Rethinking Knowledge within Higher Education: Adorno and Social Justice

Rethinking Knowledge within Higher Education argues for a higher education that is neither a romantic idyll of learning for its own sake nor an instrumental institution designed to train a willing workforce for the prevailing economic system. Instead, using analysis informed by critical theorist Theodor Adorno, this book argues that higher education should have social and economic roles at its heart, and that these should encompass the needs of all society. The key to achieving this purpose without privilege lies in the ways in which knowledge is understood and engaged with in higher education. Higher education has a special role in society as a place in which complex, contested and dynamic knowledge is engaged with, challenged and created. The realization of this purpose challenges traditional dichotomies between economic and social purposes, liberal and vocational education, and theory and practice. Jan McArthur shows that by interpreting and adapting some of Adorno's most complex ideas, the nature of knowledge and the pursuit of social justice within higher education is feasible and aspirational.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Adorno and Higher Education 1. Knowledge and Social Justice in Higher Education 2. Approaches to Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy 3. The Importance of Knowledge Being Not Easily Known 4. Beyond Standardized Engagement with Knowledge 5. The Social Implications of Engaging with Knowledge in Higher Education 6. Challenging the Theory–Practice Dichotomy 7. Towards a Higher Education Transcending Both the Elite and the Mainstream References Index

About the Author :
Jan McArthur is Lecturer Education and Social Justice within the Department of Educational Research at Lancaster University, UK. She has previously taught at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and Monash University, Australia. Her research spans the nature and purposes of higher education, social justice within and through higher education and dialogue/student voice within assessment, learning and feedback.

Review :
A highly intelligent book in which the author brings her considerable scholarship to bear on crucial questions regarding the role and purpose of higher education. Her reading of Adorno is acute and nuanced and her application of 'critical theory' to the current higher education policy context is sharp and politically astute. McArthur's argument for the necessary relation between higher education and social justice is both compelling and inspiring. Writers on social theorists often fall into the trap of being as 'difficult' to follow as those whose theories they are discussing. Jan McArthur is unusual in this respect, writing clearly, incisively and intelligibly, demonstrating what the work of one of the less quoted social theorists, Adorno, has to offer for a critical understanding of higher education today. For those of us who refuse to abandon knowledge's special place in higher education, McArthur's book reminds us that there is a job to be done in fighting for it - not as an end itself - but as part of a commitment to social justice. Situated within a tradition of critical pedagogy and with the aid of Adorno's writings, the project of McArthur's book is to reclaim a transformative narrative for knowledge, and to demonstrate why this ought to be the way forward for higher education. Amid the now familiar contradictory narratives of higher education thesis, McArthur's analysis is not only striking and intelligent, as a practice of 'thinking otherwise' it might also be seen as a welcome piece of dangerous scholarship. Any serious researcher or scholar of higher education looking for conceptual and theoretical gems to re-ignite their commitment to knowledge as a complex endeavour will find that this book has plenty to offer. This necessarily brief overview of the book cannot adequately convey the significance of McArthur's refreshing and well-written work. Her argument for placing social justice at the very core of higher education is both forceful and convincing and relevant for those teaching in religious studies or theology departments. For faculty struggling with questions regarding the future of higher education and who are looking for something beyond a business-model approach, McArthur's book offers a worthy conversation partner.