ABSTRACT
What kind of curriculum, pedagogy and qualifications do we need for an uncertain future? This chapter seeks to answer these questions by engaging with the influential ideas of Ronald Barnett (2004a), who called for an ‘ontological turn’ in curriculum and pedagogy away from a primary focus on knowledge and skills to a ‘pedagogy for human being’. A ‘pedagogy for human being’ seeks to develop the human qualities and dispositions needed to thrive in a future that is not merely uncertain, but radically unknowable. On the face of it, Barnett’s approach is a welcome alternative to the traditional ‘generic skills’ approach in tertiary education, an approach which is often criticised because it seeks to develop abstract and decontextualised skills in the absence of the communities of practice that invest these skills with content and meaning (Bernstein 2000: 59). Barnett’s criticism is different. He describes generic skills as a cul-de-sac, because they are premised on certain and knowable skills to navigate an uncertain world (2004a: 256). Barnett argues that disciplinary knowledge and skills are still important, but less so than they used to be in an age of certainty. More important now is a pedagogy that disturbs ‘human beings as such’ (ibid.: 257).
