressures as technological determinism and a narrow vocationalism but an examination of the postmodernist “mood” may also assist the resolution of some contemporary concerns in higher education. The article suggests that academics should not simply look back nostalgically to the Enlightenment certainties of traditional liberal education, locating cognition primarily within the knowing individual.  Nor however should they uncritically embrace the more grandiose claims of an ethically aimless postmodern scepticism. Neither philosophy should necessarily displace the other. The challenge is to appreciate both these intellectual tendencies as part of a mosaic of multifaceted approaches to higher education at the centre of which should be an appreciation of the continuing importance of principles and values.  

Contents:

1. Introduction

1.1  A Place for Educational Theory

1.2  Rival Theories

2. Universities and Ideology

3. The Postmodernist Mood and E-Learning

4. Theoretical Groundwork and Teaching and Learning

5. Areas of Curriculum Development  

            5.1 Virtual Teaching and the Move away from the Transmission Model

            5.2 Widening Access and Cultural Preconceptions

            5.3 Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries

            5.4 The Unity of Teaching and Research?

            5.5 Do Educators Know What is Best for Students ?

6. Conclusion – A (Real and Cyber) Place for Values

Bibliography

 1. Introduction

1.1 A Place for Educational Theory

In a recent study Barnett identifies a number of conflicting ideologies in higher education, “pernicious” ones such as “entrepreneurialism” and “virtuous” ones such as “communicating values”. He cites, as some examples of the corrosive effect on values, the increased reliance by university management on sources of non-governmental funding and the linking of much of the curriculum to vocational interests. He calls for academics to resist the pressure to serve private and business interests.  He suggests that, “[i]t is precisely because the liberal virtues of the idea of the university yield such a weak programme that ideologies have been able to gain such a powerful presence on campus.”(2003, p176) This article suggests that one prominent example of Barnett’s “entrepreneurial university” is the widespread and determined managerial push to extend the use of electronic delivery in the curriculum, primarily on grounds of economy. It argues that in order to maximize the value of this new technology for effective learning academics do need to re-examine critically the theoretical underpinning of their teaching, particularly the traditional notions of liberal education. Many lecturers, law lecturers included, currently feel threatened. They see much of their work being mechanically driven by the possibilities of the technology and of their scholarship being marginalized by the mushrooming of new more business oriented professionals such as course designers and web technicians. Lewis reports that a 1994 university surveys on the reaction of staff to the use of new technology in teaching revealed that a majority of staff questioned predicted  “ …an imposed, prescriptive and standardized approach, driven by formulae, stifling innovation and leading to a reduction in the range of available learning methods’”. Lewis added, “ Instead of identifying the positive aspects of their likely future roles, the staff feared the removal of  ‘the skilled teacher from the center of a university education”.(Lewis1998, p 29).

It is undeniable that, as Paliwala points out,

“…there are distinct winds of change in the geography and political economy of learning, which are likely to have deep impacts in the future….Learning beyond the classroom is …changing as a result of digitised libraries, courseware and electronic communications. Increasing global flows of students induces a different change in learning spaces. At the same time the growth of distance learning challenges the concept of campus universities. Learning times also change with development of asynchrous and synchronous extra-classroom interaction whether within on-site or distance learning environments.”(Paliwala 2002 ,p185)

If such developments are inevitable the question is how to maximise their value for effective learning. Paliwala   concludes by calling for more attention to be given to educational theory arguing that “Effective use of ICT requires careful attention to pedagogic as well as technical issues”. (p 202)  Effectiveness in this area, it is suggested, requires a preliminary sustained intellectual reflection on the nature of learning, an appreciation of current theories of knowledge and an understanding of what universities are for. 

Barnett sees the way to resist excessive managerialism in the development of “virtuous ideologies”. He writes,

“[i]f communities can come to understand themselves and motivate themselves through ideologies that have limited or even deleterious effects, they can also come to understand and motivate themselves through ideologies that have positive effects. And so it is on campus. If ideology cannot be extinguished on campus, let its expression include virtuous ideologies that are likely to further the project of the university”. (2003 p 62).

As far as legal education is concerned others along with Paliwala have argued for the kind of theoretically based approach advocated by Barnett and in particular that academics need to think and discuss as deeply about how they teach as they do about what they teach. As Webb put it in, “[a]nyone who says that they approach teaching without any learning theory is being disingenuous”.  He maintained that without theory legal education is “hit and miss”.(Webb 1996, p23)   Cownie also has argued powerfully for an approach to law lecturing which is based on an understanding both of the philosophy of education and educational theory.  She writes,

“[a]s law teachers in a university, members of the academy, we should not only be familiar with the philosophy and theory of education, we should also be able to put them into practice, to integrate them into our teaching methods, to be confident that just as our research is based firmly on theory and takes account of the latest developments in the field, so it is with our pedagogy”.(Cownie, 1999, p 54)

 She indicates however that her enthusiasm for a theoretical approach to in legal education is not widely shared among law lecturers. Such a disdain for theory is particularly regrettable in the face of the rapid changes in legal education described by Paliwala since it facilitates a sort of degrading technological determinism which emphasises processing increasing amount of information information rather than developing knowledge, undermining academic integrity. 

