Autonomy and critique in the goal-oriented university: the paradox of teaching reflexivity

Abstract

This article explores the meaning of the task of teaching students to formulate critique in relation to the so-called ‘pedagogical paradox’, according to which the educational ideal of individual autonomy is contradicted by the practice of planning and control, which is particularly pronounced in the influential model of ‘constructive alignment’. Taking Kant’s idea of enlightenment and autonomy as a starting point, I introduce Luc Boltanski’s concept of reflexivity and link it to Jon Elster’s discussion of ‘states that are essentially by-products’. In doing so, I advance the view that genuine critique typically emerges from a shift in perspective, from the pragmatic realization of goals according to institutionalized practices to a metapragmatic reflection on those practices. Since teaching is itself an institutionalized practice, personal reflexivity can only be understood as a by-product of teaching, and, contra the logic of models like constructive alignment, it cannot be set as a direct objective. Emerging from the subject itself, rather than from the influence of an educational technique, personal reflexivity should be recognized as an important aspect of the subject’s transition from youth to maturity.

Higher education is commonly expected to promote criticism. This means that it should enable individuals to question existing frameworks of thought and action, possibly leading to a breakout from current impasses in solving social and political problems. The potential of higher education to strengthen novel thinking and action is highlighted by organizations such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the European Union (EU), which have described ‘critical thinking’, among other skills like creativity and problem-solving, as a ‘key competence for the future’ or a ‘21st-century skill’. To many university educators, the skills discourse comes forward as a simplistic understanding of what goes on in higher education (Tight 2021). When it comes to critical thinking, higher education, particularly within the social sciences and humanities, has indeed a tradition of enabling students not only to respond critically to propositions, but also to formulate meaningful critiques on their own (Torjussen 2019).

The discourse of skills is not merely an adaptation of higher education to the needs of the market; there is a more fundamental development of focusing higher education on realizing predetermined goals, for which complete programmes of study (i.e. the Bologna Process) are designed (Magnússon and Rytzler 2019). Goals have also become more important in teaching, as teachers are asked to replace traditional lectures and seminars with learning activities carefully designed with specific objectives in mind (Fransson and Friberg 2015). Instead of understanding education in terms of what teachers do, advocates of goal-orientation assert that ‘[l]earning aims and learning outcomes should constitute the driving force of the university’ (Bowden and Marton 2004: 16). An influential implementation of this idea is the model known as constructive alignment (Biggs 1996, 2003), in which the curricular (goals) and pedagogical (teaching) aspects of education are fused into a unified, sociotechnical system intended to optimize student learning. The adaptation of this model among higher education institutions has implications for the connection between higher education and critique. While there has been much discussion about the importance and meaning of various critique-related goals, these goals are rarely placed in the context of the increasing goal-orientation in higher education today.

The fundamental problem of promoting critique through a goal-oriented system is that while critique implies student autonomy, goal-orientation implies control over what students think and do. This problem can be described as a ‘pedagogical paradox’ (see e.g. Wimmer 2016). The paradox arises from a contradiction between what educators say and what they do: the pedagogical ideal of the free, self-determined person is counteracted by the actual practice of pedagogical control (Løvlie 2007). The paradox is to some extent always present in education, but it is exacerbated in today’s situation where ideals such as critique and creativity are generally asserted while at the same time educational environments themselves are becoming more specialized and instrumentalized. The present article examines how the contemporary goal-orientation in higher education affects the possibility of critique. It begins by presenting a brief background to the discussion of critique-related goals in higher education. Then, the pedagogical paradox is presented in relation to Kant’s idea of autonomy and education, and situated in relation to the model of constructive alignment in contemporary higher education. Finally, the relationship between autonomy and critique in goal-oriented educational environments is explored with reference to Boltanski’s concept of reflexivity and Elster’s theory of ‘states that are essentially by-products’.

Background: critique as an educational goal

In educational theory, the ability of individuals to rationally evaluate certain propositions or more general truths and ideologies is referred to as ‘critical thinking’. Critical thinking is usually understood as a cognitive ability or disposition—in the narrow or broader sense—to be cultivated through teaching and training. In a more general understanding, however, critique can also be an activity that takes place in educational contexts without being directly solicited, and as such it can even cause disruption. While the first concept is well established in educational theory, the second seems to be underdeveloped.

