Knowledge Claims and Values in Higher Education

Abstract

The integration of practice-based learning experiences in higher education is somewhat problematic—traditional ideas about what knowledge is, where is resides, how it is justified and its relative certainty and simplicity are at odds with the notions of practice-based knowledge. Practice-based knowledge is recognised to be personal, contested, contingent and reliant upon individual meaning making while university traditions have built on the assumption that knowledge exists as discrete facts developed distributed and institutionalised in good research by expert authorities. This chapter highlights the role of personal and institutional epistemological theories in the perpetuation of traditional curriculum in the academy and in so doing, goes some way to unravelling the reasons behind resistance to practice-based approaches in the sector. The validation of a wider definition of ‘what counts’ within the academy can act to reduce the concerns about the changing role and nature of HE in the contemporary, knowledge intensive world and invite HE institutions to come to recognise that they are not the sole arbiters of knowledge or the sites of its production. The status of epistemologies based in assumptions about the certainty and simplicity of knowledge and its justification in expert opinion, is eroding in response to contemporary issues, and knowledge which is complex, developed and validated in practice is increasingly recognised within and across sectors as vital for institutional performance and the development of graduates appropriately prepared for the modern world.