Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, Vol. 25, No. 3, 2000
Using Habermas to Evaluate Two Approaches to Negotiated Assessment
DAVID GOSLING, Educational Development Services, University of East London,
Recent discussions about learning and teaching have been strongly in uenced by phenomenographic theories which focus on students’ experience of learning. This theoretical orientation underestimates the importance of the tutor/student relationship. Habermas’s theory of communicative action provides a model of studenttutor interaction which holds out the prospect of an ‘emanicpatory’ adult education. By comparing two courses, both aimed at HE staff and both using forms of negotiated assessment, this paper examines the possibility of approaching the Habermassian ‘ideal speech situation’. The course participants’ experience of negotiated assessment is evaluated against the declared philosophy of the tutors. Although many of the ideals of the tutors found con rmation in the experience of the participants, the paper explores the factors which in uenced the greater success achieved by one of the courses in approaching the Habermassian ideal than the other. ABSTRACT
Introduction There is no single educational theory which will adequately describe the teacher/student relationship. Theorists of education, from Plato to Piaget and from Rousseau to Rogers, have offered competing models to describe what should be the appropriate mode of interaction between the teacher and the taught. In recent years in higher education discussions about learning and teaching have been strongly in uenced by phenomenographic and psychological theories. These have focused on students’ experience of learning through a categorisation of qualitatively different ‘approaches to learning’ and have emphasised the need to encourage ‘deep learning’ by treating students as participators in the learning process (see for example Biggs, 1987; Marton & Saljo, 1997; Prosser & Trigwell, 1999; Ramsden, 1992). Unfortunately, this body of theory is weak on explaining the social context in which learning occurs, in particular the power relationships between the teacher and the taught, and has little to say about what it means for a learner to come to know something or about what kind of learning is of value. ‘Learning’ cannot be abstracted from the social relations within which it occurs and what ISSN 0260-2938 print; ISSN 1469-297X online/00/030293-12 Ó 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd
294
D. Gosling
constitutes effective learning will be circumscribed by ‘historically situated discourse’. (Webb, 1996a, p. 94). Within an institutional context, such as a university, status and rewards are within the power of certain groups to bestow and the achievement of ‘success’ is only possible by conforming to rules de ned by the assessors of student work. But in recognising the historical conditions which produce discourse there is a danger of relativising all truth claims and reducing them to subjectivity. An alternative approach, which attempts to both acknowledge the material conditions which in uence discourse but which also attempts to maintain the Enlightenment project’s search for improved understanding and search for truth, has been provided in the work of Habermas in his ‘theory of communicative action’. In Habermas’s ‘ideal speech situation’ he describes the appropriate circumstances in which it is possible to maintain an orientation for truth in contrast to the instrumentalism which characterises much of modern life. This paper discusses the extent to which two courses, both aimed at staff in higher education, succeed in meeting the ideals of adult education as outlined by writers deriving their outlook from Habermas and his theory of communicative action. In particular, the paper will examine the rationale for two different processes of negotiated assessment, how they operate in practice and what staff and students think about the processes. An attempt will be made to assess the extent to which, through the practices of negotiated assessment, the Habermassian ideal is approached. There will be an outline of the two courses, their aims, structure, target students, place within the institution and then a description of the two forms of negotiated assessment utilised. This will be followed by a brief exposition of a theory of adult education inspired by Habermas’s ‘Theory of Communicative Action’ (Habermas, 1984). The relationship between the two courses under consideration and the Habermassian ‘theory’, will be explored, utilising the comments of students (or ‘participants’) on the two courses as they have described their experience of them. Finally, some conclusions will be drawn about the feasibility of using the ‘ideal speech situation’ as a model for negotiated assessment in adult education in the HE setting. Two Models of Negotiated Assessment The two courses under consideration are the MA in Learning and Teaching in higher education and the Postgraduate Certi cate in Learning and Teaching in higher education at the University of East London. Although both these two courses are within a single modular masters structure they were conceived and validated separately. The PG Certi cate can be used as a stepping stone towards the MA, but it was designed to be a standalone course aimed at those who are new to teaching in HE and taking up teaching posts at the University of East London. The award of the PG Certi cate is made on the basis of demonstrating achievement of competence in teaching (as de ned by the course objectives) and evidence of commitment to the SEDA (Staff and Educational Development Association) principles and values (Baume & Baume, 1996). Assessment is by submission of a portfolio of evidence derived from the participant’s teaching experience, and critical re ection of their professional practice. All participants are allocated a mentor from their subject specialism as a further means of support and opportunity for dialogue and re ection on the teaching of the participant’s subject area.
