Changing Spaces of Knowledge, (Dis)placing the Learner

Nicky Solomon, UTS, and Robin Usher, RMIT University, Australia

Paper presented at SCUTREA, 29th Annual Conference, 5-7 July 1999, University of Warwick

There seems now to be a heightened recognition of the significance of ‘space’ in contemporary social and cultural theory, associated with which is the increasing use of spatial metaphors in understanding the changing place of education and learning and the changing location of the academy in the contemporary moment. In this paper, we deploy these metaphors to more productively examine changes in knowledge and knowledge production that have been theorised in relation to new modes of learning and new types of learners. At the same time we also recognise that new modes of knowledge and new conceptions of the learner have foregrounded the visibility and relevance of space, place and position. Hence our emphasis in this paper on the changing ‘spaces’ of knowledge and the changing ‘place’ of the learner. We will focus particularly on the impact of these developments on the work of the academy and the changing role of academics in these changing spaces.

We ask initially - is it possible to talk of the changing ‘spaces’ of knowledge and knowledge production? In this context we will examine the influential arguments put forward by Gibbons et al (1994) about the increasing contemporary significance of work-based or ‘socially distributed knowledge’ as against academic (disciplinary) or ‘culturally concentrated knowledge’ (see also Luke 1996). If this is accepted then the increased significance of the former has profound implications in terms of research, curriculum and pedagogy for the academy as itself a work-site and latterly as a promoter of work-based learning awards.

One way of looking at this spatially would be in terms of academic or disciplinary knowledge as ‘bounded’ and ‘inflexible’ and socially distributed or work-based knowledge as ‘unbounded’ and ‘flexible’. Whilst this is a useful way of looking at the contemporary situation, it is however over-simplistic, ignoring the complexities of socially distributed knowledge and the process by which work-based knowledge becomes validated in degree programmes – a credentialling process which itself raises ‘subject(s)’ and ‘discipline(s)’ issues. We argue that it is not so much that socially-distributed knowledge is unbounded, it’s more rather that the boundaries are different - locally specific, more complex, more contested and more fluid but also involving a different kind of regulation, ‘subject’ and ‘discipline’.

Increasingly, and particularly with the foregrounding of ‘learning’ as against ‘education’, there is a recognition that learning can take place in a multiplicity and diversity of sites. This recognition in itself challenges the educational ‘spaces’ and ‘places’ of enclosure traditionally constituted by the book, the curriculum and the classroom. Here, it is possible to foreground a number of aspects and a number of implications, particularly for the disciplinary text, the pre-determined disciplinary curriculum and the practice of studying for a fixed period of time with fixed starting and end points and within university-defined spaces. Thus it could be said that the educational spaces of enclosure are now being displaced - not only with different sites of learning but also with the onset of the coming together of information/ communication technologies (ICTs), their associated modes of computer-mediated communication, and consequent more flexible modes of organising and delivering learning.

Another, perhaps more radical, development is work-based learning which is not just a matter of studying in flexible mode but where the disciplinary curriculum and the university defined space of learning is displaced to make way for a curriculum sourced in the socially distributed knowledge of the workplace and where the workplace becomes the site of learning. This development which we shall examine in more detail later is only one, although perhaps the most significant, of a number of developments that could be said to constitute a process where the ‘student’ as traditionally conceived is displaced by the ‘learner’, located in a variety of sites, and learning in a variety of ‘displaced’ ways. In this context it is also interesting to note that learners in work-based learning programs are being referred to as participants .

However, whilst this view again has its attractions, it could be argued that it is oversimplistic, neglecting as it does that displacement always involves new and different forms of ‘placing’. It is in this sense that we believe it more helpful to talk of the (dis)placed learner – a learner who is simultaneously displaced and placed.

Finally, when talking of the (dis)placed learner in this sense we must also talk of the (dis)placed academic. New spaces of knowledge mean that academics now more so than before have to work both within and outside the academy – within both the traditional educational spaces and places of enclosure (which in certain respects have become more rigid, for example in research assessment) and the new and more fluid boundaries of the contemporary moment.

Knowledge - new modes, new spaces

Universities are witnessing an erosion of their status as primary producers of a particular (disciplinary) kind of knowledge and correspondingly of their monopoly position as certifiers of competence in knowledge production. These developments are both cause and consequence of changes in modes of knowledge production and in their relative valorisation.

With knowledge increasingly commodified and interlinked with performativity, knowledge production has begun to move out of the ivory tower and into the marketplace. Universities are fast becoming part of a wider and globalised knowledge market, forced to compete with RandD companies, consultants and think-tanks. Given the demands of performativity and the sheer explosion and disseminability of knowledge that characterises globalised conditions, they are now less able to control the production and exchange of knowledge and of access to it.