The famously “tribal” allegiance of academics to their disciplines is of course for many sufficient scholarly excitement.(Becher and Trowler 2001) However it is argued here that, in order to develop as effective teachers, subject-based academics would do well also to familiarise themselves with broader intellectual currents, specifically current controversy  about the underlying nature of higher education. Apparently antagonistic tendencies are then illuminated. Robins and Webster point out that there have been 

“various efforts to address both philosophical and policy issues relating to new developments in higher education.  These have ranged from plans for the defence of liberal educational values, via advocacy of virtual technologies and distance learning to eager endorsement of the business of borderless educations.” (2002 p13)

Several recent studies have identified the contesting claims for the attention of academics from postmodernist theorists on the one hand and from protagonists of liberal education on the other.

1.2 Rival Theories

As far as legal studies are concerned postmodernist ideas are of course most closely associated with deconstructionism and the Critical Legal Studies movement which concentrated on demonstrating the multiplicity of meanings in legal doctrines and the hidden political ideologies behind apparently neutral texts rather analysing legal education as an object of study.(Balkin 1998) It is therefore necessary to examine the work of commentators other than legal academics in the area of higher education Usher et al for example, in an examination of adult education more generally, have made hailed the values of teaching with postmodernism in mind.  They applaud its stress on the “contested nature of knowledge” (2003, p12).  They argue that it  “enables a questioning of the scientific attitude and scientific method, of the universal efficacy of technical- instrumental reason, and of the stance of objectivity and value- neutrality in the making of knowledge claims”.(p7) Lankshear sees two kinds of issues at stake: “…one is associated with Lyotard’s work on the changing status of knowledge with respect to the reasons for pursuing knowledge and the relationship between knowledge and ‘truth’. The other is associated with issues of how we verified data that exists at a distance.” (2002, p 4)   It is the first issue identified by Lankshear which challenges the post-Enlightenment or liberal concept that truth is realisable and should be sought primarily if not exclusively for its own sake.  (The second issue is of less relevance to the argument here and will not be further examined here although it is still pertinent to pedagogy, highlighting as it does the means whereby truth may be tested). 

Any examination of Lyotard’s theories in particular must appreciate that they have a descriptive and prescriptive element.  The anti-capitalist Lyotard was in part deploring developments of the information age in late modernity and in part advocating forms of action to meet what in many ways he saw as the degradation of education (see Delanty, 2001).  Lyotard wrote that in the post-industrial age, “Knowledge is and will be produced in order to be sold, and it is and will be consumed in order to be valorised in a new production; in both cases, the goal is exchange.” (1984 p 4)   Belief in the “grand narratives”, whether truth, social democracy, communism or religion diminishes, knowledge loses its use value and becomes an exchange value.  The key question as Lyotard saw it will not be whether knowledge is true but whether it is efficient and exchangeable. As Lankshear puts it, “Notions and practices of competence according to criteria like true/false, just/unjust, get displaced by competence according to the criterion of high performativity. In such a milieu the fate of individual learners will depend on factors which vary according to access to new technologies.” (2002, p 5) 

In the second camp the advocates of liberal education on the other hand retain their deep commitment to the Enlightenment values proclaimed by Newman, Arnold, Dewey and Leavis and emphasise a disinterested search for truth, emancipation and progress.  Educationalists have depicted the often tense battle between the advocates of these differing approaches.  Postmodernists contend that the search for an overarching philosophical world-view based on truth and ethical purpose is illusory and doomed.  They challenge the post Enlightenment perspective that knowledge is liberating, that it is valuable for its own sake and that educators are taking part in a great civilising mission to encourage individual critical inquiry. On the other hand the upholders of liberal education contend that university lecturers have a moral mission to generate an understanding among their students that “all actions are politically and ethically charged”.(Bradney 2003, p 43)  Transposing Newman’s ideal vision to the twenty first century Bradney  writes, “ [t]he cast of mind that a liberal education creates results in a certain kind of character or, at lest leads to a predisposition to a certain kind of character. Sceptical inquiry, notions of individual autonomy and a requirement to justify one’s actions all ten to promote a particular way of viewing the world and one’s place in the world.”(2003, p 52) While accepting that universities must also prepare graduates for employment, Bradney decries the Dearing Report 1997 for its “ focus was on how higher education would contribute to the development of the British economy and how graduates would be, by virtue of their being graduates, better workers…The focus is not on how graduates would be better citizens or better persons. Knowledge, in Dearing, is rarely valued as a good in itself.”(p 66)  Bradney like Barnett places particular stress on values in higher education although these must not be communicated in a prescriptive way since “...a liberal education does not determine which values a person must choose but it does determine the method by which those values are chosen and defended and, given the way in which those values must be defended, arguably it may delimit a range of values from which the individual can legitimately make their choice.”(p 54) The key is adhering to “the principles of sceptical enquiry and individual responsibility that are inherent in the notion of a liberal education.”(p 56)

