University knowledge, human development and pedagogic rights Monica McLean, Andrea Abbas and Paul Ashwin

April 2013 Summary -Abdullah Bayat

2 Arguments in the article

(1) that university-level knowledge acquisition is an important element of human development and capability expansion; (2) that combining the concepts of human capabilities and access to pedagogic rights can provide an analytic framework to evaluate pedagogic efforts aimed at human development.

if we can combine the notion of capabilities and pedagogic rights we would have a demanding and ethical set of standards by which to judge accomplished

Bernsteins pedagogic rights

the extent to which processes of teaching and learning in formal educational systems reproduce or interrupt social hierarchies

Capability Approach (CA)

The capability approach (CA) is Amartya Sens (1999) thinking broadly about human development. The expansion of human capabilities as a social goal is conceptualized as expansion of the essential means for individuals and groups to be free to make reasonable choices about who they want to be and what they want to do.

What are these CAs

These capabilities are human abilities that exert a moral claim that they should be developed; if they are not developed, human action and expression is curtailed, and that is tragic (Nussbaum 2000: 83).
Individual choice is central to the capability approach: individuals should be free to choose to operationalize capabilities that they have reason to value

 capabilities are opportunities for functionings that might or might not be taken up. capabilities and functionings relate in complex ways Capabilities are a person's real freedoms or opportunities to achieve functionings. Thus, while travelling is a functioning, the real opportunity to travel is the corresponding capability. The distinction between functionings [realized] and capabilities [effectively possible] is between the realized and the effectively possible,

capabilities and functionings (capabilities-in-action)

 Education is now central for organizations focusing on world-wide human development. Universities are seen both as guarantors of universal values and cultural heritage for countries to escape from their present treadmills of poverty and underdevelopment university education plays a central role in producing reasoning citizens

Expectations- of Universities

education beyond it use-value. use-value higher education a social, public good contributing to healthy, democratic societies by producing critical and responsible citizens, as well as competent professionals capability expansion through university education

Higher education and a strong case to make for mass higher capabilities

universities are sites of social transformation (Habermas 1971, 1989) because there is a structural connection between the learning processes of

reproducing the human lifeworld (culture, society and identity) by way of a bundle of four functions: functions 1.knowledge generation; 2.professional preparation; 3.transmission, interpretation, development of cultural knowledge; and 4.the enlightenment of the public sphere these four functions can be conceptualized as enhancing the capabilities of

What Universities (can) do (Habermas) Universities are unique in producing and

the connection between capability expansion & university education three core capabilities to be developed in students (Nussbaum 1997): 1.critical self-examination of assumptions and beliefs; 2.the ideal of the world citizen whereby the individual student feels tied to all people globally; 3. and the development of the narrative imagination, that is, for a student to imagine sympathetically the lives of

the connection between capability expansion & university education 2 Walker, Higher Education Pedagogies (2006), draws up a list of eight capabilities for higher education, Pedro Flores-Crespo (2007) highlights the functionings of university graduates, dividing seven functionings into personal achievements (beings) and professional achievements (doings)

the connection between capability expansion & university education 3

Lozano et al. (2012) compare and contrast the competencies and CAs to higher education showing how the former is based on a functional analysis of what university education is for, while the latters basis is ethical normative. Andresen et al. (2010) relate the CA to the German notion of Bildung which corresponds inasmuch as it points to the formation in the individual of autonomy and responsibility for self and

 Individual agency and freedom is emphasised in the capability approach. special emphasis is put on critical thinking as a means of judging reasonably what courses of action are valuable (Nussbaum, 2010)

are to individual enhancement, enhancement social inclusion and political participation and can be seen both as driving pedagogic processes and as outcomes of an educational process how unequal distribution of knowledge in formal education systems relays inequalities in society: In Bernstein, though, knowledge is

Bernsteins theory about the equitable distribution of knowledge three pedagogic rights-The rights

 This is because constraints and enablements in life arise from the relationship between the outer world of material conditions and inner worlds of consciousness and identities. Bernsteins take on structure/agency highlights the extent to which people have the capacity to change the inner/outer relationship The capacity to do so is the capacity to manipulate the discursive gap between

 People are shaped to perceive specific (im)possibilities by the myriad messages sent within the social hierarchies into which they are born that is, origins and destinies are strongly connected but the discursive gap that knowledge opens up is a site for alternative possibilities, for alternative realisations of the relation between

 Thinking the impossible might be termed a capability and certainly connects to Nussbaums capability for senses, imagination and thought. As a capability, it requires access to abstract, expert discourses, what Bernstein calls vertical discourse; and also requires seeing relationships between everyday

 In Bernstein, the degree of exchange between the two discourses dictates whether communities and individuals have strategies in horizontal discourse which carry the potential to transfer to new contexts. It is the interchange between the two discourses which is powerful.

