Abstract
Many Higher Education institutions across the world aspire to produce graduates with ‘21st century skills’, which is a concept developed as a response to the changing needs of the workforce in the digital age. The OECD's work on 21st century skills is based on the assumption that reproductive academic knowledge is no longer sufficient, and that education should instead focus on enhancing students’ critical thinking and problem solving, creativity, innovation and self-direction, etc. The discourse of 21st century skills has become an official institutional-level way of formulating educational aims. Questions become how to ‘design’ for these skills and which educational activities better meet these aims than others. Some so-called reform universities like to claim that they produced 21st century skills before it became a marketable concept, and in the case of Roskilde University, with its specific educational approach, Problem-oriented Project Learning (PPL), it is in many ways taken for granted that that is what ‘we’ do. In this paper, we discuss what it might mean to brand one’s educational approach in that way. What educational imaginaries and discourses are invoked, and which are marginalized or even tabooed?
| Original language | English |
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| Publication date | 1 Aug 2023 |
| Number of pages | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Aug 2023 |
| Event | European Reform University Alliance Summit 2023: Why Universities? Reimagining Higher Education and Research - Roskilde Universitet, Roskilde, Denmark Duration: 11 Oct 2023 → 12 Oct 2023 https://events.ruc.dk/eruasummit2023/program |
Conference
| Conference | European Reform University Alliance Summit 2023 |
|---|---|
| Location | Roskilde Universitet |
| Country/Territory | Denmark |
| City | Roskilde |
| Period | 11/10/2023 → 12/10/2023 |
| Other | Why Universities?<br/>The European Reform University Alliance (ERUA) was founded on a shared vision of<br/>universities as creative and experimental spaces and the critical function of the modern university in shaping more just, open, and inclusive societies.<br/>The conference investigates the role of alternative and experimental forms of higher education and research in a time of challenges: expanded student populations, technological disruption, the emergence of a global market of higher education, and the growth of social inequality and anti-scientific sentiment.<br/>We ask: How do - and how should - these challenges reconfigure the role of the<br/>university in the world? Why do we need universities today? |
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