modularisation

Eva Ekeblad (eva.ekeblad who-is-at ped.gu.se)
Wed, 29 Sep 1999 15:25:31 +0200

At 09.03 +0100 99-09-29, Helen Beetham wrote:
>We've done it wholesale here in the UK, at least in the 'new' universities
>which have higher student numbers and a wider diversity of student
>backgrounds.
>It's called modularisation. The rhetoric of modularisation was that
>students as
>consumers could choose whatever chunks of learning they liked to make up
>their
>degree.

Sounds a lot like the newly-prosed reform of teacher education here in Swede=
n.

oh dear, oh dear

Eva

>In practice this has (a) destroyed the cohort effect, isolating
>students from their peers (b) undermined the sense of identity which studen=
ts
>gained from being members of a specific degree course (c) arguably therefor=
e
>weakened the various discipline communities as living communities of though=
t
>and practice and (d) weakened the already tenuous connection between teachi=
ng
>and research within those communities (e) deprived students of any
>opportunity
>to synthesise the disparate bits of knowledge and skill they acquire (or
>indeed
>any sense that their own identity as learners and members of the wider
>community might involve some work of synthesis) (f) therefore failed a
>body of
>students who are particularly in need of metacognitive skills and
>enculturation
>into critical practice (g) worsened the problems of student diversity for
>staff, with module tutors unable to predict which modules their students wi=
ll
>previously have taken or even what degree course they are likely to have
>enrolled on, and (h) helped the consumer model of education to become even
>more
>entrenched in the minds of learners, their parents and teachers.