Eagleton, in his usual trenchant style, has recently produced a fervent portrait of the differences between postmodern philosophy and Enlightenment humanist values. He provides a somewhat choleric definition:

“By postmodern, I mean roughly speaking, the contemporary movement of thought which rejects totalities, universal values, grand historical narratives, solid foundations to human existence and the possibility of objective knowledge.  Postmodernism is sceptical of truth, unity and progress, opposes what it sees as elitism in culture, tends towards cultural relativism and celebrates pluralism, discontinuity and hetereogeneity”. (Eagleton, 2003 p13).

He summarises it as offering “the present plus more options”.  The differences between them are of course rooted in the history of universities over the past couple of centuries as they have responded to the need to adjust to social, political and technological developments.

2. Universities and Ideology   

Delanty demonstrates how the structural changes undergone by universities over the last three centuries were necessarily accompanied by ideological shifts.(2002, p 32)  He traces four historic periods traversed by Western European universities each characterized by particular cognitive models and taking place in specific social and economic landscapes.  The Humboldtian universities of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were dominated by the Enlightenment project with its belief in the universality of knowledge and academic freedom.  Changes through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries produced industrial and then mass universities and, in the early twenty first century, virtual universities.  Knowledge, Delanty’s model suggests, is now seen as primarily instrumental.  He claims that multidisciplinarity, diversity and market values predominate. This is taking place in a post-Fordist world of globalisation and neo-liberalism. Higher education Delanty argues is being commodified and transformed into a series of individual contracts and investments. The traditional confidence in humanistic Enlightenment values is thus challenged by postmodernist notions of the overwhelming significance of novelty, flexibility, disruption and change.

Is this shift towards postmodernist ways of thinking away from the stance of liberal education a matter for regret? The response from some quarters is to decry postmodernist notions as dangerous or ignorant or both. Taylor et al (2002) for example suggest that the promiscuity of this philosophy is such that it has a grip on official thinking, giving a theoretical gloss both to technological determinism and fluid free market cultures.  The authors write, “the political negativity of postmodernism, with its cultural and philosophical relativism, and its eventual moral and political conformity with the status quo, has rendered it a politically conservative force”.(Taylor et al 2002, p 34) They call instead for higher education institutions to embrace a revitalised Enlightenment humanism.  Postmodern utopianism on the other hand has also been savaged by writers such as Robins and Webster who have drawn attention to the connection between Third Way communitarian politics and “ technocultural discourse”. (Robins and Webster 1999, p 25) They decried the  “hype” about the possibilities of electronic technology which include “ participatory politics, material comfort, improved pedagogy, better communications, restored community and whatever else you might think.” (p5) 

This hype however continues unabated. As far as higher education is concerned Raschke  (2003) has recently made the most panglossian claims for the postmodernist electronic nirvana.  He predicts the end of the traditional physical university, under pressure from technology and the Internet, and its replacement by the “ hyperuniversity”.  Knowledge, he argues, can now be created and communicated by anyone, anywhere and “…over time the hallowed ivy halls will end up as a desolate ruin in the field, like some Medieval stone castle overlooking the Rhine”.(Raschke 2003, p 38)  They will be replaced by a grandiose digitalised project centred on online education which “ involves much more than the interaction of students and professors through email, or the dissemination of lectures via web pages. It entails a wholly unprecedented synthesis of intellect, imagination and technical competency.” (p102)  Raschke likens traditional teaching to listening to a Mahler symphony on a CD player with headphones while online education is comparable to playing the violin in the orchestra. “One’s own role in the performance is not unrelated to the outcome”. (p 102)  Hyperbole indeed seems to be the order of the day.(1)  Thus postmodernism is under attack from two quarters, both for a reactionary neo-liberalism and for a sentimental utopianism. It has not in short had a good press.(2)

