Event information

Two Philosophical Perspectives on Higher Education

Friday 13th June 2025, 11:00-13:00 (BST)

This event is part of the PESGB 60th Anniversary Distinguished Lecture Series. Hosted by the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB), CHET and Bristol Conversations in Education (BCE).

Venue – Hybrid. Information on how to attend is found at the end of your order confirmation email.

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About the event

This event is part of the School of Education's Bristol Conversations in Education research seminar series. These seminars are free and open to the public.

Host: Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB) and Centre for Higher Education Transformations

Speakers: Nuraan Davids (Professor of Philosophy of Education in the Faculty of Education, Stellenbosch University) and Kirsten Locke (Associate Professor in the School of Critical Studies in Education, University of Auckland)

Two Philosophical Perspectives on Higher Education

We showcase two contrasting thought pieces from international philosophers of education engaged in philosophy in higher education debates, Nuraan Davids (Stellenbosch University) and Kirsten Locke (University of Auckland) , following on from the PaTHES conference in Dublin. Please join us!

Postcolonial universities: A force-field of place and being

Postcolonialism is a force field where context and relationality matter. It is messy as it confronts historically alienating hegemonies, deeply patriarchal hierarchies, and ultimately the question of whose and how knowledge is constructed, valued and disseminated. In taking the baton of establishing themselves as postcolonial entities, some universities in post-colonial-cum-apartheid South Africa are gradually recognising that their confrontations are not only with epistemological, theoretical and curricula renewal, but perhaps, more importantly, with designating and claiming their own place – one defined as much by geography, history, politics and economics, as by purpose. To date, the predominant lens of universities South Africa is embedded in a counter-responsive narrative, intent upon flipping the normative hold of colonial doctrines. Implicit in this narrative is a paradoxically myopic interpretation that a postcolonial university has to re-place and stand in place of its historical colonialist trappings. This is as evident in visual redress, curriculum renewal, as it is in student massification from historically marginalised groups and the appointment of ‘diverse’ academic candidates.

Yet, despite a plethora of reform measures intent upon transformation, institutions have yet to find and inhabit their own place as (South) African universities, and have become trapped in dichotomous and repetitive discourses, which have not allowed them to break free from the powerful hold of their colonialist histories. Student massification, for example, has not translated into democratising university spaces, as envisaged in policy reform. ‘Black’ students continue to struggle to find inclusion and belonging in the spaces of historically ‘white’ institutions. It seems that the historical placements of these universities continue to loom large on the psyche of both ‘white’ and ‘black’ students, albeit for different reasons. And hence, the perennial displays of student unrests and protests, as well as the persistent descriptions and experiences of universities in post-apartheid South as ‘historically white’ or ‘historically black’.

So, what is needed for universities in South Africa to emerge and function as postcolonial places and spaces. On the one hand, I argue that what is needed, is an attentiveness to the post-colonialist university as a place of its own making, and being, perpetually alert to the potential risks of slippages into the very same binary constructions of colonisation. This requires cognisance of the myriad identities and histories which come into the space of the university, all of whom desire to find their own place of belonging. On the other hand, for the postcolonial university to come into its own place of being, it cannot be anything but epistemologically and ontologically pluralist, so that its distinctive African-ness does not preclude it from engaging with or critiquing global debates and crises. Here, considerable attention must be given to the dyadic relationship between what is framed as African or indigenous and what is not.

Nuraan Davids is Professor of Philosophy of Education in the Faculty of Education at Stellenbosch University.

Teachers’ Colleges in New Zealand have disappeared and along with them an ontology of a particular kind of higher educational institution that had creativity at its core.

The major educational report in 1987 that reshaped New Zealand education along more managerial lines, Tomorrow’s Schools, legislated for the training of teachers to be contestable (allowing private actors to enter the scene) alongside a contradictory agenda for “professionalisation” that precipitated all teacher education colleges to amalgamate with their geographically adjacent university.

This paper speaks to the theme of the conference to consider the creative university by engaging with the ontology of teachers colleges that, for a time in New Zealand at least, were the places of creative energy and boundary pushing in knowledge and the arts.

In our recent research we have engaged with accounts of the development of the arts in New Zealand and found they have overlooked the radically creative education that was happening in the teachers’ colleges in the mid-twentieth century. Colleges were a place where, for example, a person might enter intending to be a science teacher and emerge as one of the country’s leading artists (as in the case of Len Castle (Cape, 1968)).

After spending much time in the archives researching mid-century educational experiments linked to teachers colleges we have begun to realise that the implications of this observation are more significant than we initially thought. We have come to see that the Teachers’ Colleges in mid-century New Zealand were more radical than the universities because of their ontological basis in a locally inflected version of pragmatist philosophy that did not separate creative expression from knowledge production. Central to what we are calling the ontology of the teachers colleges is an understanding of the place of creativity in a social democracy.

By looking deeply at the ontology of the mid-century teachers colleges in New Zealand we can see there has been a missed opportunity for the richly creative pedagogy that informed and infused their educational approach to transform the university. Nonetheless, the possibility of such a transformation of the university could still be viable – if the spirit of the colleges could be revived to enliven, for example, our own institution’s new faculty combining the former faculties of Arts, Creative Arts and Education.

Kirsten Locke is Associate Professor in the School of Critical Studies in Education at the University of Auckland.