Using Habermas
295
Each participant negotiates a learning contract which will normally include regular meetings with a small task group on each main campus with a tutor, individual tutorials with a course tutor by appointment, individual tutorials with a mentor by appointment, observations and discussion of teaching by the mentor and a course tutor, observations and discussion of the mentor’s teaching, peer observations and discussion of teaching, self-directed study (indicative reading lists are provided for all units), and attendance at internal and external staff development sessions and events. In summary then, the emphasis in the PG Certi cate is the demonstration of competence in teaching and evidence of re ection on learning and teaching. The course serves a speci c institutional purpose in providing a programme of teacher training for new staff in an attempt to induct them into a culture of teaching quality. Negotiated assessment is to be found in the ‘Introduction to Assessment’ unit. A list of learning outcomes for the unit as a whole is predetermined, but participants negotiate with the tutor the learning outcomes for which they will provide evidence from their own professional experience and also the nature of that evidence. The participants are encouraged to explain their choice of evidence and engage in re ection on the use of assessment within the professional context (their subject, department, teaching commitments etc.) within which they work. Participants determine the evidence they will provide as indicators of having met the agreed learning outcomes in their portfolio. An outline is submitted to the tutor in order to agree what is to be assessed. Where necessary the tutor may ask the participant to re ne their proposals and to resubmit new proposals. Once agreed this forms the Learning Agreement against which the participant will provide evidence in their portfolio. The Portfolio of Evidence relating to the Introduction to Assessment Unit is selfassessed by the participant, indicating where outcomes have been fully, partly, or not met. The participant also re ects on the process by which the self-assessment judgements have been made. The MA in Learning and Teaching is by contrast aimed at more experienced staff and places less emphasis on teaching competencies. However, like the Certi cate, it is based on the assumption that “for professionals the workplace is the prime learning environment” and that “a high level of competence in the design and delivery of learning programmes” is a characteristic of masters level performance. As the course handbook says: Our working model of the future professional is of a re ective practitioner working increasingly with re ective clients and engaged in dialogue with a critical community of professional peers. Our working hypothesis is that this model is best achieved through critical re ection on and critical analysis of one’s own professional experience and current practice, in order to formulate proposals for improved practice, the outcomes of which serve for further re ection and analysis in a continuing cycle of learning (O’Reilly, 1995, p. 4). Each student takes responsibility for justifying the coherence and progression of their proposed programme in relation to their continuing professional development through a formal learning agreement developed on the PDAS (Planning, Development and Synoptic) module. In the PDAS unit students clarify the relationship between learning on the content modules, their own professional and personal development needs, and the project requirements.
296
D. Gosling
As students proceed through the programme, their supervisors monitor progression in the achievement of the postgraduate characteristics identi ed in the learning agreement. Students negotiate with their module tutors an appropriate assessment task which will contribute to coherence and progression, and t with the learning agreement, while also meeting module objectives. Each student is required to be explicit about the learning outcomes achieved at each stage, and to re ect on his/her own progression to masters level. This re exivity is a mandatory feature of all content module assessment and leaves considerable scope for tutor and student to negotiate an assessment task which meets the personal goals of the individual student, the aims of the course as a whole and the more particular aims of the module within which the task is being undertaken. The two processes of negotiated assessment display similarities in the way that students are asked to identify how they intend to meet the course requirements, but the learning outcomes in the Certi cate are more tightly predetermined than in the MALT. In both cases the responsibility lies with the student (staff member) to negotiate how achievement of the outcomes will be demonstrated. A Theory of Adult Education based on ‘Communicative Action’ There are several philosophers, for example Popper or Foucault, whose work might be used to examine the assumptions underpinning the two courses under discussion, but I have chosen Habermas because of the strong in uence his theories have had on the course team and their practices. Furthermore, it has been argued that “Habermas’s work is of central importance for critical educational theory and practice” (Welton, 1995, p. 