3. The Postmodernist “Mood” and E-Learning

It is easy to ridicule postmodernists as trendy charlatans and decry what is often merely a chic radicalism but the pervasiveness of postmodernism and its apparently antagonistic denial of traditional liberal education values means that it cannot just be dismissed out of hand. Even the celebrated protagonist of liberal education Nussbaum acknowledges, in relation to postmodernism, that “it is important to separate what is plausible in these ideas from what is naïve and dangerous”.  She illustrates this herself by adding, in language which has overtones of Foucault,  “[o]ne of the factors to be considered in evaluating a claim is the role of social and political power in shaping the concepts it contains.” (1997, p 39)  One way forward is to accept that postmodernism, despite the extravagant even apocalyptic claims of many of its devotees, represents not so much a coherent philosophy but what Usher et al call “ a certain mood or attitude”.  They suggest that it does provide a helpful critical tool.  “Postmodernism”, they write. “enables a questioning of the scientific attitude and scientific method, of the universal efficacy of technical and instrumental reason and of the stance of objectivity and value neutrality in the making of knowledge claims.” (Usher et al 2003, p 8) The fragmentation and inchoate nature of postmodernism is also identified by Murphy who refers to it as “ [m]ore a collection of often warring tribes than a unified nation”. (2000, p 363)  He also points out that, rather than, as is popularly claimed, nihilistically decrying reason and humanism, postmodernist questioning usefully serves to disturb settled stances.  Indeed it is arguable that the postmodernists are not so much opposed to the concept of “reason” as to the view that it can take only one form. Lyotard, answering accusations of irrationalism, called in aid Kant to uphold his stance that “… there is no reason only reasons” (Lyotard 2004, p 251). He continued, “... the crisis of reason has been precisely the bath in which scientific reason has been immersed for a century, and this crisis, this continued interrogation of reason, is certainly the most rational thing around. In the deepest sense it is there, in this “critical”- in the two senses of the term- movement that I would like to situate my thoughts”.(p 252)

What relevance do these philosophical deliberations have for the down to earth tasks of developing university law courses aided by electronic delivery? To answer this it is necessary to identify some of the challenges law lecturers are now facing. Firstly there is a danger that lecturers will be so overwhelmed or indeed depressed by the possibilities of the technology and its complexities that they will marginalise the underlying educational purpose of their work.  Secondly, the often professed objective in employing a wider range of resources in proposed electronic programme delivery is that lecturers should become what are termed “learning managers”, working in teams often with non academics and enabling students to engage in deep, active learning. This poses questions of educational theory as well as practical challenges.  Thirdly increasing, if still small, numbers of academics are becoming interested in the theoretical questions sparked by studying work on the scholarship of teaching by Boyer and others and also by postgraduate study in educational philosophy.(Boyer 1990)   They are enthusiastic to draw on this in their work in curriculum development, particularly in the light of the often tense relationship in the between university teaching and research.  In short changes in curriculum delivery offer an opportunity to bring into teaching the intellectual dimension and rigour which characterise research and thus effect an enhancement both of staff confidence and esteem and of the student learning experience. To achieve this in a satisfactory way a familiarity with the more general intellectual currents of the time can be valuable.  

4. Theoretical Groundwork and  Curriculum Development

There is now a small but increasing body of material, across the disciplines, which emphasises the need for a theoretically coherent approach to the production of learning materials in higher education.  For example Jenkins argues that curriculum design is “an act of scholarship” and academics should be “aware of and use the conversations on the curriculum”.  He adds, “[i]f we treat curriculum design  as something that can be done by common sense, knowledge and experience, why should we expect others to value the knowledge we have developed on the substantive areas we teach?”. (1998, p 95-6) The possible progressive effect of online delivery on pedagogy was emphasised by MIT President Charles Vest reviewing the impact of new technologies. He observed that “the real lesson of the MIT experience with educational technology, in my mind, is that it forces us to rethink the educational process.  Faculty engaged in these new approaches do believe that they have become better teachers- but not so much because of the technological extensions of their capability but because the process of designing the programs forces them to think in fresh ways about ancient techniques”. (Vest 2001)

Among those academics who have concerned themselves with pedagogic theory several have acknowledged the importance of being receptive to apparently rival philosophies. Bradney, whose comprehensive theory of a liberal legal education challenges narrow  vocationalism, points out that,  “ [t]he postmodernist argument asks theorists of liberal education to once again reconsider and restate their positions.”(2001, pp 45-46)  He also insists that such debate is a necessary and healthy and  “notions of liberal education can only flourish in the present era if the study of post-modernism flourishes”.(p 47)   Bloland, outlining its impact on higher education, sees postmodernist philosophy’s main features as: “…the indeterminacy of language, the primacy of discourse, the decentering and fragmentation of the concepts of self, the significance of the “other”, a recognition of the tight, unbreakable power/knowledge nexus, the attenuation of belief in metanarratives, and the decline of dependence upon rationalism”.(Bloland 1995, p 526)  Rorty goes so far as to contend “ I do not see any difference between Dewey and Foucault on narrowly philosophical grounds.  The only difference I see between them is the presence or lack of social hope which they display.” (1990, p 43)  Even Raschke claims that his messianic vision is a development from the liberal educator Dewey whom he describes as “America’s most distinguished philosopher of education”. (2003 p 31) Indeed, it is suggested here, closer examination of both apparently antagonistic theoretical positions prompts the view that as analytical tools they can make complementary contributions to developing a more mature understanding of the learning process, specifically that depending increasingly on electronic delivery. 

