The skills revolution: the time has come for a counter-revolution
This blog was kindly authored by Professor Ronald Barnett, Emeritus Professor at the Institute of Education, University of London and President Emeritus of the Philosophy and Theory of Higher Education Society, and Secretary of the Global Forum for Re-Humanizing Education.
The gloves have now to come off. I have been too gentle in my critiques over the past 40 years.
We live in a world marked by egregious power wielded in non-educational ways. The term ‘cognitive capitalism’ – much mooted over the past 20 years – barely does justice to the situation.
This plays out in higher education and universities in very many ways, just two of which are (the perniciousness of) learning outcomes and the discourse of skills. Together these exert an iron grip not only on our understanding of higher education but moreover on its practices and the formation of its students. We are moving to a ‘skillification’ of society.
In the 1930s, Critical Theory – in the shadow of advancing Fascism – inveighed against ‘instrumental reason’. Now the situation is much worse – we have instrumentalism without any reason.
For forty years, I have myself pressed these concerns in trying to advance the philosophy and theory of higher education as a field. Some of my early books carried titles such as ‘The Limits of Competence‘, ‘A Will to Learn‘ and ‘Beyond All Reason’.
Now, in a robotic, AI, Trumpian, and ever-controlled, surveilled and measurement-crazy era oriented towards profit and growth, these concerns take on heightened proportions. And the domination of the ‘skills’ agenda is symptomatic. Of the increase of ‘skills’, there shall be no end. It now has a vice-like grip around what is taken for ‘higher education’.
I challenge anyone who is in or around the policy/ managerial/ leadership networks to write even an 800-word article on higher education without using the term ‘skills’. It has become – to use a term of art these days – the dominant ‘imaginary’, a framework, a perspective, an iron cage with totally inflexible bars, that brooks no escape.
Consider the concept of understanding. Fifty years ago, there was talk of higher education being concerned with ‘knowledge and understanding’. It was not enough to know things, for one’s knowing had to be backed up by one’s own appropriations, one’s own insights, one’s own feeling and commitments to that knowing, and so make that knowing authentically one’s own. Then the concept of understanding was dropped, as ‘knowledge and skills’ took over. Then it became ‘skills and knowledge’. And now it is just ‘skills, skills, skills’ and in that order.
For those who continue to believe that these reflections on my part are antique, consider this. When one goes to a piano recital, one wants to be assured that the pianist has many advanced skills, honed over years and even decades. But that is taken for granted. That is not why one goes to hear and to see a particular pianist. One goes to be in the company of a certain kind of humanity, of graciousness, of generosity, of subtlety, of interpretation, of inter-connectiveness with the audience, of a will on their part to communicate. It’s not skills that mark out the great pianists but their human qualities and dispositions; their sheer being as a human being.
And the determination to corral all of this under the rubric of ‘skills’ is testimony to the loss of wisdom, care, concern, and empathy – for others in all their plights and for the whole Earth and all its non-human inhabitants – that is so vital for the whole life of this planet.
Note, too, that those skills on the part of the pianist were honed NOT through skills but through an assemblage of qualities and dispositions. One may have all the skills in the world, but unless they are accompanied by qualities and dispositions – not least the disposition to keep going forward in a difficult world – those skills count for nought. (I have spelt out all this at some length in some of my books.)
It is noticeable that in all the talk of skills, we see nothing of the skills of activism, of demonstration, of counter-insurgency, of contestation, of resistance and so forth – so vividly apparent in many of the student movements across the world. So, for all their apparent breadth in the playing up of skills, it is skills only of a certain kind that are sought; skills that seek to counter the dominant forces of the world are silenced. So there is a major interest structure behind the tilt to skills. It is far from neutral. It acts to serve and to heighten the already dominant interest structures in the world.