136). According to Habermas, and those he has in uenced, education is a key element in the achievement of autonomy and responsibility, but, to be successful, educational practices must permit and encourage forms of communication which are not distorted by imbalances of power or other blocks to open and rational discussion. Much of educational practice suffers from what Habermas calls ‘communication pathologies’, when the intentions of the various parties fail to match each other. The ‘ideal speech situation’ is one in which all the parties have an ‘orientation to understanding’ and are committed to rationality, openness, equality and to nding truth. Communication pathologies can be conceived of as the result of a confusion between actions orientated to reaching understanding and actions orientated to success. In situations of concealed strategic action, at least one of the parties behaves with an orientation to success, but leaves others to believe that all the presuppositions of communicative action are satis ed (Habermas, 1984, p. 332). These pathologies are as commonly found in classrooms in higher education as indeed they are at other levels. Students who adopt what others have called a ‘strategic’ or ‘surface’ approach to learning (Marton & Saljo, 1997) do not have an orientation to understanding, and most institutional learning contexts are characterised by inequalities of power between teachers and the taught. For Habermas the problem is not simply a personal one of mismatched intentions, but, rather, is characteristic of society in late-capitalism. Following Weber, he argues that modernity has proceeded by devaluing tradition and the sacred as authoritative forms of knowledge. These pre-modern ‘institutions’ of knowledge have become subject to a rationalising process in an attempt to justify their continued existence. In their place instrumental and strategic forms of
Using Habermas
297
justi cation have become dominant as part of a process of demythologisation, mechanisation of production and bureaucratisation. Much of university education can be said to participate in and contribute to these characteristics of modern late-capitalist society and might be regarded as a “paradigm institution of modernisation” (Blake, 1997). Barnett has spoken of the ‘knowledge crises’ of the modern universities deriving from two sources, post-modernism and statesponsored operationalism (Barnett, 1997, pp. 167–170) re ecting what Habermas has described more generally as the ‘legitimation crisis’. In these circumstances, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that courses within universities can escape from the restrictions of bureaucratisation, instrumentalism and vocationalisation and achieve ‘liberation’ from the dominant forces which are taking them down the road of being instruments of social control and the labour market. What emerges from Habermas’s account of ‘communicative action’ and ‘communicative rationality’ is an educational ideal which he de nes as: That form of social interaction in which plans of action of different actors are co-ordinated through an exchange of communicative acts, that is through language (or corresponding extra-verbal expressions) orientated towards reaching understanding (Habermas, 1982, p. 234). This concept of communicative rationality carries with it connotations based ultimately on the central experience of the unconstrained, unifying, consensusbringing force of argumentative speech (Habermas, 1984, p. 10). Habermas holds out the hope of an emancipatory discourse which is free from the systematically distorting in uences of unequal power relations, (concealed) strategic orientation, structural restrictions, closed thinking, xed assumptions, one-way communication and domination by one party to the communicative interaction. Freedom from these distorting factors constitutes what Habermas calls the ‘ideal speech situation’ which: must ensure not only unlimited discussion, but discussion that is free from distorting in uences, whether their source be open domination, conscious strategic behaviour, or the more subtle barriers to communication deriving from self-deception (McCarthy, 1984, p. 306). However we must emphasise that this is an ‘ideal’ conception, since ‘no historical reality matches the form of life that we can in principle characterise by reference to the ideal speech situation’ but he does think it is ‘an unavoidable supposition reciprocally made in discourse (Habermas, quoted by McCarthy, 1984, p. 310). Accepting that it is an ideal, some educators have nevertheless argued that the ideal can be regarded as a goal towards which particularly adult education should strive. Mezirow is a good example of an expression such a goal: The social goal towards which adult education thrives is one in which all members of society may engage freely and fully in rational discourse and action without being subverted by the system. Such subversion occurs in everyday life when communication becomes distorted by unequal distributions of power and in uence. Transformation theory holds that adult education’s intervention is to redress this distortion or ‘violence’ by creating protective learning environments with norms which assure everyone more free and full participation in emancipatory discourse (Mezirow, 1995, p. 57).
