OECD: Head attacks university 'conservatism'

Traditional university faculties are too conservative and are standing in the way of progress as Europe's education system struggles to become more innovative, the head of the OECD's Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, Professor Dirk Van Damme, told a European Policy Centre debate last Tuesday.

Van Damme said the current system of dividing knowledge into faculties should be broken up if Europe was to move to a new education system capable of equipping students with critical skills.

"We should abolish faculties in universities. Faculties are the most conservative bulwarks against change. Europe must move to a radically different trans-disciplinary approach. Most of the interesting things happen on the boundaries of the discipline," he said.

The debate, 'Beyond chalk and talk: Creativity in the classroom', is part of the European Year of Creativity and Innovation. Van Damme said Europe's economic and social progress was a result of the quality of its education system.

"Compared to Japan and even China, European schools are much more innovative. Japan teaches hierarchy and respect whereas European schools teach us to challenge convention," he said.

"We have increased educational achievement in Europe and schools are still digesting the revolution in education. If we are to move to the next stage of development, this has to be reinvented."

But Van Damme expressed concern that education ministries in the EU were attempting to "squeeze" ever-increasing amounts of information into the school curriculum when a more balanced approach would be more beneficial.

Stressing the importance of quality in education and teacher education, he warned that the push towards greater innovation would result in mediocrity if greater emphasis was not placed on excellence.

* In an additional comment provided exclusively to University World News, Professor Van Damme said:

In my presentation at the debate I started with a nuancing observation that, in stressing the need for innovation and creativity, European school systems should not be depicted as overall 'traditional' and that the reality is much more complex.

Questioning authority and stimulating curiosity are part of the pedagogical legacy in European education alongside repetition, imitation and other more authoritarian and less-innovative components in teaching-learning arrangements.

Second, I emphasised the social perspective: the selection and meritocratic functions of schools often impose themselves as external limitations on the innovative capacities of schools. The 'pedagogy of failure', which often dominates schooling, is not the best environment for the development of creativity and heteronymous thinking.

Innovation and creativity in the classroom can only flourish in a 'pedagogy of success', in which all talents of all children have the chance to develop. Well-performing school systems are those where the drive for excellence is linked with a strong equitable ambition.

Third, creativity in the classroom urges us to rethink the curriculum. Whereas in many European countries the curriculum still is driven by an accumulative approach to knowledge development, creativity is only flourishing in an environment which favours a different mode of knowledge development. In that, we can learn a lot from the arts and arts education.

In that context I made a couple of more provocative statements on trans-disciplinary knowledge and the need for divergent thinking. But, fourth, this also demands a culture of quality and excellence.

Creativity as a cover-up of a mentality of 'anything goes' and mediocrity is doomed to fail. Innovation and creativity in the classroom are only possible in a highly developed aspiration for quality. Questioning knowledge and developing curiosity and imagination demand already a fairly well developed knowledge base.

Finally, I emphasised the cost associated with educational innovation, including also investments in teacher training and professional development, in schools and infrastructure, etc. And the need for targeted assessment and benchmarking associated with the introduction of new sets of skills in general.

One of the best immediate steps universities can take in promoting creativity and innovation in knowledge development is to abolish the faculties, which mainly act as disciplinary confinements of knowledge, and to make a radical choice for trans-disciplinary organisation of knowledge development.

The most interesting research is taking place at the boundaries and intersections of disciplines, often challenging the organisational structures in universities. Some of the more innovative universities have developed other organisational models which offer more favourable environments for creative and innovative knowledge development.