In post-war America, critical thinking was widely promoted by educators and philosophy teachers who recognized that many students lacked basic reasoning skills in the face of rapidly expanding higher education. Critical thinking was in this context mainly understood as skills in logical argument analysis. However, these courses also had a political dimension: many considered uncritical thinking to be an important factor in the rise of ‘totalitarianism’ in Europe and its perpetuation in the Soviet Union. The fact that critical thinking was understood as a cognitive skill or general disposition that can be shaped by education has inspired psychologists, educators, and philosophers to develop tests (e.g. Watson and Glaser 1942; Ennis 1984, 1993. See also Lamont 2020), textbooks (e.g. Black 1946; Scriven 1976; Bowell and Kemp 2015) and teaching methods (e.g. Niu, Behar-Horenstein and Garvan 2013; Tiruneh, Verburgh and Elen 2014; Abrami et al. 2015; Davies and Barnett 2015; Huber and Kuncel 2016; Puig et al. 2019) for its effective cultivation.

However, the idea of a pedagogy of critical thinking has also been challenged. Two main directions of criticism can be discerned. First, the simplified concept of critique associated with the notion of critical thinking has been questioned. Scholars rooted in the German tradition of pedagogical thinking have argued that education has a complex relationship with critique: critique is both a purpose and a means of education and therefore cannot simply be added to a set of educational goals (Biesta and Stams 2001; Benner et al. 2003; Pongratz et al. 2004). Second, the discourse on critical thinking in higher education today is often criticized to the effect that the concept of critical thought has been appropriated by an instrumentalist mode of thinking in education. Henry Giroux (2020) describes a ‘culture of positivism’ that leads to ‘objectified knowledge’ and suppresses other forms of knowing, such as self-reflection and political emancipation. The solution proposed by critical pedagogues is to ask teachers to renounce the instrumentalist orientation and instead allow students to strive for something greater than just the technical skills demanded by the market. Alternative critique-related goals have been elaborated by Ronald Barnett, who presents a taxonomy of learning goals ranging from basic ‘critical skills’, to ‘reflexivity’, ‘refashioning of traditions’, and ‘transformative critique’ (Barnett 1997). Some educators have argued in this vein for the recognition of political activism and dissent as legitimate educational goals (Stitzlein 2012; Dunne 2015; Sibbett 2016). Even if the political goals promoted by critical pedagogues are not formally recognized by higher education institutions, creative teachers can always incorporate them into their own teaching (Brookfield 2011; Schwittay 2021).

The aim of this article is to look at the domestication of critique from a different angle: instead of focusing on the popular notion of critical thinking, I examine the very status of critique as a learning goal. Indeed, the model of organizing education in terms of learning goals is not only used to achieve instrumental goals such as notions of critical thinking linked to problem-solving and innovation, but also emancipatory goals such as democratic values and various types of social critique. As this model is now widely accepted and naturalized, educational debates often revolve around the question of which goals are appropriate in today’s society. However, some goals, such as critique based on personal reflexivity, are, as I will argue below, incompatible with the paradigm of goal-oriented learning, which calls for a shift of focus to the question of what goals are possible in a strongly goal-oriented education.

Autonomy and control in Kant and constructive alignment

If by critique we mean activities and attitudes that arise from autonomous thinking, it clearly cannot be reduced to a learning goal to be achieved through planned and controlled educational activities. In fact, few educational goals with a universal orientation can be considered as direct outcomes of educational training. Consider a goal like self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency cannot be a concrete learning goal, because by definition it contradicts the logic of educational guidance, as famously declared by Immanuel Kant in his essay on enlightenment: ‘Nonage or minority [Unmündigkeit] is the inability of making use of one’s own understanding without the guidance of another’ (Kant 1784: 516, 1798: 3). In this interpretation, self-sufficiency is only conceivable as an educational goal if we accept that it is always already present in the subject and that education works by removing its moral and intellectual obstacles. Self-sufficiency is then not a product of education, but rather its purpose.