As we shall see in a moment, different kinds of knowledge are now being produced through the academy’s forging of collaborative research partnerships with government, industry, and other organisations — collaborations which have forced academics to question conventional disciplines-sanctioned knowledge production. As Gibbons et al put it:

… the parallel expansion in the number of potential knowledge producers on the supply side and the expansion of the requirement of specialised knowledge on the demand side are creating the conditions for the emergence of a new mode of knowledge production. (Gibbons et al 1994: 13)

Gibbons et al (1994) distinguish between two modes of knowledge production which they refer to as Mode 1 and Mode 2. Luke (1996: 7-10) distinguishes between ‘culturally concentrated knowledge’ (the outcome of Mode 1) and ‘socially distributed knowledge’ (the outcome of Mode 2). Mode 1 is defined as:

a form of knowledge production - a complex of ideas, methods, values, norms - that has grown up to control the diffusion of the Newtonian model to more and more fields of enquiry and to ensure its compliance with what is considered sound scientific practice (Gibbons et al 1994: 2)

Mode 1 knowledge production is conducted by a disciplinary community. Culturally concentrated knowledge is those intellectual products produced and consumed inside traditional research-oriented universities. It is:

tradition-bound in practice as well as conventional in form... produced on a campus by academic researchers in clearly demarcated scholarly disciplines to be transmitted first, to students in accredited degree programs or second, to clients in government, industry, or non-profit organisations through sponsored research contracts. (Luke 1996: 7)

Although Mode 2 is not exactly a new way of producing knowledge – and certainly socially distributed knowledge has been around for a while! - it is according to Gibbons et al becoming increasingly prevalent and is taking its place in significance alongside the traditional and hitherto dominant Mode 1. In contrast then to Mode 1, Mode 2, the outcome of socially distributed knowledge, is:

an emergent gridwork of intellectual products increasingly produced and consumed outside of traditional university settings...it arises from a material context of very short-run corporate outsourcings, task-specific government contracts or entrepreneurial venture capital start-ups. (Luke 1996: 7)

Mode 2 knowledge production is characterised by being produced in the context of application - it has to be useful to someone in a contemporary situation where the sources of supply and demand for different forms of specialised knowledge are diverse and where the market process defines contexts of application. Furthermore it is heterogeneous in terms of the skills deployed, transdisciplinary in the sense that it cuts across conventional disciplinary structures, and is located in a multiplicity and diversity of sites.

Socially distributed knowledge has found its moment within the folds of globalisation. As Luke (1996) points out, the capacity of labour to process information and generate knowledge is increasingly seen as the source of productivity and of economic growth, with notions of the ‘knowledge economy’ gaining in popularity. Lash and Urry (1994) have referred to contemporary socio-economic processes as a ‘reflexive accumulation’ where knowledge, flexibility and symbol processing skills are key. In this contemporary economic environment, technological innovation becomes the means of keeping ahead - and technological innovation requires the generation and deployment of new and specialised knowledge - an applied, specific, transient and commodifiable knowledge oriented to the identification and solution of problems generated in the workplace.

The characteristics of Mode 2 knowledge production have certain implications and raise a number of important issues in thinking about the contemporary role and place of universities. First, the global growth of higher education with consequent increases in the output of graduates has led to more and more people becoming familiar with and competent in knowledge production. Here, although there remain important hierarchies in the production, reading and evaluation of knowledge it becomes no longer the preserve of a select group of academics. With the parallel growth of ‘knowledge’ and ‘knowledge-based’ industries many now work in ways which incorporate a research dimension but where the worksite is no longer the university. Thus knowledge production goes on outside disciplinary communities and in sites other than the university – although whether this research would be considered ‘competent’ in Mode 1 terms is a critically contested matter within the academy.

Second, there has been an expansion in the demand for specialised knowledge - a critical factor, as we have noted, in determining an organisation’s comparative advantage. Organisations have now become involved in a complex array of collaborative arrangements that very often involve universities. Indeed it is possible to discern a reciprocal relationship developing with organisations seeking certain kinds of ‘expertise’ from universities and universities seeking certain kinds of knowledge from ‘organisations’.

However, in Mode 2 knowledge production the focus is on application rather than contemplation. The current situation tends to be one where ‘in Mode 1 terms… much of this Mode 2 knowledge is automatically suspect; partisan, non-objective, undisciplined, ad hoc, unsupported or unreliable’ (Luke 1996: 9). Luke points out that culturally concentrated knowledge structures are mostly ill-adapted to producing the socially distributed knowledge needs of individuals as lifelong learners and organisations as learning organisations - although as he also points out universities should not necessarily be blamed for this nor need they apologise for continuing Mode 1 forms of knowledge production.

Indeed, it could be argued that Mode 2 knowledge production still needs Mode 1 and it is probably the case that Mode 2 researchers still need to be trained initially as Mode 1 researchers - hence perhaps the still important role universities have in research training and in building research capacity. The important point to note however is that what is involved here is not a matter simply of the most efficient and effective means of producing and disseminating knowledge but of the very legitimacy of different kinds of knowledge and modes of knowledge production.

