Society for Research Into Higher Education Series

Engaging the Curriculum

by Ronald Barnett and Kelly Coate

Published 1 January 2004

There is greater interest than ever before in higher education: more money is being spent on it, more students are registered and more courses are being taught. And yet the matter that is arguably at the heart of higher education, the curriculum, is noticeable for its absence in public debate and in the literature on higher education. This book begins to redress the balance.

Even though the term ‘curriculum’ may be missing from debates on higher education, curricula are changing rapidly and in significant ways. What we are seeing, therefore, is curriculum change by stealth, in which curricula are being reframed to enable students to acquire skills that have market value. In turn, curricula are running the risk of fragmenting as knowledge and skills exert their separate claims. Such a fragmented curriculum is falling well short of the challenges of the twenty-first century.

A complex and uncertain world requires curricula in which students as human beings are placed at their centre: what is called for are curricula that offer no less than the prospect of encouraging the formation of human being and becoming. A curriculum of this kind has to be understood as the imaginative design of spaces where creative things can happen as students become engaged.

Based upon a study of curricula in UK universities, Engaging the Curriculum in Higher Education offers an uncompromising thesis about the development of higher education and is essential reading for those who care about its future.

Reshaping the University: New Relationships between Research, Scholarship and Teaching

by Ronald Barnett

Published 1 January 2005

What is the emerging shape of the University? Are there spaces for present activities to be practised anew or even for new activities? If these questions have force, they show that the metaphors of shapes and spaces can be helpful in understanding the contemporary university.Research, teaching and scholarship remain the dominant activities in universities and so it is their relationships that form the main concerns of this volume. Are these activities pulling apart from each other? Or might these activities be brought more together in illuminating ways? Is there space to redesign these activities so that they shed light on each other? Is there room for yet other purposes?

In this volume, a distinguished set of scholars engage with these pertinent but challenging issues. Ideas are offered, and evidence is marshalled, of practices that suggest a re-shaping of the University may be possible.

Reshaping the University appeals to those who are interested in the future of universities, including students, researchers, managers and policy makers. It also addresses global issues and it will, therefore, interest the higher education community worldwide.

Contributors: Ronald Barnett, David Dill, Carol Bond, Lewis Elton, Mick Healey, Mark Hughes, Rajani Naidoo, Mark Olssen, Bruce Macfarlane, Kathleen Nolan, Jan Parker, Michael Peters, Alison Phipps, Jane Robertson, Peter Scott, Stephen Rowland.