This is a desperately serious situation. At just the moment across the world that we need an expansion of human qualities and a recognition of the fundamental dispositions of human and educational life (and ‘qualities’ and ‘dispositions’ differ profoundly – see the arguments in my books – AND both are opposed to skills), we retreat behind technicism, roboticism, and electronic networks (which are totally opaque), which serve the interests of the great powers. (The AI corporations will not reveal the nature of their logarithms, so the whole notion of critical thinking is stymied – one cannot be fully critical of that which lies deliberately hidden.)
By the way, it is wrong to believe that the great powers have no interest in universities and higher education: they are bewitched by universities and higher education and seek to do all they can to corral them in their (the former’s) instrumental interests. This is why we are witnessing the abandonment of ‘critical thinking’ as a trope in higher education ‘debate’. (Just see how little it appears, if at all, in university websites.)
The world is in great difficulties, and higher education and universities are only aiding these movements in the abandonment of a language of qualities, dispositions, care, understanding, criticality, wisdom, carefulness and so on. (Again, ‘higher education’ and ‘university’ are different concepts, although they are treated as synonymous. Both are crucial but in being elided, we neglect the capacity of universities as sites of the formation of criticality in themselves, beyond the students’ study programmes.)
The current movements, if left uncontained, herald a new kind of techno-fascism descending onto higher education. This is a grave moment for the world: some universities are recognising the threat. but the situation is so serious that nothing short of a mass mobilisation of universities across the world – a counter-revolution indeed – is called for. I have been too gentle in my commentaries over the past 40 years – in playing the game, in negotiating, in epistemic ‘diplomacy’, in paying due attention to noises off. Perhaps a new kind of diplomacy, more strident, more assertive, is needed now.
Comments
Matthew Lovett says:
Interesting perspective on perceptions of visibility / invisibility of a concert pianist’s skill, and as a musician who taught for years on an undergraduate music programme that very deliberately did not include instrumental or vocal tuition, I absolutely get the point about ‘skills’, at least in a traditional sense of the word, not being the sine qua non of a creative education process.
However, skills are an aspect of creative expression – and not only in the sense of enabling creative expression. And skills are part of the thinking process. That is to say, we don’t simply learn to do something in order to say something. In terms of musical skills, instrumental facility can open a performer up to new ways of engaging with their instrument. In other words, technical facility and creative investigation are deeply entangled component parts of an individual’s capacity to produce meaning in the world.
The relationship between creative skills and critical thinking may play out more obviously in the realm of expressive arts, but skills and thinking are part of all learning ecologies. Whether students are writing, delivering presentations, working in teams, contributing to a class debate, defending their work in vivas, or working in any number of traditional academic scenarios, these are all skills that are part of a creative process of investigation and expression. Understanding that the capacity to make things is an essential part our capacity to think critically does lead to a diminishment or weaponisation of education in the name of what the author sees as ‘skillification’or ‘techno-facism’. Instead, it is an acknowledgment that the learning and development process is simply more complex – and therefore infinitely richer – than we may have previously imagined.
Reply
David Palfreyman says:
If ‘higher’ in higher education has any meaning it is not ‘further’ – by way of pouring in more facts/skills into student heads as if just a continuation of school (not that school should be a Gradgrind “Facts. Facts. Facts.” process). It is the development of critical-thinking via engagement in academic discourse – achievable only if there is adequate F2F contact among Ss and with effective seminar leaders in small-scale delivery of teaching. And critical-thinking becomes ever more crucial if AI is to be absorbed into HE teaching & learning as preparation for its use within graduates’ working lives.
Reply
Replies
Gavin Moodie says:
Why must development of critical thinking be done face to face? Erasmus’ letters were very effective.
Reply
Tom Coward says:
Please could you give an example of how this agenda has manifested itself, and what the negative impact is for students and society as a whole?
Reply
Gavin Moodie says:
Thanx for pointing out that ‘skills’ does not include the skills of activism, etc.
I would like some analysis of why and how skills have taken over everything, and why university leaders are apparently so compliant.
Reply
Replies
Josh Patel says:
Gavin – I hope to contribute to this question: I am currently drafting a piece for this blog which considers the historical-ideational emergence of skills as a (flawed) accountability apparatus in liberal societies, as development of the arguments of my soon-to-be-published (this week) monograph on universities and higher education in post-war Britain.