Such delivery currently includes in part the following features: use of Internet sources and data banks, electronic discussion boards and provision of specially prepared online sources, in other words a combination electronic communications and electronic publishing.  Many university managements have financed the installation of this new technology enthusiastically, but often without clear educational perspectives.  As Jones and Scully put it “the development of educational technology is characterised by an a-theoretical approach embracing technology for technology’s sake.” (1996, p 8)   They point out that the technology can offer stimulating new possibilities: “Educational technology can encourage activity, communication and exploration.  It can provide immediate and effective feedback and evaluation. However the development and implementation of such technology must embrace the basic principles of good pedagogical practice, facilitating learner activity, enabling different styles and providing multiple representations of the subject domain. Thereby (sic) enabling students to understand, to relate one idea to the other and be capable of independent inquiry.” (p 9) 

Such a vista seems on the face of it very close to the traditional landscape of a liberal education.  Do lecturers therefore need to go beyond the liberal theoretical framework?  It is submitted here that they do and that a deeper approach to the encroachment of technology in higher education could also include reflection on the theoretical work of postmodernists in this area.   In particular attention could usefully be directed to their claim that it is the nature of knowledge itself not just the process of delivery  which has changed. Thus although liberal educationalists might agree that Lyortard’s gloomy analysis is a more or less accurate description of what is happening they do not necessarily accept the further conclusions which Lyotard drew. Two are particularly contentious: firstly the famous “incredulity towards the meta narrative”, and secondly the demise of the professoriate (academics) who will no longer be needed.  For the liberal educators truth is still a valued goal and knowledge is of paramount importance for it is the route to emancipation, challenging the social order.  As Delanty put it “in one way or another all great thinkers of the Enlightenment and its aftermath - Hegel, Marx - held to this idea of the liberating power of knowledge.” (Delanty 2001, p134)   By contrast, as he points out, Lyotard argued that we are living in an information society which has fragmented knowledge by commodifying and instrumentalising it. The result was that knowledge had lost its promise of emancipation. Closer examination of the constituent parts of postmodernism suggest however that it is not necessarily the case that academics  need look back nostalgically to Newman’s elitist, male nineteenth century vision of the university and reject the post-modernists as devotees of a dangerous relativism. Admittedly many legal scholars do see them as targets for condemnation. Salter for example condemns their approach to human rights.  He decries postmodernist “dimensions of determinism, ethical relativism and the irresponsible dismantling of rationalism, humanism and universalism that are fundamentally subversive to many of the standard liberal assumptions and overall rights-based agenda of most civil libertarians.” (1996, p 31)   More generally Taylor et al complain that the question set by postmodernists is not is it to be human but what is it that makes us different.(2002, p 40)   There seems, indeed, to be scant acknowledgement in some postmodern thought that some differences (racism, xenophobia, dishonesty) are unacceptable . Excessive emphasis is placed on innovation, diversity and novelty. However, as Bloland suggests, postmodernists in their ceaseless questioning of all received truths do make “us aware of the destabilization and uncertainty that we confront not only in society but in higher education.” (1995, p 551)    Such awareness it is argued here is of particular value in facing some current challenges in curriculum design. 

5. Areas of Curriculum Development 

5.1 Virtual Teaching and the Move away from the Transmission Model

The stance of liberal educators is succinctly put by AS Byatt in her recent novel.  Her character Frederica reflected that “she was a good teacher because she was more interested in the books she taught than in the students who listened - which is to not to say that she wasn’t interested in the students, only that she had her priorities”.  (Byatt 2003, p 37) In a similar reverential vein Steiner writes “ [t]here is no community, no creed, no discipline or craft without its Master and disciples, its teachers and apprentices. Knowledge is transmission. In progress, in innovation, however trenchant, the past is present. Masters guard and enforce memory.” (2003, p 148)   Behind this liberal education mission is this sense that the tutor is expert, the propagator of what Newman called “universal knowledge”.  Is this an appropriate approach in the Information Age when our students are bombarded with authorities and a vastly increasing range of sources?  For Edwards and Usher the “hypertextual capacity of cyberspace allows learners more scope to construct knowledge rather than just passively receive it.” (2002, p 48)   Curriculum designers might indeed gain some insight from the postmodernist rejection of the existence of an accepted canon of knowledge.  Scott’s attempt to present a less stringent version of the postmodernist stance is particularly worthy of consideration. He has advocated the concept of the university as a site of "contested knowledge". (Scott 2003)   In this view teaching should be a dialogue and not a site for the transmission of universally accepted truths.  For Barnett, “Grand Reason” has dissolved but there are now “multiple forms of reason” (2003, p161).  The key point lies in the perception of what the tutor should be doing.  As Barnett also points out “the lecture confers on the lecturer an authority that he or she cannot maintain in an age of super-complexity.  What is required is a pedagogy that allows the student to come to terms with uncertainty where there are no ultimate authorities; and no ultimate authority residing in any framework”.(2000 p 125) 

