EUROPEAN PAPERS ON THE NEW WELFARE

4. Practical consequences on the Educational System

What are the most immediate and practical consequences of such a “learning-and-work view (or mentality)”, on the structure (or on the internal logic) of the educational system itself? These are to be identified as follows:
• 4A: Modules and modularisation: Introducing modules as the basic units of learning. The new knowledge unit is the combinable module instead of courses and subjects. Modularisation consists in dividing subjects into shorter units which can then be combined with other units forming interdisciplinary chains. The chart of modules inspires attempts to draw up a map of knowledge¹.
What are the potential consequences of modularisation? These are enormous. All the classical terms that we have grown accustomed to, are going to change their meaning: university, school, classroom, teacher, subject, discipline, chair, certificate or diploma, etc. Even the structure of the compulsory ten-year primary and secondary school will change. The teacher will do little teaching, instead s/he will supervise, monitor, clarify, and s/he will also assists the pupils’ choice of modules. A school’s profile will be mainly given by the nature of its laboratories and experimental technology workshops in biology, physics, chemistry, natural or agricultural sciences, etc. The focus on experiment is expected to take pride of place in the new century, after a long pre-eminence of theoretical knowledge. The exercise of trying out new paths is a dimension of learning that cannot be substituted by the computer; it is also responsible for the acquisition of most practical skills.
All in all, knowledge modularisation (sciences and disciplines) consists in creating subdivisions of the present classification of disciplines, which at this time is heavy, massive, inflexible.
Each subject contains subdivisions that may become almost autonomous in order to be learned and especially in order to be combined with modules from other disciplines. Thus, mathematics has algebra as a discipline, but this has a possible module of matrix calculus which is needed in dozens of other technical or social disciplines or in other branches of mathematics.
Modularisation consists in the identification of modules, the definition of dimensions, their codification into a wide system and introducing them in RKB (resource knowledge bases) permitting them to be recovered through interrogation after criteria (predicates) imposed by the goal (activity) proposed.
Higher education experiments that may be considered as a potential start of knowledge modularisation are:
• Lowering the credits level in the courses of less than one year (semestrial or even trimestrial) and on shorter portions of subject.
• Developing interdiciplinary training and research, which lead to combining disciplines pertaining to different branches.
• Distance learning, which presupposes transmitting more easily learning portions.
Obtaining concrete results in knowledge modularisation is made difficult by the fact that disciplines continue to have large divisions which lack the necessary flexibility that could allow an efficient planning of learning and an easy combining of knowledge units in the disciplines. Knowledge is divided into too large units that do not allow a rational management.
Another process for which modularisation is a prerequisite is the changing of professional profiles and increased professional mobility.
The unwedging signaled above must be connected with the unprecedented acceleration of the production of knowledge in science and technology, whose expansion has attained the rhythm of a revolution (doubling of knowledge every 18 months).This rhythm leads to a rapid obsolescence of the accumulated knowledge and to the necessity of their permanent renewing and also of a different modality of learning, lifelong learning.
• 4B: a deeply reformed curriculum: personalised and interdisciplinary.
The modularisation of the curriculum encourages a personal choice system to be built by the individual along his active life, between age 16 and 76, which consists of alternative sequences of work or studying but always learning. On the other hand, personal curricula allows the acquisition of credits in education (and in work), and allows the society to coherently assure individuals that they will be socially supported in their fundamental activities (learning and work). Finally, personal curricula are coherent with the whole arsenal ITC which directly influences personal learning and the re-organisation of work (at home).
Individualised learning is formalised as a personal learning itinerary, which will grant an initial choice and adapting and modifying en route a learning program shaped along one’s aspirations, vocation, social or labour market requirements.
At the present time, the personal direction and the modification of learning needs are difficult to resolve problems. For example, an engineer who becomes a manager and feels the need for an adequate training for that job will have to make use of the double qualification method, and will have to attend a faculty of economics. It must be said that the effort to learn and the volume of knowledge collected from the two parallel or successive itineraries is greater than what is needed for his job.
The personal learning itinerary allows to adapt learning to the goal of the activity and to achieve an important economy of effort, energy and training time by eliminating superpositions and non-relevant knowledge acquired through the standard itineraries to which the individual has to resort.
The curricula accept periodical changes (adjustments) according to the modification of the horizon/specificity of profession.

5. Conclusion

Changing the ‘learning-work view and practice’, by cultivating the vocational dimension in higher education (through the application of the principles of lifelong learning, interdisciplinarity, personalisation of curricula, modularisation) is the first step to be taken: it leads to an improvement of the internal logic of higher education itself and implicitely offers solutions to the present-day crisis of labour markets.

References
Giarini, O. and Malitza, M. (2003): The Double Helix of Learning and Work, Editura Enciclopedica Publishing House, Bucharest.

1 During the early 1990s Poland and other postcommunist countries were not that unique in experiencing structural problems leading to reorganisation of the welfare state. The developed countries underwent a painful process of transformation to the ‘postfordist’ model of capitalism. With mass production companies in crisis, markets for mass-consumer durables saturated, social security systems came under financial strain. In response to welfare crisis the social policies underwent significant reforms embracing the arguments of the New Public Management proponents. Mots de jour were ‘market-type mechanisms’ in social policy (quasi-markets, vouchers, user fees, etc.). Another facet of the ideological shift was a shift from ‘nanny state’ towards ‘workfare state’ (Millar 2003).

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