Analysing micro-credentials in higher education: a Bernsteinian analysis

ABSTRACT

This paper critiques the emergence of micro-credentials in higher education. It argues that micro-credentials build on the discourse of employability skills and 21^st century skills within human capital theory, and that they increase the potential of human capital theory to ‘discipline’ the HE curriculum to align it more closely with putative labour market requirements. The paper is situated within the social realist school in the sociology of education, and it draws primarily on the sociology of Basil Bernstein to develop this critique, while also drawing on the Continental Didaktik tradition. It analyses the nature of the person envisaged in curriculum, the homo economicus of human capital theory. This self is a market self who uses micro-credentials to invest in this or that set of skills in anticipating labour market requirements. The paper uses a range of Bernstein’s concepts to analyse the links between what is to be taught, to whom is it taught, and how is it taught in micro-credentials. It focuses on the principle of recontextualization which comprises instructional and regulative discourses, to examine the ways in which notions of the person and human motivation are reshaping relations of classification and framing in HE curriculum.

KEYWORDS:

• Bernstein
• social realism
• micro-credentials
• 21^st century skills
• higher education
• Didaktik tradition

Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to the two reviewers and to the associate editor for their very helpful and perceptive comments which helped us to sharpen the focus of this paper and our argument.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We are grateful to one of the reviewers who drew this implication to our attention and helped us to position it more clearly than we may have otherwise done.

2. While discursive institutionalism is helpful in this context in analysing policy flows, it would be stronger if it were grounded on a stronger realist ontology such as critical realism (a notion the authors explicitly reject), rather than its current constructivist premise. Such a debate is, however, beyond the scope of this article.

3. See also the work of scholars associated with Legitimation Code Theory (https://legitimationcodetheory.com/).

4. Exceptions are the work of Young and Muller (2014), Hordern (2016, 2019a, 2019c), McLean et al. (2013), (2017), and Clegg (2016) in the UK, and scholars in South Africa (see Luckett, 2009; Luckett & Shay, 2020; Muller, 2009; Muller & Young, 2014). In contrast, there has been substantial theorizing about the role of knowledge in the vocational education sector, in part in response to competency-based training models of curriculum, although there is still a marked disjuncture between the scholarly literature and policy (see Allais, 2014; Gamble, 2016; Wheelahan, 2015).

5. For a clear example of this arrogance by higher education scholars about vocational education, see Lewis and Lodge (2016, p. 46).

6. For example, as is common in university quality assurance processes in the Westminster Anglophone systems, this is exemplified by the need to produce a program quality assurance report which includes a demonstration of how learning outcomes at the course or subject level are linked to program learning outcomes, which are then connected to the department, faculty and university missions.

7. They cite the dominance of John Biggs’ model of Constructive Alignment (Biggs & Tang, 2011) in programs for university teachers in Europe (and arguably also in many Anglophone systems) as a pedagogic model that offers one homogenized framework for understanding the nature of teaching and learning.

8. And this is a key reason why it is mistaken to confuse a curriculum that it strongly classified and framed with strong signalling to students about content, selection, pace, and evaluation as antithetical to a student-focused approach. Strong framing of the instructional discourse may provide working-class students with access to the boundaries between different forms of knowledge and the principles of their construction.

9. The demonization of those on welfare is, of course, a key component of neoliberal discourse from the 1980s until now at the time of writing, in 2020. However, attitudes may shift, given the widescale implementation of state-funded welfare for the whole population in many countries necessitated as a result of the Covid-19 Pandemic.

10. As an illustration, an example of a new six month higher education certificate in Australia is an under-graduate certificate in aged care support which is offered fully online. See: http://handbook.westernsydney.edu.au/hbook/course.aspx?course=7173.1.

11. For examples, see: https://credentials.deakin.edu.au/credentials/ and https://www.rmit.edu.au/creds.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Leesa Wheelahan

Leesa Wheelahan is a professor and William. G. Davis Chair in Community College Leadership in the Department of Leadership, Higher, and Adult Education at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her research interests include relations between colleges and universities, tertiary education policy, and the role of knowledge in curriculum.

Gavin Moodie

Gavin Moodie is Adjunct Professor in the Department of Leadership, Higher, and Adult Education at the University of Toronto, Canada, and Adjunct Professor in Education at RMIT University, Australia. His research interests include relations between college and university education in developed countries; relations between postsecondary education and work; and, postsecondary education policy.