298
D. Gosling
But the motivation for attempting to achieve what Mezirow describes as a ‘social goal’ is not simply one relating to democratic and participatory forms of communication. It is also motivated, at least in Habermassian terms, because this is the way to achieve truth. A communicatively achieved agreement has a rational basis; it cannot be imposed by either party, whether instrumentally through intervention in the situation directly or strategically through in uencing the decisions of opponents (Habermas, 1984, p. 287). On this view of education, the goal is not simply for tutors to teach and students to learn. Learning which occurs without reference to the conditions under which what is learned is subjected to rational scrutiny cannot result in knowledge. Rather, both parties must be jointly engaged in a search for truth which is only achievable when the communication between teacher and learner is open to challenge from either side, and not distorted by power relations which inhibit criticism. As McCarthy has said: The criterion of truth is not the fact that some consensus has been reached … If for example the discussion was such that the conceptual framework within was simply taken for granted, the consensus arrived at would be open to the charge of being insuf cient warrant of truth … Thus the situation of discourse must be such as to exclude structural constraints on argumentative reasoning—whether these be open or latent, conscious or unconscious. It must, in Habermas’s words be an ‘ideal speech situation’. (McCarthy, 1984, p. 308). Striving for an ‘ideal speech situation’ in higher education is, on this view, not judged on whether or not it will achieve more effective learning or be more likely to encourage ‘deep learning’, desirable though this may be, but because only in these circumstances can the ‘truth’ be constructed. This is a deeply unfashionable way of describing the function of higher education. A recent survey account of research into the ‘experience of higher education’ pays no attention to the construction of knowledge, except in so far as students preconceptions of what constitutes knowledge of a subject in uences their approach to learning (Prosser & Trigwell, 1999, p34–37). It may be argued that the relationship between a young student and his or her tutor is necessarily different to that which can obtain between a tutor and students in the context of adult education. However, such a claim must rest on assumptions about the relative status and motivations of the parties in the learning/teaching matrix which is, at the very least, open to challenge. Let us now proceed to a consideration of how far an approach to the ideal speech situation was achieved in the context of the two courses outlined earlier, when in both cases tutor and students are in other respects colleagues and peers. Here, it might seem, is as close an approach to equality between the taught and the teacher as one might ever hope to nd. Learning Outcomes A key aspect of ‘communicative learning’ in contrast to ‘instrumental learning’ is its open-endedness. As Brook eld has argued, the outcomes of re ective and complex learning are incapable of being speci ed too closely before its acquisition:
Using Habermas
299
The most signi cant personal learning adults undertake cannot be speci ed in advance in terms of objectives to be attained or behaviours (of whatever kind) to be performed (Brook eld, 1986, p. 213). However, within the institutional context in which both the PG Certi cate and the MA are to be found, this presents a dif culty. The university expects courses to state ‘learning outcomes’ as a condition of validation. The rationale for this regulation appears to be reasonable enough and will be familiar to most, namely that the standards expected to be achieved by the students can only be known by asking course designers to pre-specify the learning outcomes expected of students and that a fair and open assessment system requires that students should be given a clear indication of what is expected of them. Diana Laurillard has put the standard justi cation for specifying learning outcomes: Without clearly de ned objectives … it is impossible to bring any rational planning to the problem, or to recognise where the end has been achieved. They (learning outcomes) simply enable teachers to think more clearly about what they are doing, and providing a way of deciding whether the teaching has succeeded (Laurillard, 1993, p. 182). But the proponents of ‘communicative learning’ question the value of the teacher controlling ‘where the end has been achieved’. Within the context of more equalised pedagogy the determination of the ‘end’ must be shared between teacher and learner. The two courses being compared adopt different strategies for addressing this problem. On the MALT, the outcomes are speci ed in terms of the “characteristics of postgraduate achievement” such as “critical analysis and synthesis of arguments”, “high level critical re ection on the interrelationship between theory and practice” and “critical re ection on own learning” (O’Reilly, 1995, p. 6) These indicators of postgraduate work leave open the precise outcomes to be demonstrated by each learner, whereas the Post Graduate Certi cate is more competency-based and speci es learning outcomes more precisely. Participants’ Perceptions of Negotiated Learning A very clear thread running through the way the participants described their experience of negotiated assessment was its novelty. One described it as “a very strange concept”, another said it was “novel”, another that “it was completely different”. These perceptions derived from the perceived stark contrast between their experience of negotiated assessment and all their previous experience of assessment in higher education as a student or as a tutor. As one participant said, “I had the preconceived idea that assessment is something done to you, rather than something in which you play an active role” and another, whose training had been in law, emphasised the difference between the traditional system of lectures followed by exams, which he described as “ingesting information and then regurgitating it for the examiner”, and his experience on the PG Certi cate which required him to select the evidence from his own teaching which would demonstrate achievement of the agreed learning outcomes. Another participant compared her experience on the MA with that of the nal year undergraduate project where there was an opportunity to decide the subject for the dissertation. She felt that the fundamental difference was that, on the MA, student and tutor start off on a more equal footing which sets the tone of the relationship throughout, whereas in the undergraduate programme, although there was a shift towards greater
