Keynote address

28-29 January 2011, University of Warwick

The keynote was delivered by Professor John Brennan, Director of Centre for Higher Education Research and Information (CHERI) and Professor of Higher Education Research at The Open University.

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What is learned in higher education? And what use is it?

As part of the ESRC’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme, a recently completed research project on the Social and Organisational Mediation of University Learning (SOMUL) has been asking questions about learning outcomes and how these are affected by the growing social and organisational diversity of higher education. In particular, the project has given voice to students and to their perceptions of the ways in which they have changed and developed as a result of their experiences of higher education. The things that seem most important to students do not always accord with the things given most emphasis by policy makers and university teachers. The presentation will summarise the main findings of the SOMUL project and pose a number of questions about their implications and, in particular, about their application to professional fields of study such as Law. The project investigated students across different subject fields with varying balances between the academic and the vocational. But it did not explicitly look at law students. From the students investigated, it appeared that changes were conceived more in social and personal terms than in academic or professional, with a big emphasis on the development of personal self-confidence and the ability to get on with a wide range of people. Would this apply to law students? What would be the implications for curricula, for learning and teaching, and for the ways in which the legal profession utilises the graduates it recruits?

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About John Brennan

Professor John Brennan has directed and participated in many national and international projects on topics such as graduate employment, quality assurance, universities and social transformation. His funded work includes projects on The Social and Organisational Mediation of University Learning and Higher Education and Regional Transformation – social and cultural perspectives, plus the UK end of an international project on The Changing Academic Profession. He has recently also led the development of a new research programme on Higher Education and Social Change for the European Science Foundation, where he is leading the UK end of an international project on Higher Education and Knowledge Societies. He has published several books and many reports and articles on higher education and has spoken at countless conferences on higher education in the UK and many other parts of the world. Prior to joining the Open University in 1992, he was Director of the Quality Support Group at the Council for National Academic Awards and has held academic posts at Lancaster University and Teesside Polytechnic. By training a sociologist, he is a founder member of the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers and an elected Fellow of the Society for Research into Higher Education.

Last Modified: 28 February 2011