Journeying through the University
Howard Woodhouse2013, Education Matters the Journal of Teaching and Learning
The article chronicles a personal journey through various universities in different countries for almost fifty years. It draws upon my own experience as student and university teacher in the form of a story in order to illuminate the changes that have taken place in that time. My focus is on the ways in which universities have shifted from places in which the search for shared knowledge provided endless possibilities for those engaged in it to sites where knowledge increasingly serves the demands of the corporate market. I conclude with a brief description of an alternative possibility which has taken root in Saskatoon. Prologue his article is about a journey through universities on three continents over a period of almost fifty years. It's a personal story written in narrative form. The word 'I' occurs rather a lot as I try to make sense of my own experience as student and university teacher. Story telling helps one to engage in a relational process of learning in which all aspects of experience, including emotions, are given their full range (Woodhouse, 2011a). Story telling, whether in oral or written form, is such an integral part of human existence that it provides access to the relationship between the past and present, and gives meaning to one's life (King, 2003; 2012). Mine is a written story, though it could be told out loud if anyone were willing to listen. As the title suggests, I believe there has been a shift in universities from the endless possibilities they offered until quite recently to their subjugation by market imperatives.