Reply
Paul Vincent Smith says:
It is pleasing to see this necessary piece, not least after hearing Prof Barnett (and, over the years, many other HE commentators that I respect greatly) emphasise individual and under-the-radar resistance to the trends addressed. Prof Barnett’s willingness to be reflective on his career’s work, now positing the need for broader and more visible action, is admirable. The question is: what is to be done? And perhaps more to the point: who, or what structures, are in a position to undertake this kind of “strident diplomacy”?
As I have no doubt written on previous threads, such questions need to address the fault lines within universities, perhaps most prominently that of academic departments and university management. Prof Barnett refers to “some universities” that are “recognising the threat”. A critical mass of common purpose is needed within these universities. Personally, I cannot escape the perception that resisting both learning outcomes and the skills agenda means focusing more on disciplinary practice than it does on employability, although the latter is not a word used in the blog.
Reply
Johnny Rich says:
Thank you for a thought-provoking piece. I heartily agree on some points, most notably that critical thinking and understanding are among the most important – if not the quintessential – goals of higher education. (One might even, ahem, call them the most important ‘learning outcomes’ or ‘skills’ to be developed.)
However, I really don’t understand Prof Barnett’s antipathy towards skills. Describing them dismissively as ‘instrumentalist’ seems a peculiar way of implying that they’re useful in the world of work and therefore somehow beneath the higher occupations of knowledge and understanding.
During the article, he shifts from decrying the “dominance” of skills to apparently identifying them as the mark of “a new kind of techno-fascism”. Re-reading the article, I can’t find any explanation of exactly what he thinks is wrong with higher education seeking to develop students’ skills.
For what it’s worth, my view is that skills acquisition is a vital component of HE. Without doubt, it is a driving force behind the decision to pay for HE by students and (policymakers acting on behalf of) taxpayers. Survey after survey shows that improved employability is by far students’ main incentive for going to university.
More important than that, though, is the fact that improved employability is not IN OPPOSITION TO understanding and critical thinking. On the contrary, those are key attributes that make graduates more employable. Some might call them ‘skills’ in their own right, albeit perhaps ‘cognitive skills’. I don’t care much about the terminology. If we get dragged too far into that, it becomes a semantic debate.
This new ‘Two Cultures’ demarcation is a false dichotomy and (in a parallel to the original Two Cultures debate) the idea that skills are discrete from knowledge, critical thinking and understanding will seem alien to many in STEM disciplines. In engineering, for example, students are learning how to identify problems, apply their knowledge to invent solutions and apply their skills to put those solutions into practice.
Higher skills go hand in hand with knowledge and understanding. To develop any of them without developing the others is an incomplete education and not what that students want, what employers want, or what the nation wants. Nor should universities settle for anything less.
PS. I would argue that skills of activism ARE valued by higher education in the sense that communication, rhetorical skills and persuasion, values, and so on are all part of the rounded person that HE should be trying to develop. Whether one uses those attributes for insurgence, for oppression or for corporate marketing is down to the individual.
Reply
Ron Barnett says:
Johnny, Nowhere in the blog does it express an ‘antipathy towards skills’. To the contrary. It indicates that skills are a valuable component of life (witness my pianist-recital example). In many situations, they are crucial to life itself.
Rather, the blog expresses a concern with the way in which – amid cognitive capitalism – a discourse of skills has so become the dominant imaginary that other hugely important aspects of life are extinguished and made invisible. And, in the process, what we understand by ‘university’ and also by ‘higher education’ wither.
These are literally terrible features of this techno-AI world that has descended onto higher education with very little serious debate.
And – as intimated in the blog – to place everything that might be valued in university and higher education under the umbrella of ‘skills’ is precisely part of the problem and the blankness facing us today.
Ron B
Reply
Replies
Johnny Rich says:
Thanks, Ron, for taking the time to respond. Given that you support the importance of skills, are you arguing that there is something in the focus on skills and learning outcomes that necessarily pulls focus away from knowledge and understanding?
