EMERGENCY DEPARTURES

Emergency Departures

Colloquium

Our world is characterised by global possibilities, yet fragmented realities. In such a context, transition is not experienced as movement from one stable state to another but rather as complex and continuing negotiation between contesting sites of practice, culture, language and identity. While the technical possibilities for communication are rapidly changing and developing, how are we to cross professional, educational, disciplinary and institutional boundaries? What is the nature of these boundaries both within our institutions and in relation to the wider community? How do researchers, students and teachers face the task of moving across these boundaries, making developmental transitions from the familiar to the unfamiliar and engaging in the process of mutual learning?

Higher education is a context for transition between and across many of these different boundaries. Within the field of study of 'higher education', the concept of 'transition' applies in a range of investigations. Transitions in culture, for example, apply across national/linguistic boundaries, phases and stages of formal education and boundaries between university and workplace, formal and informal learning. They involve questions of identity and life change. As such, the concept of 'transitions', and how it may be explored in different areas, is a challenging way of approaching the question of lifelong learning itself and has led to the planning of a Colloquium on Transitions.

The colloquium addressed the wide theme of 'transitions' in relation to the study of higher education, its practices and its impact upon society. Conceived in this way, the theme relates to the concerns of the ESRC/TLRP, especially its third phase, by engaging an interdisciplinary audience involved in a wide range of research activities relating to how we understand higher education. Such activities might include educational research, but also economic, psychological, philosophical and scientific research related to this field of study. The colloquium would thus aim to provide a stimulus to new collaborations across the disciplinary boundaries of higher education. The form of the colloquium would be transitional across disciplinary and institutional boundaries as well as in terms of its content and would demonstrate through its practice the idea of 'mutual learning'.

As indicated above, the concept of 'transition' applies in a range of investigations and contexts within the field of study of 'higher education' and transitions in the nature of knowledge might relate to disciplinary boundaries (interdisciplinarity), boundaries between print and digital representations of knowledge and transitions between theory and practice.

Conceived around such (interacting) themes, the colloquium would draw upon a wide range of existing research interests and studies. Discussions have started with possible contributors to the Colloquium and a list of those interested is being drawn up.

Colloquium Themes: Interdisciplinarity

'Interdisciplinarity' is a term that is commonly used but with little shared understanding concerning its meaning. From some perspectives, it can be viewed as a radical and intellectual challenge to come to new understandings of knowledge, theory and hence the curriculum. From other perspectives, it is seen as a pragmatic response to the rapid increase in knowledge which devalues the role of ...