300
D. Gosling
equality in the nal year, the student-tutor relationship had by that time been established within a hierarchical frame. This shift in the locus of responsibility was not without its dif culties for the participants. The rst dif culty which several people mentioned was in understanding what was being asked for. They felt that they were entering something that was ‘murky’, ‘a vague idea that needs to be focused’, ‘unclear’, ‘dif cult to understand what was expected’. To cope with the uncertainty some wanted examples of what others had done, or more time spent at the outset explaining the idea of negotiated assessment and its rationale. There was also a self-confessed tendency to ‘hark back to the old paradigm’ and to think in terms of what the tutor wants rather than taking full responsibility for the process. When the idea of negotiated assessment, was understood it remained nevertheless, in the words of one participant, “a bit daunting” or, as another described it as, “intimidating”. What the participants found dif cult was the realisation that they were not being ‘spoon-fed’, that there was not a pre-ordained structure, that the decision about what to write was theirs and not determined by the tutor. As one respondent said: “At rst you think this is wonderful but then it can take weeks to work out what to do. You start with a large area, then you have to focus it down yourself and that’s a lot more dif cult”. Despite the perceived challenging nature of the process, one person was concerned that the process might be perceived by others to be “easier than normal MAs”, because it might be thought that “setting your own parameters detracts from masters-level” that somehow it was “second-rate to do-it-yourself”. This fear links with a more general concern about setting appropriate standards at masters level and distinguishing between those things which are negotiable and those things, such as standards at masters level, which are not. The respondents tended to feel that they needed more guidance on what was expected by the tutors in order to achieve masters level work. As explained above, the mechanism on the MA for achieving this is via the PDAS unit, in which the participants have to identify the professional characteristics that they will demonstrate through their work. However, my respondents felt that this was only partially successful and that there was a tendency to regard the process of identifying their masters level learning outcomes as merely a formality, choosing phrases from the Student Handbook without fully appreciating their meaning. It was clear that a full understanding of what phrases such as ‘placing specialism in socio-historical or socio-political context’ or ‘enhanced interpersonal and counselling skills’ meant in terms of judging the level of work to be presented only became clear through the experience of writing submitting and discussing work on the course. Most of those interviewed admitted that, despite all the rhetoric of negotiation, there was still a tendency, when writing a piece for submission to a tutor, to think ‘what do they want?’ However, this was not thought to be a problem, rather it was regarded as inevitable, given that certain ‘standards’ had to be non-negotiable in order for the work to be acceptable at masters level. Nevertheless, this concern did appear to be a source of anxiety for many of the participants, leading to repeated requests to receive clearer guidance on what was to be expected at MA level (see O’Reilly, 1996, p. 76 for further discussion of these issues). This is a critical issue when the work to be handed-in is a product rather than a standard academic essay. The course encourages participants to carry out work which relates to their professional duties and which involves their colleagues as part of a critical community. The intellectual scrutiny to which the work is subjected is, therefore, not just that of the tutor, but a wider audience of colleagues. On the Open Learning unit, for
Using Habermas
301
example, products included: an open learning package for staff on producing student handbooks; an evaluation of an open learning unit on psychological testing; an open learning package in mathematics to be used with NVQ students; an open learning package for students with dyslexia. The issue which arises in these cases is whether the product demonstrates masters level work in itself or whether it is the accompanying commentary which provides the appropriate evidence of analytic skills, theoretical knowledge, and awareness of the literature. The participants felt that it was right that there should be a justi cation and evaluation of the product and that the masters level of the work would be demonstrated in the conceptual sophistication of this commentary. Despite the dif culties all the respondents declared themselves to be much happier with this process than one in which the assessment tasks or the learning outcomes were determined by the tutor. As one said “It’s more rewarding, more satisfying because it’s something that you want to do. Also it’s nice to do something that bene ts students as well”.