In my humble opinion, I don’t see any such necessity. Quite the opposite, I see them as different sides of the same coin – routes to better development both of skills and of knowledge & understanding.
To take your pianist example, it is only by perfecting their skills (not just the technical practice of piano-playing, but analysis of music, performance, etc) that the pianist can communicate their deep understanding of the music to their audience. One unlocks the other (in both directions) and without both, either is ultimately undermined. Playing badly with great feeling is every bit as unsuccessful as playing technically well, but without emotion.
The same goes for any academic discipline, especially more ‘instrumental’ ones, such as medicine, engineering, architecture or accountancy. The technical skills are part of the process of unlocking what makes a student excel in all fields of learning.
Having studied Philosophy as an undergraduate, the technical skill of formal logic made me a more proficient student and I continue to try to apply those skills even many decades later. Although my knowledge (largely faded) and (probably limited) understanding of Kant or Hegel is now markedly less useful, it was fulfilling and no doubt helped my intellectual development. However, to elevate that above the skills involved rather than seeing that these attributes are all inherently intertwined seems strange to me.
That said, I agree that the focus on skills is often reductionist in that the skills that are defined (often encouraged by standards and accreditation) are limited and technical, making them short-termist and inflexible. If HE has a fault when it comes to skills, I would argue not that it is the over-emphasis on them, but rather the lack of clarity about what skills we are genuinely hoping to develop and how best to bring that about through a more metacognitive approach to skills.
While technical competencies will be important in most disciplines, we should also be looking to encourage transferable, flexible and resilient skills and behaviours. I would class critical thinking as just such a skill, but I recognise that you may categorise it differently. If so, it may well be that we agree, but are slipping into a difference over terminology.
Understanding is not only the product of these transferable skills (as I said earlier), but also a precursor to them. If a student has a deep understanding of what skills may be important to them, what comprises them and how they might develop them, then they are more likely to be successful in doing so.
This is why I would argue skills, knowledge and understanding are – and should be – inseparable in high-quality higher education.
Reply
Richard Heller says:
As universities descend into skills factories, learning will be taken over by BigTech and, as you warn, ‘techno-fascism’ is the big danger. The question is whether universities understand the dangers and are able to respond to them without major transformation?
Reply
Ron Barnett says:
Some very quick additional remarks, if I may:
– ‘… skills, knowledge and understanding are – and should be
– inseparable in high-quality higher education’ – that’s absolutely fine, Johnny. We agree on that – but that is never said (in the political sphere, or in the corporate sphere) these days. A concern with skills has smothered all else.
And your formulation raises nice issues about the relationships between those three moments – knowledge, understanding and skills, not to mention qualities, dispositions and values, all of which are crucial in the flourishing of the planet and human being in an antagonistic age.
Skills are instrumental, whatever else are their virtues. (I have intimated that they have virtues. I am using skills every day, even as I type this note.)
Skills can help us with means but rarely can they help with ends. They are of little help us in judging what IS to be done.
Skills can help in dropping bombs; they can hardly help in judging whether bombs should be dropped.
We are slipping evermore into an instrumental age. This is why there is renewed interest in the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory of the 1930s, who identified and attacked instrumental reason as the basis of a lurch to nihilism.
Look around us across the world; listen to the news every day. This is the world now facing is; a world of instrumental reason (in which ‘can do’ implies ‘must do’); and it is in such a world that skills take the educational prizes.
It is a world heading for self-destruction.
Reply
Jane D. says:
I think it is worth noting that the idea we are now reduced to ‘skills skills skills’ appears to ignore the fact that in England skills-focused courses area based on occupational standards which comprise knowledge, skills and behaviours (in that order). Further, in many degree level occupational standards critical thinking, reflection, understanding, evaluation and/or analysis, are writ large. The popular discourse may miss this nuance, but those building and working in this space are ‘skilled’ (pun intended) in ensuring that this level higher learning take place.
