Theoretical Framework

This paper is a theory paper.  It draws on our teaching experience using a model we call the change maker model.  The paper explores a more active and student driven model in the context of a more neoliberal and accountability environment that we find in higher education around the world. This neoliberal, global economy-oriented model is not only educationally limited, but like similar instrumental models in primary and secondary schools, it tends to disadvantage students who do not come from privileged backgrounds.

The paper explores a modern version of Humboldt University’s emphasis on research being a co-creative endeavour between teachers and students. When teachers lead a co-creative endeavor with their students to develop new knowledge in the teacher’s field of expertise, it imbues the students with a strong feeling of meaningfulness. This allows the students to become more engaged and motivated, thus triggering deeper learning and more diligent study behaviours. The underlying mechanism that triggers these much-desired effects is that students are encouraged to explore their own interests and to become outwardly focused by creating something of value for others. This allows students to draw on their own backgrounds and knowledge base as they work toward advancing their understanding in a meaningful way.

Like many institutions in contemporary society, higher education has become dominated by instrumental reason (Taylor, 1991). For so many politicians, policy makers and higher education administrators in Europe, and other parts of the world, their vision of the university is single-mindedly focused on creating a workforce for the economy and contributing to economic growth through new innovative products and services.  (Wright et al. 2020) explain that the drive in Europe (and other parts of the world) has been to become competitive in the global knowledge economy, itself a product of a collective imagination on the part of global elites. But the original Humboldt vision was a much broader vision of what the university could be, with its emphasis on the relationship between open and free exploration and communication and the processes of creating new knowledge. That original Humboldtian vision was central to many of the advancements in the modern world. 

Wright (2014) suggests that many policy makers have embraced a “Humboldtian” vision of freedom for the university, but this vision is only “Humboldtian” through a creative “slight of hand.” While the Humboldtian idea of academic freedom, is about teachers and students pursuing knowledge unfettered by outside influences, contemporary policy makers in Denmark and Europe see freedom in the sense of setting the university free to pursue its place in the market providing knowledge and innovations to corporations and other actors in the economy (Wright et al. 2020). This instrumental market vision, or neoliberal vision, is the very thing that will rob universities of their creative potential. Elites of the world hope the neoliberal approach will usher in a new phase of growth in knowledge and the creation of new and expanding forms of value that are good for people and society. We however suggest that this more instrumental approach will undermine the kinds of economic growth potential the policy makers seek.  Further, it will exacerbate inequalities that we already see among students in higher education. Finally, it ignores the larger problems such as climate change, poverty, crime, war that are critical to address for the well-being of all people.

The Curricular Model The paper briefly presents a model of teacher student interaction that we refer to as the change maker model. It is an example of an innovative pedagogy that resonates with a neo-Humboldtian approach. The model puts the student at the centre of learning and encourages collaboration with peers and practitioners outside of the university. The student identifies their own strengths, values and competences and becomes clear about how to articulate these for other people. Understanding that diversity is a strength, the students work together with the common values that bind them to find ways to investigate and solve pressing issues of importance to them and the practitioners. The perspective we are advocating is very much different than the direction most universities in the western world are going. The change-maker model can be thought of as having five phases. These phases are firstly and most importantly student- centred. The second phase requires collaboration, as a means to develop critical thinking and identity development and supports questioning ‘who do I want to be’ The next phase requires investigation and inquiry of authentic practice, being curious and reflecting with peers. The fourth phase opens up to imagination and understanding divergent and convergent processes in order to experiment and finally, in the last phase, testing and getting feedback, making decisions and reflecting what has been learned. The change-maker model has been developed from the need to focus on the process of learning rather than on learning as outcomes. While the broad goal of ‘creating value for others’ will always be linked to meaningful learning, what is learned along the way and how the learner is ‘transformed’ is determined by the learner themselves. The change-maker process includes participative learning, peer feedback, supervision, formative and summative assessment forms as well as a range of digital technologies that are carefully chosen to support learning processes. Further, these processes can be enacted, although with differences across the university, in the sciences, technical fields, humanities and the arts. Examples of how the change-maker model has been used in a range of disciplines will be discussed.

Summary Learning is always centered within a social context and is connected to individual interest. Higher education is currently becoming less democratic, and less focused on a process of meaning making. In this way, it is undermining core principles we know to be true about learning. We attempt here to think of ways to get back to the Humboldt University vision of students and teachers working closely together in a free and unencumbered way. Developing teaching designs that will enable students to critically reflect on authentic situations and empower them to use curricular knowledge in attempts to change and improve the world might seem like a difficult challenge. Meaningful learning addresses this challenge in several ways. Meaningful learning extends what the learner already knows, connecting this knowledge with how people act in the world. Meaningful learning is at the same time cognitive, constructivist, affective, and linked to one’s understanding of practice in a socio-cultural context. And indeed, when learning happens in this way learners become change-makers.

References Taylor, C. (1991). The Ethics of Authenticity. Boston: Harvard University Press. Wright, S. (2014). ‘Humboldt’ Humbug! Contemporary Mobilizations of ‘Humboldt’ as a Discourse to Support the Corporatization and Marketization of Universities and Disparage Alternatives, in The Humboldtian Tradition : Origins and Legacies, edited by P. Josephson, et al., BRILL. Wright, S., Carney, S., Krejsler, J. B., Nielsen, G. B., Ørberg, J. W. (2020). Enacting the University: Danish University Reform in an Ethnographic Perspective. Springer Nature B. V. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1921-4