TY - JOUR
T1 - Transforming Academia
T2 - The Role of Education
AU - Juhl, Joakim
AU - Buch, Anders
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - Scientific research is usually presented as the driver that provides progress and meaning to the academic ecosystem. Higher education on the other hand, is typically imagined as something that naturally follows scientific research. In the academic ecosystem, education often retains a more marginalized position than scientific research and in many of the predominant accounts of the academic ecosystem it is even neglected. As a result, higher education and teaching tends to be treated as duty work that retracts resources away from research. In response to such accounts the present article proposes an alternative perspective in which higher education can assume a proactive role that affects institutions’ research. The article presents a case that demonstrates how social scientists at the Technical University of Denmark, in response to new demands for autonomous economy within Danish universities, invented the controversial, yet successful, ‘Design and Innovation’ engineering program. Design and Innovation’s controversial curricular composition brought together: creativity, social awareness, and product innovation and heralded the salvation for the declining status of engineering in Danish higher education. The article contributes to contemporary discussions on transformations within the university system by illustrating educational development as a transformative practice whereby the value and purpose of scientific disciplines get rearticulated in conversation with contemporary understandings of social needs.
AB - Scientific research is usually presented as the driver that provides progress and meaning to the academic ecosystem. Higher education on the other hand, is typically imagined as something that naturally follows scientific research. In the academic ecosystem, education often retains a more marginalized position than scientific research and in many of the predominant accounts of the academic ecosystem it is even neglected. As a result, higher education and teaching tends to be treated as duty work that retracts resources away from research. In response to such accounts the present article proposes an alternative perspective in which higher education can assume a proactive role that affects institutions’ research. The article presents a case that demonstrates how social scientists at the Technical University of Denmark, in response to new demands for autonomous economy within Danish universities, invented the controversial, yet successful, ‘Design and Innovation’ engineering program. Design and Innovation’s controversial curricular composition brought together: creativity, social awareness, and product innovation and heralded the salvation for the declining status of engineering in Danish higher education. The article contributes to contemporary discussions on transformations within the university system by illustrating educational development as a transformative practice whereby the value and purpose of scientific disciplines get rearticulated in conversation with contemporary understandings of social needs.
KW - higher education
KW - engineering education
KW - reform
KW - innovation
KW - sociotechnical imaginaries
KW - co-production
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85053304396&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/00131857.2018.1508996
DO - 10.1080/00131857.2018.1508996
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0013-1857
VL - 51
SP - 803
EP - 814
JO - Educational Philosophy and Theory
JF - Educational Philosophy and Theory
IS - 8
ER -