New Challenges for Research in Tuning. Clifford Adelman Tuning Academy Launch 15 June, 2011

Transcription

1 New Challenges for Research in Tuning Clifford Adelman Tuning Academy Launch 15 June, 2011

2 What does research on Tuning mean? Determination of the critical mass of faculty participation. Analysis of assessments used to validate learning outcomes. Processes of expansion, linkages, and confederations of allied disciplines. All these examples are internal to Tuning.

3 What does research in Tuning mean? Guiding the future development of templates and learning outcome statements within existing Tuned fields. Determining expansion of degree-level boundaries of both existing and new fields. Both of these examples are externally driven, relying on developments outside higher education.

4 Tuning has always held that Knowledge is not static; Templates for the disciplines must be periodically revisited to ensure that they are concurrent with the state of both knowledge and its applications; Applications, in turn, are influenced by Public investments, Labor market conditions, Consumer behavior. All these are difficult to predict beyond the near term, but the trajectories of applications can be identified with close monitoring.

5 In this light, what Tuning research is NOT An undertaking that conducts future-oriented studies and forecasting of changes in the volume of employment and skill demand; It is NOT Cedefop, Foresight Academies, WORKSProject, or REFLEX. All of these efforts acknowledge the contingent and speculative nature of their findings. These types of forecasting are peripheral to Tuning s job.

6 Expanding labor markets in Green Technologies? What the U.S.ONET system says through 2018 Biofuels/Biomass: processing technicians, production managers, plant technicians-- -ALL Declines Solar/Wind: system engineers, sales representatives, installers, operations managers, service technicians---all Average Growth This is not a raging bull market!

7 Where and how would new jobs arise in this sector---in Europe? In North America? Would these new jobs require new skills and knowledge or simply adaptations of existing skills and knowledge? If the bulk of new wind energy projects moved offshore, to what extent would contractors recruit from those who had previously designed and operated marine-based oil drilling rigs? From an existing supply of coastal ecologists? This is yet another case of speculation, the core of the mixed messages of predictions.

8 Let s try another lens, again using ONET, for agricultural occupations other than farmers: Tools and Software Tools: gel documentation systems, photometers, spectrofluorimeters, dehydrating machinery, grain analyzers, micrometers, cultivators, seed drills Software: query (SQL), spreadsheet, map creation, inventory management, enterprise resource planning

9 Where do these fit in Tuning templates? Where are the competences? Where are the learning outcomes? And how are these going to be different---if at all---in 2020? 2025?

10 Tuning at any degree level of higher education Will not affect large numbers of employees in industry/occupation configurations that do not require structured education programs beyond novice competence. For example, where does Tuning fit into fields studied by individuals heading into hotel, restaurant, and tourist service industries and the mass of occupations within those industries?

11 What can be said for increased education and training demands for these occupations? Multilingualism will help (but language training can take place in many environments); Increased ability to interpret equipment operating instructions; Greater fluency in information gathering to assist conversation, hence human relations in occupations where one finds conversation. Tuning has nothing to do with any of this!

12 Now that I have been skeptical and critical about common assumptions... Just what can Tuning Academy research do to connect the core Tuning enterprise with its future environment?

13 Tuning Observatories Environmental scanning is a prime function of observatories. Tuning already has its protocols and structures, so one knows where the knowledge gleaned from observatory scanning will go and for what purposes. The observatory becomes an extension of Tuning to the extent its findings can continually modify subject reference templates and student learning outcomes.

14 What is scanned---and why What: workplace tasks, technologies, and environments. Why: to influence revision of Tuning templates and learning outcomes from the concurrent to the leading edge. The process is analogous to what psychometricians call content representativeness studies.

15 What is the core question for such studies in a Tuning context? Given current curricular reference points in a discipline (the Tuning template) and their corresponding learning outcomes, what modifications would meet the specifications experts agree as ideal to anticipate the future of knowledge and skills among students preparing to enter the field? A long question, to be sure, but it all must be put in the same sentence.

16 How does one answer that question? Change Tuning s method of consultation to informed futures simulations. That means no surveys, rather regularly scheduled focus group discussions among recognized managers and students of change in core Tuning fields, along with journalists who write about economic issues.

17 Example #1: the history of Computer Science as a field of study The demise of courses in computer architecture and design as gateways. The evolution of object-oriented program languages (from to C++ to Java and beyond). From mainframes to PCs to severs to networks to clouds. For each successive niche came specialization in the IT workforce and, in Tuning terms, variations on previous templates.

18 Could higher education systems have predicted these evolutions? Could anyone else? No, but an environmental scanning process with focus groups would have detected and elaborated the underlying shifts in knowledge and (by implication) the skills necessary to apply that knowledge.

19 That is where a Tuning Observatory and its focus groups begin. But they require a feedback loop to faculty in the Tuning disciplines in order to realize changes in curriculum and delivery.

20 Example #2: Chemistry and its European Thematic Network In its 12 th year of evolution, ECTN opened to include Chemical Engineering and Chemical Technology. The opportunity is now present for focus groups representing bench science, applied science, and supportive mid-level technical work to articulate projected changes in affected occupations, hence revealing missing elements in the current Tuning templates, and (critically) opening those Templates to include Short- Cycle programs in Chemical Technology.

21 This is a task for Tuning Observatories to facilitate And require new standing connections to the established Academic Thematic Networks under Socrates-ERASMUS

22 Why stronger connections between Tuning and the TNs? Tuning brings experience, depth, methodological rigor, sophistication and sustainability of the enterprise. The Thematic Networks bring learned societies, professional organizations, industry associations, and non-academic partners to the table.

23 Does/should Tuning worry about European demographics? Only in observatories covering regions in which dramatic population change is an issue, e.g. much of Eastern Europe. When there is pressure, through age pyramids, on retraining older cohorts, an observatory must gather in information on knowledge and skill levels attached to ISCED 5B (short-cycle) credentials.

24 Including Short-Cycle degrees also addresses what Observatories learn of work-role mismatches, for example When scientific workers must learn sales, but not at a 1 st degree level; When the dominant software applications move from statistical to graphic to network. The rise of mid-level technical work in an expanding health care sector. The Tuning feedback loop in these cases would be to a short-cycle template.

25 The health care sector reminds us that Observatory monitoring of new knowledge, ICT-based skill enhancements, and new configurations of services and their delivery leads Tuning to: Modifications of templates in existing 1 st cycle programs such as dietetics, gerontology, public health, health care administration, and medical informatics; And expansion to short-cycle programs in such occupational areas as emergency medical technology, ophthalmic services, veterinary technology, and medical laboratory technology. Go on-line to the EC s EURES system, pick a country, then pick a set of health-related occupations, and you will see what I mean!

26 What do Observatory focus groups of faculty, health care journalists, and health care practitioners look for and decide? The matches and mismatches between program learning objectives and occupational practices such as PHorizontal organization of rehabilitation; PAdvanced medical technology system applications; and PTrans-border service delivery. And determine whether and how new Tuning cycles can be planted in allied health programs.

27 Without setting forth a specific agenda and structure for Tuning Observatories, one anticipates: 3 or 4 observatories, located in dispersed knowledge regions Including faculty who have not previously engaged in the Tuning process Direct links to faculty teams who have previously engaged in Tuning, and who would be charged with revising existing Tuning reference templates at the leading edges of knowledge and skills, and with student learning outcome statements to match.

28 This vision connects the activities of Tuning Academy observatories to the practice of Tuning itself Without that organic link, we will be talking to the wind.