It is a faculty development online workshop for university teachers. The main topic was the importance of relevance of curriculum

1. Webinar
December 2023

2. Lessons learnt from Thinking Skills Workshop
•The viruses
•I am the most intelligent person on the planet
•Others must follow me
•No need to learn further
•Intelligence trap
• We simply talk and don’t communicate
•System-1 thinkers
•Don’t practice deep thinking.

3. Logic and Perception
• Humans err in perception not in logic.
• If your perception of an issue is wrong, no amount of logic can get you to the right
solution.
• Perception depends on your mental models.
• Changing the perception i.e. to unlearn is the most difficult task for the human
mind.
• Logic is a tool and not a solution.
• Human mind is very sharp at developing logic.
• The comfort zone
• Human mind loves to remain in comfort zone.
• Once an opportunity/solution is spotted, the mind blinds out all other
opportunities.
• If you can’t see an opportunity, it doesn't mean that opportunity does not exist.

4. Adding on to Thinking Skills Workshop
• One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right.
• (Pope, 1688–1744, Epistle i, Line 289)
• History records no unwillingness quite so persistent as the
unwillingness of mankind to abandon time-honored principles.
• (MacNeal, 1970, 184)
• Attempts to depart from [traditional] conventions run into opposition
similar to that encountered by any violation of long-established
traditions—people automatically assume that the conventional
practices are correct.
• (Arthur L. Thomas, 1975a, 13)
• When all around take fundamental ideas for granted, these must be
the truth. For most minds there is no comfort like it.
• (Barzun, 2000, 23)

5. •In 1932, the AI[CP]A Special Committee on Co-
operation with Stock Exchanges stated that
• “There is no need to revolutionize or even to
change materially corporate accounting . . .” (AICPA,
1963, 11).

6. Academic Leadership
•Routine matters
•Philosophical aspects

7. Philosophical aspects
• Long-term agenda
• The discourse
• Mindset
• Discourses of
• Colonialism
• Modernism
• Post modernism

8. •In 1931 an eminent Indian philosopher K. C.
Bhattacharya expressed his concern about the
impacts of colonialism on Indians.
•Two impacts deeply concerned him.
•The first he referred to as the enslavement of the
mind,
• he believed, was worse than political subjection since the
latter only meant restraint on the ‘outer life of the people,
whereas
• in the case of the enslavement of the “ mind slavery
begins when one ceases to feel the evil and it
deepens when the evil is accepted as a good”.

9. •The second harmful consequence for him
was the replacement of the real mind by
the shadow mind “that functions like a real
mind except in the manner of genuine
creativeness”
•It means that the colonized base their
decisions on borrowed ideas and concepts.
However, they feel and believe that the
ideas are their own. Their minds become
incapable of creating original ideas.

10. ‫جو‬ ‫تھا‬
’
‫وب‬ُ‫خ‬‫نا‬
،
‫بتدریج‬
‫وہی‬
’
‫وب‬ُ‫خ‬
‘
‫وا‬ُ‫ہ‬
‫ضمیر‬ ‫کا‬ ‫قوموں‬ ‫ہے‬ ‫جاتا‬ ‫بدل‬ ‫میں‬ ‫غالمی‬ ‫کہ‬
‫وائے‬
‫ناکامی‬
!
‫متاع‬
‫رہا‬ ‫جاتا‬ ‫کارواں‬
‫سے‬ ‫دل‬ ‫کے‬ ‫کارواں‬
‫احساس‬
‫رہا‬ ‫جاتا‬ ‫زیاں‬

11. •The myth that was promoted was that the
conceptual schemas of Europe, their
normative goals, were superior and valid for
the whole world.
•By buying into them, we, the colonized
people, developed an idiom and a
vocabulary that was alien to us since we
either abandoned our own schema or
allowed it to be treated as inferior.
•Fanon said, “we may have black skins but
we had begun to wear white masks.”

12. Important questions
•Has the enslavement process ended?
• Have we achieved real independence i.e.
the independence of mind? or
•whether the enslavement process still
continues?
•If yes, which definitely is, then how can we
free ourselves and start original independent
thinking?

13. •You should support nothing without struggling with
it, both the conventional wisdom and challenges to
the conventional wisdom, “to throw off the yoke of
the inherited dogma and reexamine the
fundamentals”
• (Sterling, 1979, ix).
•Sterling urged teachers of financial reporting “not
[to] just mindlessly teach and use the conclusions
(GAAP or standards BEST PRACTICES) supplied to
you by somebody else.”
• *Emphasis added

14. Best practises
• If customers who took the long coach ride from London
to Edinburgh around 1800 were asked how service could
be improved, they would be likely to mention the need
for fresh horses, better springs on the coach and
improved inns along the way. Few, if any, would have
suggested inserting the passengers in a metal tube and
flinging them through the air at 500 mph in the direction
of Scotland.
• (Burton and Sack, 1991, 118)

15. Paradigm Shift in Higher Education
• A paradigm shift has occurred.
• From social and intellectual institutions to mini industry. Education
industry.
• Customers not students
• Products not scholars. Market oriented approach.
• Emphasis changed from life to livelihood.
• Livelihood has been knotted with consumerism. A never ending hurdle
race.
• Teaching has changed from passion to profession. Every intellectual activity
has been monetised.
• The basic function of Higher Education
• should be creation of knowledge.

16. •Simply providing access to higher education is
not enough.
•Quality academic programs that provide value to
the student—is essential. Without a central
focus on quality, access is an empty promise
•The education (HEIs) must prepare youth to
become architects of their own lives and
contributing members of their communities.

17. Curriculum

18. Challenges - Routine
• Alignment with legal requirements
• Removing duplication of content
• Elimination of some courses and replacing them with new ones.
• Possible reduction in total credit hours of the program
• Emphasis on quality rather than quantity.
• Optimum distribution of faculty workload
• Updating the outlines
• Optimising the content portfolio
• Including case studies. Preferably the local ones
• Including research articles. It is must at graduate level.
• Use of technology particularly AI

19. The challenges
• Philosophical
• What type of mindset we need to develop?
• Nelson Mandela said, “Teach your kids that they are not an iota inferior to
their Western counterparts”
• Identify and remove any content that could possibly generate inferiority
concept.
• Modify or replace such contents. Contents that create confidence and sense
of pride.
• Tolerance at all levels
• Alignment with socio-economic needs and values
• e.g. inculcating simplicity instead of consumerism
• Future challeges

20. Inquisitive Wondering and Questioning, Exploring and
Investigating, Challenging assumptions
Persistent Tolerating uncertainty, Sticking with difficulty,
Daring to be different
Imaginative Playing with possibilities, Making connections
Using intuition
Disciplined Crafting and improving, Developing techniques,
Reflecting critically
Collaborative Cooperating appropriately, Giving and receiving
feedback, Sharing the ‘product’

21. Two Mottos
• Learning to learn
• Life not livelihood

22. 1/2/2024