Language A critical issue for the participants was the language which they believed was expected to be used. This was perhaps more of an issue at the Postgraduate Certi cate level than on the MA, because most of the participants on the PG Certi cate are tutors who are required to attend the course because they do not have suf cient previous experience of teaching in higher education on their appointment. This means that they are often very unfamiliar with the jargon attached to higher education and more particular to that used by educationalists and staff developers. Terms which are taken for granted by the tutors—‘learning outcomes’, ‘re ective practice’, ‘assessment criteria’, ‘quality enhancement’ as well as the more technical terms such as ‘deep learning’ or ‘extrinsic motivation’ can be barriers to understanding. However, it was not simply that the language of the subject presented a barrier to the participants’ understanding, though this did happen, but, more signi cantly, some felt that, unless they used the expected language approved by the course, they would not be heard. As McCarthy has said, summarising Habermas, “It is possible for any speech act to fail or to be challenged on the grounds that it is ‘wrong’ or ‘inappropriate’ when measured against accepted norms” (McCarthy, 1984, p. 311). The problem here, and this is not unusual in academic discourse, is that the norms are not made explicit and therefore newcomers to the discourse have to discover ways of expressing themselves that are acceptable. This rather hit and miss approach can be very disempowering to those struggling to nd the appropriate language for the ‘re ection’ required by the course. Webb argues in Foucauldian terms that the language espoused by educational and staff developers incorporates value systems and assumptions which re ect a ‘dominant development story’. This ‘gives permission’ for some forms of speech and penalises others: The major categories and metaphors that are praised at present are those of ‘re ective practice’, the ‘deep’ and ‘surface’ metaphor and the idea of emancipation through collaborative action research. Those excluded comprise much of hermeneutics, humanism, post-structuralism including post-
302
D. Gosling structuralist feminism, ethnically informed, localised and historicised research (Webb, 1996b, p. 64).
But what is also excluded is the untheorised communication of personal experience, expressed in a vocabulary uncontaminated by educationalists’ jargon. Others have noted that this is a common experience of students being inducted into a new academic discourse (Wailey, 1995), but it does raise questions about the extent to which the rhetoric of negotiated assessment can be realised in practice, where there are inequalities in the command over the accepted forms of discourse. These inequalities will exist in varying degrees between participants and tutors and between participants themselves. Some academics on the course will be relatively familiar with the idea of re ection on practice and with the vocabulary associated with the dominant discourse in this area, whilst others will have no previous acquaintance with it and are therefore more likely to feel more alienated and powerless.
Conclusions Habermas has never claimed that the ‘ideal speech situation’ is achievable in any actual historical situation. Nevertheless, the ideology underpinning the forms of negotiated assessment under discussion (as we saw in the third section) aspires to create a situation which approximates to the kind of conversation which Habermas describes as “orientated to reaching understanding”. This requires that there are no hidden blocks to achieving a rational consensus, such as undeclared or unchallenged assumptions, failures in understanding of the language used, inequalities of power or a hidden strategic purpose held by one or other of the participants. It would appear that there are differences in the extent to which the two courses under consideration approach this ideal. The Postgraduate Certi cate, as it is currently constituted, is more likely to be seen by its participants to exhibit unequal power relations, using language that contains assumptions which participants feel unable to challenge, and in which participants’ motivation to succeed is more likely to be strategic than communicative. This is not to say that these are not issues on the MA, but there are speci c contextual factors which impact on the assessment of the Certi cate which tend to undermine the aspirations of tutors in the operation of negotiated assessment. These are as follows. The reason for being on the course is more likely to be extrinsically determined by the university’s requirement to attend than by the participants’ own choice. Whilst most staff agree that the requirement is reasonable and see the value of the course, they are more likely to see it instrumentally as a hurdle to be jumped to secure their appointment to a permanent post. There is a tighter speci cation of the competencies which staff are required to demonstrate to pass the course than on the MALT. This re ects a difference in the purpose of the course in institutional terms, with the Certi cate performing the function of certifying the member of staff’s competence to teach in HE. Because the participants come from a very wide range of academic disciplines and are new to HE, they are more likely to be unfamiliar with the language being used to describe learning, the aims of higher education, forms of assessment and so on. As relative novices in the profession (compared to those on MALT) they are more likely to perceive the tutors as the ‘experts’ from whom they demand guidance and to
Using Habermas
303
whom they look for specialist knowledge in a eld of knowledge with which they are unfamiliar and have only limited motivation to become experts themselves. The aspirations of the tutors to achieve the Habermassian ideal must, therefore, be tempered by these contextual factors, within which the Certi cate course operates and which differentiate it from the MA in Learning and Teaching. If this conclusion is correct, then it casts doubt on the possibility of achieving the emancipatory ideal in any assessed course where there are unequal power relations between tutor and the assessed.