For Bernstein the..

acquisition of knowledge or curriculum content is prioritised, while in capability-approach-based education literature it tends to be seen as one of other capabilities, or in Sabine Alkires (2002) term, as a dimension.

Pedagogic means to acquiring knowledge

a capability approach highlights the need for student participation and dialogue. What Bernstein contributes to such a conceptualisation is a way of thinking about pedagogic microprocesses. How pedagogy is framed is the key to understanding how students best acquire knowledge.

Pedagogic means to acquiring knowledge 2

The main issue is the locus (whether with teacher or with student) and degree of control over organization, selection, sequencing, pacing, and criteria for assessment, as well as teacher/student relations. Each of these aspects can be discretely strongly or weakly framed.

 Strong framing places control with the teacher, who makes the boundaries explicit; and, weak framing places control with the student.
Briefly, since it is not the main subject of this chapter, although progressive teachers lean towards weak framing, it can work to exclude from knowledgeacquisition working-class students who are not familiar with academic ways of thinking and writing.

Ascertaining what pattern of framing works best is a matter of pedagogical

The Concept of Pedagogic Rights

The authors contend that pedagogic rights as conceived by Bernstein bridge first-generation rights (political and civil liberties) and second-generation rights (economic and social rights) by providing educational means to opportunities and capacities with which to make choices about life plans (Nussbaum 2000: 97).

Bernsteins pedagogic rights

Bernsteins pedagogic rights are fundamentally about how the construction of symbolic and real boundaries in education influences the extent to which people become free to imagine and act.
The question is whether the educational process itself is differentially and unfairly enabling and constraining students to be who they want to be and do what they want to do.

 experienced [as] tension points their study revealed how a university social science education is an experience of boundary-crossing. students forming a specialised social science pedagogic identity by way of the experience of tension points in the boundaries between abstract disciplinary knowledge, which in Bernsteins terms is sacred expressed and in vertical discourse, and previously-held mundane

PR 1-Individual advancement

PR-2
The rite of passage of the social science degree invests students with specialised knowledge and understanding which benefits society by way of their capability for affiliation.

PR3
he students we studied questioned the status quo and thought about ways in which society might be differently arranged.

3 Pedagogic rights

Combining pedagogic rights and human capabilities Pedagogic right 1: individual

enhancement
Being able to make well-reasoned, informed, critical, independent, intellectually astute, socially responsible and reflective choices. Being able to construct a personal life project in an uncertain world. Having good judgement. (2006, p.128)

Pedagogic right 2: social inclusion

to be included socially, intellectually, culturally and personally [including] the right [to be] autonomous (Bernstein 2000: xx).

Pedagogic right 3: political participation

is to participate in debate and practices that have outcomes in society: to participate in the

Investigating quality & inequality in undergraduate degrees Pedagogic right 1: individual

enhancement
Students repeatedly report that having their eyes and minds opened about themselves, others and society by way of disciplinary knowledge has changed them forever in ways that they value.

Pedagogic right 2: social inclusion

the students were developing the capability of affiliation as defined by Nussbaum

Pedagogic right 3: political

 Bernstein proposed that the three pedagogic rights set up a model against which [to] compare what happens in various education institutions to see whether there is unequal distribution of these rights (2000, p.xxi ).

Conclusion
the potential role of student engagement with university disciplines in interrupting social hierarchies (if powerful knowledge is equitably distributed) and in producing responsible, critical citizens, both goals central to human development.

 As Walker suggests, if we can combine the notion of capabilities (a list drawn up locally discipline by discipline to prevent normalisation) and pedagogic rights we would have a demanding and ethical set of standards by which to judge accomplished university teaching (Walker 2006: 140)