Can engagement in higher education drive a more equal and socially-just society?
This crucial question persists as we look to reset, renew and rejuvenate our sector through the Accord process.
Engagement Australia was established in 2003 to help universities drive improved outcomes by prioritising engagement with community and 20 years on, the challenge to create, measure and demonstrate the value of universities to the Australian public are just as urgent and compelling as they were two decades ago – if not more so.
The much-anticipated policy settings that are set to emerge from the current Accord process will also pose another crucialquestion, namely: ‘Is our higher education system structured and capable of delivering graduates that are agents of change for their future communities?’
One important aspect of the changes that are required to improve engagement is recognising and re-imagining the importance of place-based learning. We need to re-imagine the part played by institutions, re-defining the community of learners and recognising the fundamentals that underpin a renewed curriculum.
We continue to ignore the positive impact of diverse cultures, students’ own concerns with language and identity and the power of affective learning in driving improved engagement and graduate outcomes.
The role of places and spaces is of great emotional significance and shows the potential that a treasured environment may have on personal and social understanding. We must start to incorporate this rich, but often ignored resource into future place-based strategies for learning if we are to build institutional affiliation and public recognition of the value of universities.
There are opportunities to create new learning outcomes, involving objective knowledge and thought and feeling.
Passion for place is a marvellous resource that we need to harness, so it can feed into a passion for learning.
We need to re-define the subject matter of what we learn and teach so that the life experience of people in communities can become central to learning.
The Accord and the anniversary of Engagement Australia’s establishment also prompts a further question related to learning and engagement impact: ‘Will our education system be up to the task of producing really useful knowledge of the wicked issues of the day?’
The failure to recognise and address the wicked issues of the day is more serious than just the sin of omission. Climate change, world poverty, war, social dislocation and environmental destruction are some of the great evils of this time. They are the existential issues which will make or break our way of life and they impact the whole globe and all who live on it. Our handling of these issues will determine the future of our planet and species.
Whilst we cannot and should not invite people to consider deep suffering and deprivation as a learning opportunity, the relevance of our learning and teaching to addressing these issues needs to be considered at the very heart of every curriculum. These issues also must form the basis of a critical literacy relevant to all learners.
What is needed is something that resembles a critical community-based learning culture which investigates and supports the communities in which educators actually live and work. This involves learning beyond the classroom, where the problems and challenges facing communities become the source and inspiration for learning.
The forthcoming Issue of Engagement Australia’s journal Transform will include leading edge case studies from around Australia that showcase inspirational and innovative learning, as well as the importance of critical community-based learning which will become increasingly important for our future students.
We need to re-focus our institutional approaches, involving student and community participation in designing and leveraging learning and teaching models which are locally relevant, addressing the monumental issues that humanity currently faces.
This approach to creating a negotiated curriculum must be delivered through a decelerated approach to learning and teaching (a pedagogy for dialogue) which would provide us with better tools to fashion our future.
Learners must develop a critical commentary on public life and reality, because the systems of mass communication we have currently leave many of them immobilised, unable to understand the causes of their confusion and alienation and unable to act on them.
For young people in particular, this is important since they will be required to lead change in coming years and they also have the most to gain or lose.
Professor Jim Nyland, University of Southern Queensland and Chair, Engagement Australia