Note on Contributor DAVID GOSLING is Head of Educational Development Services at the University of East London, where he contributes to both undergraduate political philosophy teaching and postgraduate courses for academic staff. As Convenor of the Heads of Educational Development Group, he has a particular interest in the issue of accreditation of initial training for staff in higher education. He is currently Chair of the Southern England Consortium for Credit Accumulation and Transfer. Correspondence: Dr David Gosling, Educational Development Services, University of East London, Longbridge Road, Dagenham, Essex RM8 2AS. Tel: 0208 223 2161; Fax: 0208 223 2824. E-mail:
[email protected] REFERENCES BARNETT, R. (1997 ) A knowledge strategy for universities, in: R. BARNETT & S. GRIFFIN (Eds) The End of Knowledge in Higher Education (London, Institute of Education Series, Cassell ). BAUME, C. & BAUME, D. (1996 ) A national scheme to develop and accredit university teachers, International Journal of Academic Development, 1 (2), pp. 51–58. BIGGS , J. B. (1987 ) Student Approaches to Learning and Studying (Victoria, Australian Council for Education Research ). BLAKE, N. (1997) Truth, identity and community in the university, in: R. BARNETT & S. GRIFFIN (Eds) The End of Knowledge in Higher Education (London, Institute of Education Series, Cassell ), pp. 151–164. BROOKFIELD, S. (1986 ) Understanding and Facilitating Adult Learning (Buckingham, Open University Press ). HABERMAS, J. (1982) A reply to my critics, in: J. B.THOMPSON., & D. HELD, (Eds) Habermas Critical Debates (London, Macmillan ). HABERMAS, J. (1984) The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1 (trans. T. MCCARTHY) (London, Heinemann ). LAURILLARD, D. (1993 ) Rethinking University Teaching (London, Routledge ). MARTON, F. & SALJO, R. (1997 ) Approaches to learning, in: F. MARTON, D. HOUNSELL & N. ENTWISTLE (Eds) 2nd edn, The Experience of Learning (Edinburgh, Scottish Academic Press). MCCARTHY, T. (1984) The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas (London, Polity Press ). MEZIROW, J. (1995) Transformation theory of adult learning, in: M. R. WELTON (Ed.) In Defense of the Lifeworld: critical perspectives on adult learning (New York, State University of New York Press ), pp. 39–70. O’REILLY , D. (1995 ) MA in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, Student Handbook (London, University of East London ). O’REILLY , D. (1996) Becoming a master in learning and teaching in higher education: some issues raised by problematising ‘mastery’ on a learner-led MA programme, International Journal of Academic Development, 1(2), pp. 73–79. PROSSER, M. & TRIGWELL, K. (1999 ) Understanding Learning and Teaching: the experience in higher education (Buckingham, SRHE and Open University Press). RAMSDEN, P. (1992 ) Learning to Teach in Higher Education (London, Routledge ).
304
D. Gosling
WAILEY, T. (1995 ) Arenas of representation within experiential learning, in: G. GIBBS (Ed.) Improving Student Learning Through Assessment and Evaluation (Oxford, Oxford Centre for Staff development ), pp. 148–153. WEBB, G. (1996a ) Understanding Staff Development (Buckingham, SRHE/Open University ). WEBB, G. (1996b ) Theories of staff development: progress and power, International Journal of Academic Development, 1(2), pp. 59–66. WELTON, M.R. (1995 ) In defense of the lifeworld: a Habermasian approach to adult learning, in: M. R. WELTON (Ed.) In Defense of the Lifeworld: critical perspectives on adult learning (New York, State University of New York Press ), pp. 127–156.
