1.
The challenges of resilient
learning and the production of a
university experience
Professor Richard Hall
t: @hallymk1
e: rhall1@dmu.ac.uk
w: richard-hall.org

2.
UWS Learning, Teaching and Assessment Strategy
• LTAS arises at a time of change and uncertainty in
Higher Education generally, and in Scotland in
particular.
• Accordingly, there is a need to ensure flexibility in the
expression and aspirations of LTAS.
• Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence: learning styles;
curriculum expectations; certificated capabilities; inter-
disciplinarity; and social learning.
• The economic, social and cultural needs of the
communities and colleges served by UWS.

3.
SFC: disruption? http://bit.ly/1508sP8

4.
HEA: disruption?
http://bit.ly/10fbRNK

5.
JISC: disruption?
http://bit.ly/18BTS7S

6.
IPPR: BAU http://bit.ly/19fiLpt

7.
Hope

8.
A strong civil society protects liberty because it diffuses the
centres of power.
It creates fraternity because it encourages people to work
together as neighbours and friends.
It promotes equality because it tempers self-help with help
to others, and because the help given to others is such as to
encourage their participation and eventually independence.
Sacks, J. 2000. The Politics of Hope. London: Vintage, p. 137.

9.
Most importantly, civil society constitutes a moral domain, a
world of covenants rather than contracts, in which duty,
obligation, loyalty and integrity restrain the pursuit of self-
interest, in which I learn to value others and win their trust
because that is the only way families and communities can
be maintained.
Sacks, J. 2000. The Politics of Hope. London: Vintage, p. 137.

10.
Resilience: adaptation not BAU
“the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance
and reorganise while undergoing change, so as to
retain essentially the same function, structure,
identity and feedbacks”
Hopkins, R. 2009. Transition Culture: http://bit.ly/3ugobl
Systemic diversity, modularity, feedback

11.
resilience at scale
“we have a choice between reliance on
government and its resources, and its approach to
command and control, or developing an
empowering day-to-day community resilience.
Such resilience develops engagement, education,
empowerment and encouragement”
DEMOS. 2010: http://bit.ly/15yRl9

12.
Harvey: seven activity areas that underpin meaningful social
change.
1.Technological and organisational forms of production, exchange
and consumption.
2.Relations to nature and the environment.
3.Social relations between people.
4.Mental conceptions of the world, embracing knowledges and
cultural understandings and beliefs.
5.Labour processes and production of specific goods,
geographies, services or affects.
6.Institutional, legal and governmental arrangements.
7.The conduct of daily life that underpins social reproduction.
Harvey, D. (2010). The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. London:
Profile Books.

13.
Resilient education: what is the role of
higher education, the University and the
curriculum in a world that is being
increasingly disrupted?

14.
Despair

15.
TUC. 2009: http://bit.ly/iivVTO

16.
http://bit.ly/owE2zW

17.
New system transfers the cost of HE
from the taxpayer to graduates
themselves
Dearden et al. 2010. http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/5354

18.
Zerohedge (31/5/13): http://bit.ly/18EfIGZ

19.
Zerohedge (31/5/13): http://bit.ly/1aHWflp

20.
Debt is a way of life.
"Anyone put off... university by fear of...
debt doesn’t deserve to be at university in
the first place“.
Michael Gove, quoted at Next Left: http://bit.ly/foMuBQ

21.
“student debt, in its prevalence and
amounts, constitutes a pedagogy, unlike
the humanistic lesson that the university
traditionally proclaims, of privatization
and the market.”
Jeffrey J. Williams. 2011. “Tactics against Debt”:
http://bit.ly/fQvP8N

22.
Education markets are one facet of the neoliberal
strategy to manage the structural crisis of
capitalism by opening the public sector to capital
accumulation. The roughly $2.5 trillion global
market in education is a rich new arena for
capital investment.
Lipman, P. 2009: http://bit.ly/qDl6sV

23.
the logic of 'security' is the logic of an anti-
politics in which the state uses 'security' to
marginalize all else, most notably the
constructive conflicts, the debates and
discussions that animate political life,
suppressing all before it and dominating political
discourse in an entirely reactionary way.
Neocleous, M. 2007. Security, Liberty and the Myth of Balance: Towards a Critique
of Security Politics. Contemporary Political Theory 6, 131–149. http://bit.ly/gariqH

24.
1. There is a strong correlation between
energy use and GDP.
2. Global energy demand is on the rise
yet oil supply is forecast to decline in
the next few years.
3. There is no precedent for oil
discoveries to make up for the
shortfall, nor is there a precedent for
efficiencies to relieve demand on this
scale.
4. Energy supply looks likely to constrain
growth.
5. Global emissions currently exceed the
IPCC 'marker' scenario range. The
Climate Change Act 2008 has made
the -80%/2050 target law, yet this
requires a national mobilisation akin
to war-time.
6. Probably impossible but could
radically change the direction of HE in
terms of skills required and spending
available.
7. We need to talk about this.

