Call
The past two years of online teaching have forced educators to reconfigure their pedagogical practice. As a result, we have been obliged to look at academia in practical ways. However, the higher education sector has never only been about delivering classes. It has also never existed in isolation. It supports its local community and teaches students the skills they need to succeed outside the academy, whether life skills or the technical knowledge of their professions. So, in preparing students for a world of work we also help ‘transform’ them – opening them to the myriad possibilities education brings across different aspects of their lives.
Considered in this context there are multiple issues we need to consider. How we support adult education. How we develop disciplinary knowledge and expertise. How we avoid thinking in silos. How we foster critical self-reflection and lifelong learning. In a technologically fluid world, how do we keep up with changing uses of media? How do educators stay ‘connected’ with modes of student learning? How do we respond to specific community or cultural needs?
All this is connected to the ‘world outside’. The professionals we ‘produce’ will engage with communities. In the best of cases, they will transform them. They will also work with industry – whether in the built environment, the creative industries, the cultural sector, or the worlds of health and education. How then, do we prepare our students for the social and workplace issues and players they will meet? In short, how are we contributing to the transformative experience of education?
.
Issues
.
The premise of this conference and its publications with Routledge is that this is a useful moment for reflection across disciplines. We are beginning to move beyond the pandemic and its focus on online teaching. As such, we need to re-highlight multifaceted considerations of what we do in our different disciplines: how we engage beyond the academy’s walls and, within it, how we teach and how students learn.
In exploring these ideas, this conference welcomes delegates from various fields: Social Sciences – Health studies, sociology, business, law and communication studies; Art and Design – art practice, graphic design, media, film, spatial design and architecture; Environmental Sciences – urban design, sustainability, engineering, technology and geography. Presentations are welcome on a range of related issues – from post education employment, skills building, creative exploration and personal development, to critical thinking, external engagement and more.
The conference also welcomes presentations that respond to the specific themes of interest to the partner institutions on the event:
Florida State University: Uncertainty and Social Responsibility in Education | University of Dundee: Transformative Learning, Activism and Reflexivity in Education | Zayed University: Creative Economies – Connecting the Academy to creative Industries.
Image: Sylvia Yang