For present day educators, who must define the outcome of their work in terms of predetermined learning outcomes, purpose-goals tend to be confused with product-goals. This is the case with the goal of critique: critique is recognized both as a general purpose of higher education (active, participating citizens) and as a specific learning goal (critical thinking) to be achieved through teaching and assessment. The pedagogical paradox arises in the goal-oriented university because the pedagogical focus on product-goals can contradict purpose-goals. The typical example is the goal of individual freedom, which pedagogical practice negates through the exercise of coercion:

One of the biggest problems in education is the question of how to combine submission under lawful constraint [gesetzlichen Zwang] with the capacity to use one’s freedom. For constraint is necessary. How do I cultivate freedom under constraint? (Kant 1803: 27 [2007: 447])

Although Kant had the moral education of children in mind, a similar contradiction is evident in contemporary higher education, insofar as it is increasingly goal-oriented. It is true that, unlike the subjection of children to education, the participation of adults in higher education is voluntary and students are free to abandon their studies at any time. Adult students are—ideally—mature, self-determined beings who pursue an education to gain knowledge, not to receive a second upbringing. At the same time, today’s goal-oriented university does in practice treat students as immature, as it seeks to reduce the possibility of students setting their own goals and thus acting as self-determining beings. Constructive alignment is the most influential pedagogical model to this end, and it is often taught in academic teacher training courses. It prescribes a form of teaching in which students’ behaviour is continually shaped towards a ‘model-behaviour’ (in constructive alignment: learning outcomes formulated in verbs) through a series of pedagogical activities, each purposefully designed to fulfil a specific function in a predetermined learning trajectory.

The pedagogical paradox of constructive alignment stems from the ambiguous notion of ‘learning’. On the one hand, the model prescribes ‘student-active’ or ‘student-centred’ learning, thus distinguishing itself from the traditional, monologic university lecture. On the other hand, such activities have nothing to do with student subjectivity, but are mere pedagogical tools used to shape the behaviour prescribed in the learning outcomes. John Biggs, the inventor of the model, explains:

The ‘alignment’ aspect refers to what the teacher does, which is to set up a learning environment that supports the learning activities appropriate to achieving the desired learning outcomes. The key is that the components in the teaching system, especially the teaching methods used and the assessment tasks, are aligned with the learning activities assumed in the intended outcomes. The learner is in a sense ‘trapped’, and finds it difficult to escape without learning what he or she is intended to learn. (Biggs 2003: 2)

The metaphor of ‘trapping’ students is used here to describe a situation in which the subject must follow a specific predetermined learning trajectory, and not drift into other, unintended learning experiences. This regime of control is effective in that the educator can construct a ‘system’ of carefully ordered learning activities and assessments. Since this arrangement is emptied of any contingency, its ideal form does not allow for any real freedom during the learning process. Taken to the extreme, the model of constructive alignment completely subordinates teaching to the curriculum. Accomplishing learning activities through interaction with a Skinnerian ‘teaching machine’ (now probably a computer) rather than a teacher would, for instance, be preferable, since the machine could more accurately facilitate and incrementally reinforce the behavioural changes required to achieve the model-behaviour in students. The curriculum (a set of learning outcomes) is applied directly to the learner, so to speak, shortcutting the human teacher. Constructive alignment is thus neither a teaching model nor a model for organizing content and goals, but a sociotechnical system designed to bridge these aspects of education. For higher education institutions, adopting this model means providing higher education teachers with training in organizing learning activities around specific goals, and allocating resources in a way that favours focused learning activities over unbiased student–teacher interaction. Certainly, individual teachers might try to counteract the system by being creative in their teaching and attempting to build genuine bonds with students (see e.g. Schwittay 2021), but such a strategy has limited scope in an environment that has implemented constructive alignment on a structural level, not least because fewer hours are allocated to actual encounters with students.

It can be added that the model of constructive alignment is not a priori oriented towards the technical goals that are recognized in today’s capitalist market. On the contrary, it is rooted in post-war science (behaviourism, cybernetics) associated with social engineering and the construction of redistributive welfare systems. It could well be used to achieve ‘progressive’ goals associated with individuality, democratic attitudes, and political engagement, and it can be—and it sometimes is—justified by some notion of freedom. However, its particular mode of shaping behaviours negates autonomy. In practice, freedom is thwarted by the constant tightening of arrangements by which individuals are subjected to control. The more educators informed by constructive alignment want to ensure that students learn to exhibit a behaviour implying a state of autonomy, the more they seem to undermine the actuality of that state; the more effort educators put into liberating the subject, the more freedom they take away.

If critique were to be operationalized as a model-behaviour to be shaped successively through carefully planned learning activities, critique would not be an autonomous activity. Students would not be allowed to formulate criticism using their own reason and will. Since in a fully ‘aligned’ classroom only activities perceived as contributing to the achievement of certain goals (formulated from the teacher’s point of view) are allowed, there is an obvious danger that many expressions of criticism among students will be seen as useless and irrelevant. In such an environment, critique ideally occurs only in forms that teachers have anticipated in advance and accepted as meaningful; rather than allowing various forms of criticism to emerge organically among students, educators would actively solicit certain forms from them.