Such a stance has practical implications for course design.  One derives from the nature of electronic based materials. Traditionally knowledge has been conveyed by the written word, in a linear and analytical way.  The Internet however is the prime example of the non-linear, or multi-linear representation of knowledge.  Course tutors need to enable students to navigate this new form of knowledge representation and to discriminate as to the value of apparent authorities. This arises for example in relation to law reports where the mushrooming of series of case reports has undermined the traditional notion of precedent. (Spencer et al 2002) There is a greater premium now on teaching students to question authority. Raschke makes the point that, “The former epistemology of learning… was founded upon the premise that knowledge is somehow pre-existent and is transmitted, like a radio signal from instructor to student.”(Raschke 2003, p30)  He contrast web-based learning where “ the guidance itself comes from the contours of the system, and how the pedagogical architect configures it”.(p33)       

Electronic delivery also prompts new approaches to assessment.  Is the classical essay format still valid with its linear depiction of an argued thesis?  Andrews claims that the essay “ reflects the rationalist paradigm, underpinned by argumentation and in turn by logic, dialectic and rhetoric”. He suggests that it can be refreshed by allowing the injection of personal perspectives and by creating a “multi-voiced” work. (2003, p126)   Bleakley laments that the “dominant practices of self- assessment in contemporary higher education are rooted in this post Enlightenment humanist model of the person that takes the subject to be an essentialist fact.” (2000, p 3)   He proposes alternative models of self assessment which recognizes that selves are social creations.  More specifically it is arguable that consideration could be given to web based portfolios and web-pages as assessment mechanisms. This is not a question of inculcating technical skills but of a creative and challenging presentation of content. Winter outlines a fresh approach to assessment in higher education based on in part on the principles advocated by Barnett whose work he says “ provides a broadly based argument in favour of a model of teaching and learning focused on dialogue, critical reflection, reflexivity, self awareness and self-evaluation”(2003, p119). Winter’s chosen method is a cumulative series of varied written exercises, the “Patchwork Text”, which he says “ deconstructs the essay’s monolithic, finalizing unity into a series of fragments, with a possible overall “pattern” that is waiting to be synthesised by means of a personal journey of exploration”.(2003, p121) Electronic discussion boards which facilitate such written dialogues between students and lecturers give improved opportunities for developing student literacy in imaginative ways. Winter acknowledges a debt to Levi- Strauss and Derrida in the development of the intellectual underpinnings of this fresh approach to assessment.

Admittedly it is not only postmodernists who reject the passive receptacle view of learning, thus demonstrating that there is not so much a clear divide but rather a continuum stretching between the two philosophical standpoints.  The great liberal educator Freire famously deplored what he called “the banking model” of education.  The development of constructivism, associated with Bruner, has also contributed to this approach.(see Maharg 2000) As Shoffner et al point out,  “[t]he major differences between objectivism and constructivism involve beliefs about the nature of knowledge and how one acquires it. Objectivists view knowledge as an absolute truth; constructivists are open to different interpretations depending on who is interpreting”.(2000, p 8) 

5.2 Widening Access and Cultural Preconceptions

For Lyotard the university had it outlived his usefulness.  It could not accommodate to the post-modern fragmentation of knowledge since it tried to present a unifying narrative. Indeed for Lyotard the very idea of teaching in higher education was counter-revolutionary.  The problem with this approach is that there is a risk that the individual student, liberated from the University, would be prey to precisely to the kind of market domination that Lyotard decries.  In any case reports of the death of the university have been grossly exaggerated.  Although this extreme vision of Lyotard does not hold water the postmodern analysis does have much to offer academics in terms of the need to appreciate the many different identities of students in the era of lifelong learning.  Educators must be sensitive to the new self-confidence of those who wish to learn and welcome the diversity.  Course designers need to be aware of cultural differences particularly in the fields of academic literacy (Lea and Nicol 2002). Electronic discussion boards offer fruitful opportunities for students to engage in sustained literary exercises, to enter into dialogue with peers and receive tutor and peer feedback.  On-line learning communities in short present opportunities for students to take part in many differing conversations which cross boundaries of nationality, age, ideology.  Edwards and Usher provide some analytical tools for appreciating this development.  They write,  “ [i]n addition to the pedagogical question, there is also the wider question as to whether, given its characteristics of disembodiedness and disembeddedness,  cyberspace can ever be a site of culture….  Perhaps what this implies is that we need to rethink our notions of “culture” and a homogenous social sphere and as a means of realizing a core identity”.   (2001, p 63) On the other hand there is a danger in Lyotard’s rejection of institutional teaching that the outcome would be an educational individualist consumerism which would undermine educational values.  For example Widdison writes,

Widdison even foresees the emergence of “one-person law schools - individual academics with an excellent reputation for taking on and educating small numbers of students in their area of specialism”. (p 10)   Undoubtedly online education has many possibilities and the emphasis may well shift from university awarded degrees to individual accreditation gained at the workplace or in the student’s own time and place.  Against this however is the view that the universities will be reluctant to lose their unique validating powers.