25.
in the most developed and the emerging economies unsustainable
consumption must be urgently reduced. This will entail scaling back or
radical transformation of damaging material consumption and
emissions and the adoption of sustainable technologies.
At present, consumption is closely linked to economic models based on
growth. Decoupling economic activity from material and environmental
throughputs is needed urgently.
Changes to the current socio-economic model and institutions are
needed to allow both people and the planet to flourish by collaboration
as well as competition during this and subsequent centuries. This
requires farsighted political leadership concentrating on long term
goals.
Royal Society. 2012. People and Planet. http://bit.ly/IF77EJ

26.
more efficiently unsustainable.
33

27.
(You can't run a consumer society on renewable energy)
Net Energy/Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROIE)
34

28.
Ahmed, N. (5 June 2013): http://bit.ly/18V4E8u

29.
Ahmed, N. (7 June 2013). The Guardian. http://bit.ly/18V4E8u

30.
“Decoupling economic activity from material
and environmental throughputs is needed
urgently.”
Does this look like capitalism?

31.
OWS
May15 and Spain
GeziPark and Taksim Square
PRISM
MENA protests
Greece
Chile

32.
“At the heart of it all is a new sociological
type: the graduate with no future”.
Mason, P. 2010. why it is kicking off everywhere

33.
Courage
(#solidarity)

34.
A four-point agenda for critical scholarship:
1. a powerful sense of engagement with politics and the political;
2. a consistent belief that there must be better ways of doing
things than are currently found in the world;
3. a necessary orientation to a critique of power and exploitation
that both blight people’s current lives and stop better ways of
doing things from coming into existence; and
4. a constant and unremitting critical reflexivity towards our own
practices, no one is allowed to claim that they have the one and
only answer or the one and only privileged vantage point.
Indeed, to make such a claim is to become a part of the
problem.
Amin , A ., and Thrift , N . 2005 . What’s left? Just the future. Antipode , 37 , 220–
238.

35.
“make hope possible” by presenting
alternative practices and trajectories
Williams , R. 1958. Culture and society . Harmondsworth: Penguin.

36.
What can we learn from Cuba?

37.
What is to be done? Critical pedagogy
Amsler on the Fearless University
Gramsci on organic intellectuals: praxis in context
Friere on critical pedagogy: social transformation
and emancipation
Habermas on legitimation, colonisation, value and
participation in a “lifeworld”
Holloway on “doing”

38.
What is to be done? Some possibilities*
Owenite co-operation
Cuban attempts at self-sufficiency
Global Swadeshi - The Economics of Permanence
The Transitions Movement
The autonomous Geographies Collective: participatory
action research
The EduFactory Collective/The Knowledge Liberation Front
The Social Science Centre
* I accept that these possibilities are contested and need critique. However, they
are alternative examples of action/doing in the world.

39.
an ending of sorts

40.
Towards a curriculum for resilience?
• Complexity and increasing uncertainty in the world
demands resilience
• Integrated and social, rather than a subject-driven
• Engaging with uncertainty through projects that involve
diverse voices in civil action
• Discourses of power – co-governance?
• For knowing and not the knowledge economy. For
liberating knowledge.
• Authentic partnerships, mentoring and enquiry, in method,
context, interpretation and action

41.
“only in association with others has each individual
the means of cultivating his talents in all directions.
Only in a community therefore is personal freedom
possible... In a genuine community individuals gain
their freedom in and through their association”
Bottomore, T.B., and M. Rubel, M. 1974. Karl Marx: Selected Writings
in Sociology and Social Philosophy. London: Penguin.

42.
[The Gambler] said, "Son, I've made my life out of readin' people's
faces,
And knowin' what their cards were by the way they held their eyes.
So if you don't mind my sayin', I can see you're out of aces.
For a taste of your whiskey I'll give you some advice."
So I handed him my bottle and he drank down my last swallow.
Then he bummed a cigarette and asked me for a light.
And the night got deathly quiet, and his face lost all expression.
Said, "If you're gonna play the game, boy, ya gotta learn to play it right.
You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.
Schlitz, D. 1978. The Gambler. http://bit.ly/O5dPJp

43.
The challenges of resilient learning and the production of a university
experience is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-
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