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Higher Education in Networked Knowledge Societies

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RE-BECOMING UNIVERSITIES?

Abstract

This conceptual chapter articulates an analytical synthesis: Networked Knowledge Society. This synthesis incorporates the role of knowledge, information and communication technology (ICT) and networks in order to better understand the dynamic nature of contemporary societies. It also conceptualises the relationships between contemporary societies and higher education. A traditional approach to examining the relationships between higher education and society is to consider this from the societal point of departure to interpret or explain change in higher education. Our approach, by contrast, is relational with respect to the dynamic role of higher education in societies and the ways in which higher education both transforms – and is transformed by – changing societies. We propose to briefly concentrate more generally on the nature of contemporary social order. We then advance the analytical synthesis Networked Knowledge Society, which both integrates a view of knowledge, ICT, and networks as the most important social phenomena in contemporary societies and that also illuminates the key relationships necessary to better understand twenty-first century societies and higher education.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This also was a central goal of the EuroHESC Research Programme, in which CINHEKS was carried out.

  2. 2.

    The theory of Risk Society by Beck (1992) addresses some of the topics discussed in the theory of Knowledge Society. However, Beck was more interested in redefining the traditional relationship between nature and society than reflecting on the impacts of knowledge production for the society. One of his main arguments is that industrial society has made the world as its laboratory. For this reason we can understand social change from the redefinition of this relationship. In other words, “Nature” challenges “society, as society challenges nature” because each challenge the limitations of the other.

  3. 3.

    According to organizational theorist Blackler (1995) there can be found at least five different ways to define knowledge as a concept. These are (1) embrained knowledge which depends and conceptual skills and cognitive abilities; (2) embodied knowledge is action oriented and probably only partly explicit; (3) encultured knowledge, in turn, refers to processes of achieving shared understanding; (4) embedded knowledge resides in systemic routines; (5) encoded knowledge is information conveyed by signs and symbols.

  4. 4.

    Brainport area in The Netherlands gives a revealing example on this kind of development (see Lintsen 2009).

  5. 5.

    We refer to social structure in a broad, pragmatic sense, for example, the durable manner in which social relationships are patterned (Dewey 1929) reproduced and transformed (Bourdieu 1988) and in which new phenomena continuously emerge.

  6. 6.

    The changing locus and mode of knowledge production has been reflected in the conceptualisations such as Mode 1 & 2 knowledge production and the Triple Helix (Gibbons et al. 1994; Nowotny et al. 2001; Etzkowitz et al. 2000; Etzkowitz 2003) as discussed by Välimaa and Hoffman (2008).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Finnish Institute for Educational Research, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Jussi Välimaa & David M. Hoffman

  2. School of Education, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Vassiliki Papatsiba

Authors
  1. Jussi Välimaa
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  2. Vassiliki Papatsiba
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  3. David M. Hoffman
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Correspondence to Jussi Välimaa .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Finnish Institute for Educat. Research, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    David M. Hoffman

  2. Finnish Institute for Educat. Research, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland

    Jussi Välimaa

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Välimaa, J., Papatsiba, V., Hoffman, D.M. (2016). Higher Education in Networked Knowledge Societies. In: Hoffman, D., Välimaa, J. (eds) RE-BECOMING UNIVERSITIES?. The Changing Academy – The Changing Academic Profession in International Comparative Perspective, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7369-0_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7369-0_2

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