5.3 Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries 

Some postmodernists would go as far as dismantling disciplinary boundaries, seeing them as now archaic social constraints.  As Drolet puts it “ Foucault’s archeological method and genealogical approach made a significant contribution to the shattering of barriers between established academic disciplines.”(Drolet 2003, p 21)   Indeed it is arguably desirable that universities should be at the forefront of developing systemic knowledge where the traditional disciplines collide and implosion is taking place.” As the Canadian lawyer Arthurs puts it “our current problem is to manage the exponential growth of this technical knowledge and to fit it into intellectual structures and information systems which will make it accessible, reliable, coherent and ultimately usable.” (1995, p 298)   As far as law is concerned he gave the example of the closeness between the disciplines of employment law and human resource management. At the level of the curriculum this may imply planning courses which straddle the disciplines.  Electronic based courses provide scope for a wide sweep of resources and offer opportunities for engaging in legal discourses on feminism, cultural studies and globalisation for example which are multi disciplinary.  More concretely in the context of curriculum planning academics are recognizing that establishing “communities of practice” does mean moving away from the “lone scholar” concept to welcoming curriculum designing as a team project involving web specialists, information retrieval experts, student counsellors and programme planner, in short all who are concerned with aspects of student “well being” which might impact on learning.(3) However there are risks in this blurring of boundaries. Academics may fear deskilling and an undermining of their status. For Lankshear, “Lyotard’s recognition of the role and significance of multidiciplinary teams …supersedes that of the expert individual (Lyotard’s professor) as the efficient means of making new moves”. (Lankshear 2002, p16)   Trowler in his study of the fictional “NewU” points out that in the “ many academics felt they were in danger of becoming mere ‘deliverers’ of modules, interchangeable teachers perceived as having no special skills or qualities and merely there to satisfy the whims of the student market”.(Trowler1998, p33)  

5.4 The Unity of Teaching and Research?

For both post modernists and liberal educators the various aspects of academic life present ambiguities and conflicts.  These arise particularly in the context of the relationship between teaching and research and have significant implications for the preoccupations of lecturers.  Traditionally liberal education advocates such as Newman viewed research as a secondary occupation for academics (Hattie and Marsh 1996, p 507). For others today the view that teaching and research are complementary is a myth which “causes incalculable harm to liberal education, betrays those who understand the importance of college teaching and who have chosen to make this their life’s work, by giving currency to the doctrine that teaching is not enough, and that what really counts is publication, publicity and prestige” (Crimmel 1984, p193 quoted in Hattie and Marsh 1966, p533).  On the other hand Bradney sees research as a prime pursuit of academics and one that all lectures should engage in it to a greater or lesser extent.  Paradoxically the current emphasis on research is in part an aspect of the academic capitalism and audit culture which is so condemned by liberal educators.  It is a modern development.  As Delanty put it “in the Enlightenment model of the two were inseparable: professors gave lectures that formed the core of their writings. By contrast “today in the age of the researcher and new links with industry, these domains of discourse had become separated.”(Delanty 2001, p110)  For Lyotard research was the only legitimate higher education pursuit since there challenges to meta narratives could be generated.  One way forward from the rather sterile teaching versus research debate is suggested by the postmodernist challenge to the conventional liberal education view of academic texts.  As Edwards and Usher put it “ at the heart of the modernist approach to education is the rational and humanitarian educator – governed by reason and human values and making original contributions to knowledge”.( 2001, p112) As they point out courses using a virtual learning environment are increasingly giving the opportunity for more imaginative use of resources, a move away from the fixation with originality and authenticity and a consequent inspiration to students to engage in a variety of literary practice.  Raschke also sees this trend as a confirmation of the appropriateness of a postmodernist stance. He writes