It could be argued, therefore, that there has been a reworking of knowledge boundaries and a displacement of learning that is both cause and effect of the new spaces of knowledge. This redefining of the boundaries happens at a number of levels and all have a significant influence in re-shaping the identities of both learners and academics:

  • at the theoretical/ discursive level, through for example, the very articulation of ‘socially distributed knowledge’ as a significant form of contemporary knowledge and its contrasting to ‘culturally concentrated knowledge’; these articulations being part of a new discourse which displace learners by constituting contemporary learning as flexible and lifelong.
  • at the institutional level through restructuring or realignment, e.g. creation of mega-faculties; disestablishment of departments within faculties.
  • at the curricular level (e.g. double degrees and hybrid degrees such as the BA in International Studies at UTS and RMIT); increased use of ICTs and computer-mediated communication in the teaching and learning, development of work-basedlearning awards (we shall say more about this development in a moment).

Perhaps the best way to explore the displacements and the new boundary settings associated with the changing spaces of knowledge is by exemplification. We will do so by focusing on one innovative education development at one of our universities – the work-based learning (WBL) partnership program at UTS. This programme presents an interesting example of what we mean by the contemporary (dis)placement of learners and academics in relation to the new and more fluid boundaries, the new spaces of knowledge and new sites of learning within which these programs are positioned.

Workbased learning programs

In WBL partnership programmes the learning arrangement is a three-way contractual partnership between the university, the learner and her/ his employing organisation. As such these programmes represent a radical re-definition of what constitutes a university education. While partnerships between universities and organisations are becoming increasingly familiar, the nature of the learning arrangement in a WBL partnership programme is an innovative one because learners (or ‘participants’) study for a degree or a diploma primarily in their workplace through activities that arise from their everyday work activities. The study programme is therefore not based on conventional disciplines, courses or subjects nor is work a discrete or an integrated element of study within a larger university-based discipline-oriented programme. In a WBL partnership, work is the curriculum with individual learning programmes tied into the strategic goals of the participating organisation.

In WBL awards each participant designs a learning programme centred on their work responsibilities (frequently as defined in performance management agreements), identifying and naming areas of learning which are likely to have no immediate equivalence with university subjects. Thus the learning opportunities found in WBL programmes are not contrived for study purposes but arise from normal work. The role of the university becomes one of providing an enabling framework and a credentialling mechanism. Thus an organisation’s employees are not only enabled to obtain a recognised (and marketable) qualification but also to develop lifelong learning skills – and to do this not through engagement with existing disciplines or bodies of knowledge and a programme defined by academics but through a curriculum which is unique to each as an individual learner and is at the same time both linked to the strategic goals of the organisation and is of direct benefit to it.

This kind of curriculum is indeed a challenge to the academy's view of the place of disciplinary knowledge. It is simply not possible to drop a body of disciplinary knowledge into a workplace and expect to sustain the same boundaries around it. Knowledge in the WBL curriculum is of the socially-distributed type, specific, applied, pragmatic and certainly neither generated by, nor responsible to the academic community. Rather the workplace, the individual learner and the university have to work together to produce and validate a non-disciplinary yet still ‘legitimate’ knowledge.

This shift presents an unprecedented challenge to dominant conceptions of what a university education is and what ‘legitimate’ knowledge should be. There are structural problems difficult to overcome in practice - WBL awards are based on socially-distributed knowledge – yet the validation of this knowledge is now being carried out in sites which traditionally have very different standards and conceptions of what constitutes legitimate knowledge. Academics are struggling with the shift—both conceptually and in their daily practice. Work-based learning raises questions about the role and identity of universities and of academics, and whether or not work-based learning is a vehicle for letting go of the very reason for their existence. Academics are confronting changes in curriculum ownership and the balance of power and control. They are trying to find answer to questions about the relationship of work performance outcomes and learning outcomes. They are wondering about the place of critical thinking and the theorisation of practice particularly in 'courses' of learning where learning outcomes are linked to pay packets. At the same time, the very notion of the workplace as a site of knowledge generation is a new and difficult one for the academy to come to grips with.

As indicated above, the WBL curriculum does not fit within conventional curriculum boundaries. At UTS the significance of the loss of these boundaries has emerged at the end of the first year of delivery. Discussions with both staff and ‘participants’ revealed a significant number of requests for clearer boundaries. Through this initial experience, a number of teaching, learning and assessment issues have emerged that are critical to the effective operationalisation of the concept of 'work as the curriculum'. The academic valuing of 'the curriculum in the workplace' (socially distributed knowledge) is a complex process that requires institutional resources and structures supporting this kind of teaching, learning and assessment. The partnership at a course level and the accompanying relationship of work and learning, between being a worker and a learner, between the educational institution and the workplace has meant that the organisation of learning and the assessment of this learning requires a very particular set of boundaries (in relation to resources and processes). While these need to be located within the educational framework of conventional university-based courses, they also require a different slant, a different shaping and thus different resources, in order to capture the different kind of learning, the different kinds of assessment and the different layers of negotiation that are needed between the three partners.