Another niggle is the comment on the ‘perniciousness’ of learning outcomes. Having seen, experienced and taught in higher education before and after their wholesale introduction, I have observed their role in supporting those who struggled with a teaching and learning system that was opaque, impenetrable and inequitable – particularly in the face of diverse learning needs, differences in cultural capital and variable teaching skills/standards. Learning outcomes are not a panacea, but they certainly make the learning journey more navigable for more people.
Reply
Replies
Paul Vincent Smith says:
Learning outcomes, as with marking criteria, have become over-engineered for little benefit. There is certainly a virtue to knowing what you’re going to learn and how it will be assessed. But this is not achieved (fully) through verbal formulations provided in advance. Understanding them requires being inside a practice: “Explanations must end somewhere.”
Reply
Doug Cole says:
As someone who has worked in a leadership role in the HE space for nearly 20 years, specifically trying to enhance learning for employability and student success, and how we can address this more effectively, the skills narrative is hugely unhelpful Johnny for many reasons. Ron is right and to anyone I have ever met before, this view will come as no surprise at all.
The vague and ambiguous umbrella term of ‘skills’ has been viewed as the solution to supporting economic development and responsibility of HE and FE by the government and media since the 1960s, and here we are still talking about ‘skills”. So that in itself should tell us something? In two decades of working in this space I have never heard anyone talking about the problems with ‘attitude’ or ‘behaviours’ or similar terminology, yet I observe these problems on a daily basis, in life in general.
There are many other problems with the overuse of the term skills, and how it frames our approaches in education, several of which Ron has articulated.
Here are just a few others:
1. Look at the key research over the last 20 years on employability and how it is defined. None of this proposes a skills based model. Look at the body of work by Dacre-Pool and Sewell, Holmes, Donald, Fugate, Tomlinson, Hillage & Pollard even myself and Hallett! Ron is not alone here and he is not saying anything new, but I absolutely understand his frustrations first hand. None of these published models feature or inform policy and strategy at a national level or even an institutional level for the main part.
2. It is inaccurate and misleading. If we want to try and nurture and develop lifelong learners, pretending knowledge + skills is the answer sets learners up to focus on things like teamwork, communication, leadership and what else exactly? And why exactly? Are these basic aspects of learning really the things that truly make a difference when it really comes down to it? Success in any context is dependant on a combination of things, so much more than merely skills as Ron rightly is highlighting.
2. Pedagogically teaching skills is one thing, technical skills sure, straightforward and already happening successfully. Trying to develop and nurture, attitudes, behaviours and other human capabilities in combination and in context requires a different approach, this is not as straightforward and the difference matters. The reality is teaching skills in practice is often reduced to a meaningless tick box exercise, skills are context specific and dependent on so many variables that are not skills related at all!
3. Trying to engage all academics in order to support and in turn engage all students in preparing for their futures, the ‘skills’ banner divides more than it connects. If we want to have an impact at scale it requires a whole university approach and that is exactly why language matters.
4. National occupational standards define the knowledge, skills and behaviours needed in most professions. Anecdotally the behaviours part often appears to be the poor relation, tagged on at the back, the last page of the document, like it’s the least important when it’s probably the most. Skills England have just produced a proposed Standard Skills Classification, with hundreds and literally thousands of definitions that most will never be able to use in practice. Whilst helpful to a degree in terms of understanding across industry and education, the behaviours that matter equally as much have been completely stripped out of the NOS, why??? It doesn’t make any sense and could set us back even further.
We do not all have to agree on a single definition or a single list of skills, education is not about building clones who all have to have exactly the same, subject and disciplinary differences matter, as do the individual learners and their own aspirations for life. This fundamentally is what should matter most and not a set of convenient and easy to measure set of metrics that can be turned into league tables that really help no one.
Sadly the skills narrative is global, has become habitual and is not going away, so we have to work with it. But when people highlight it’s shortcoming I personally have to at least support and acknowledge this because they are right.
Reply
Add comment