5.5 Do Educators Know What is Best?

Liberal education is prefaced on a certain kind of teleology in that educator is assumed to know in advance what is best for the student.  But it might be argued that it is not only educators who should dictate the purpose of education.  While eschewing the wilder excesses of vocationalism and rejecting the Blairite view that higher education should be primarily servicing industry, law lecturers should perhaps acknowledge that the advent of lifelong learning means that students may have any number of motives in taking up higher education.  Usher et al  point out that “ [w]hilst no one would seriously argue that education can be purposeless, there is a problem in so far as it is by no means axiomatic that educators alone should dictate what these purposes are”. (Usher et al 2003, p 23)  It is also worth noting that liberal education is not as disinterested a search for knowledge as it might appear.  The same authors note that “[it is actually possible to argue that liberal adult education is instrumental….[it] did not so much provide learning for its own sake but a training for a certain kind of citizenship. It was an important instrument in the formation of the liberal citizen, individualist, rationalistic with a faith in benevolent progress through science and truth”. (Usher et al 2003, p 11)  It is indeed difficult to see that the traditional liberal education approach is appropriate one in the twenty first century and it is surely healthy to question its complacency whether this concerns the nature of society or the nature of learning. As Graham Webb puts it “…postmodernism challenges us to move out of our particular comfort zones (reflective practice, action research, phenomenography etc). …We do not lose values or abrogate responsibility but they become less anchored, more contingent.”(Webb1996, p 96)    

6. Conclusion-A (Real and Cyber)Space for Values

There is doubtless still a place for the traditional residential model of the university confidently educating, almost exclusively by face to face methods, the minority of eighteen to twenty one year olds.  It is not however the only model in the age of lifelong learning, flexible and distance education and massification.  Universities, like many of their students, face a multitude of tasks of which enlightening society is one of many.  They cannot however, as Barnett points out, operate effectively without an ideological framework for their activities. Delanty argues that academics have responsibilities also to the wider community and he sees a place for a revival of a sort of technological global  citizenship where universities

“have an important role to play in linking technology to citizenship. Technological citizenship concerns a new terrain of rights relating to the forces unleashed by technological rationality in the media, environment, the internet and information technology food and water, health….. In an age characterised by the mobility of capital, labour, communication, food and images, new kinds of rights will emerge which cannot be organized around the centrality of the state and national societies. It is evident that these kinds of rights will increasingly depend on new technologies which will in turn shape the discourse of rights.” (Delanty 2001 p156-157)

Delanty convincingly argues that “knowledge can still be emancipatory but in a more restrictive sense”.(p81)  It is suggested that in the taking up such responsibilities legal academics in particular have a key role to play and they may usefully draw on a number of intellectual strands recognizing their limitations as well as their strengths.

The underlying weakness of postmodernist philosophy is what Griffin refers to as “ambiguity and equivocation about values and a self- subverting reliance on values which at the same time they profess to scorn in others”. (1997, p 7)  The narrative of anarchic consumerism, implicit in the postmodernist alliance with the global corporate market ethos is not an attractive one. As Taylor et al point out: “Without a critical humanistic framework in higher education, the system tends to produce technically competent but socially, morally and politically disengaged and thus, in the “public” sense, amoral graduates”. (Taylor et al 2002, p160) The challenge facing academics is to draw on the humanising influence of liberal education values while questioning the accompanying rather complacent implication that the secure and knowing individual is the centre of epistemology.  Smith points out the limitations of a return to the nineteenth century liberal education ideals.  “In the discourse of today merely to use such conceptions as a starting point, to reverence the mythology of the nineteenth century academy, automatically presupposes a narrative of decline and crisis”. (2003) A reinvigorated assertion of rationality, critical inquiry and individual human worth alongside the postmodernist more sustained subversive questioning of authority, power and certainty may be more fruitful.

Law lecturers are finding it difficult to avoid the pressure from cash strapped universities to increase the use technology in teaching and reduce the extent of physical contact with students. This article has argued that there may be many positive features for effective student centred learning in more extensive use of digital technology in what is known as “flexible delivery”. Undoubtedly there are also dangers. Information may be confused with knowledge and dialogue with tutor or fellow students may become remote and superficial.  In a prescient  study of the impact of  computers and information technology on law teaching Alldridge and Mumford wrote, “[i]n a time of shrinking provision, C&IT may be a way to preserve quality of teaching and learning. It may also, however be regarded as a threat to the way in which teaching and learning was previously conducted”. (1998 p 133) Whether the learning environment is enhanced or diminished depends in part on whether we engage in a sustained attempt to develop a coherent and systematic ordering of educational theory, drawing on prevailing intellectual debates, alongside the practical tasks of developing the curriculum. Perhaps we will find that after all the gulf between liberal educators and enthusiasts for postmodernism is not that great. They form part of the same Western  philosophical tradition. As Drolet puts it “…what postmodernism and modernism share is the deep impulse to liberate the human spirit from intellectual and cultural constraints. Both Michel Foucault …and Immanuel Kant, the champion of the Enlightenment, were united in their use of Kant’s own motto for the Enlightenment: ‘Sapere aude!’ have courage to use your own understanding”.(Drolet 2003, p 34)      

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