Teaching as a matter of by-products

Both the proponents of constructive alignment and many of its critics assume that some form of critical ability can be set as a learning goal to be intentionally achieved according to an educational plan (although they differ in what meaning they ascribe to it). However, critique could also be seen as an activity or attitude that is not directly elicited by a particular form of pedagogy. Today’s persistence of student protests at universities testifies to the fact that the university is not only a producer of certain forms of critique, but also a place where subjects independently formulate critique. Especially in the second half of the 20th century, the university often attracted young people who used academic knowledge to question social orders of oppression and exploitation. In the student unrest from 1968 onwards, the university was both a resource for knowledge and a target for critics who held it responsible for reproducing social orders of domination. The pedagogical claim of impartiality was typically met with suspicion by the popular intellectuals of the time, who unmasked it as a call for a return to order:

Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e. in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means. … [T]he restoration of freedom of thought may necessitate new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions which, by their very methods and concepts, serve to enclose the mind within the established universe of discourse and behavior—thereby precluding a priori a rational evaluation of the alternatives. (Marcuse 1965: 100–1)

In France, Jacques Lacan offered a structural explanation for student unrest in the form of a mechanism in ‘university discourse’ itself. By positing the student as the ‘object cause of desire’ of the educator, university discourse produces a split, ‘hysterical’ subject that arises from the question of what the pedagogical intervention really wants from them (Lacan 2007). Lacan’s idea is thus different from the idea of critique as an educational goal—for Lacan, critique is an unintended effect of a pedagogical discourse operating within the strict boundaries of science. Since English-language educational theory on critical thinking has been mainly concerned with the analysis of goals and teaching methods, forms of critique that are not intentionally produced have not been analysed as such.

As we have seen, to produce critique through a sociotechnical system that is hostile to unexpected events is an inherently paradoxical task. For critique to go beyond its most elementary forms, it must involve reflexivity, which means relativizing the normal, expected way of doing things. In his book On Critique, Luc Boltanski defines reflexivity as the capacity of subjects not only to act and react, but also to make judgements about actions (in the case of moral judgements, for example). Judgements typically aim at the correspondence between what Boltanski calls symbolic forms and the state of affairs. The symbolic form is the formal definition or common understanding of a practice, while the state of affairs is the concrete instance of the practice in particular situations (Boltanski 2011: 3–9). In real-life situations, participants in a given practice may stop focusing on its immediate, pragmatic goal and start to reflect upon the nature of the practice itself—what are we doing? What kind of ‘seminar’ is this? In these cases, participants leave the pragmatic register of thought and action and move into a metapragmatic mode (pp. 62–8). It is important to note, however, that not all metapragmatic reflection can be seen as an opening to critique. Many institutions are reflexive in that they have an official, largely institutionalized meta-language (p. 102). In education, for example, there is continuous assessment and improvement of courses. For critique to emerge, the institutionalized way of doing things has to be measured against criteria outside the institution—for example, against personal experience. This does not mean that critique must be subjective, but that critique depends on someone making a judgement about the relationship between the symbolic form and the state of affairs. Institutions cannot make such judgements themselves because they have no body and thus no position in or perspective on reality; they exist in the world only insofar as they are represented by spokespersons (pp. 74–5). Personal reflexivity is thus different from institutional reflexivity: while the latter depends on individuals pragmatically following certain procedures, the former means that individuals relativize the institutional procedures and begin to reflect on their meaning in relation to the world outside the institution. Boltanski’s understanding of reflexivity thus locates the possibility of novel forms of critique in the reflexive capacities of the individual. These powers are activated, so to speak, by the individual’s participation in institutional practices whose constant mismatch between their official definition and their actual reality is experienced by a corporeal being with a particular perspective and thus a capacity for judgement.

Where institutional practices exist, critique tends to emerge because these practices rarely conform to the idealistic definitions officially ascribed to them. The point is that the criticism that arises from this mechanism is not intentionally produced by institutions; rather, it is a by-product of attempts to perform tasks according to formal procedures. Jon Elster has analysed various ‘states that are essentially by-products’, such as sleep, sexual desire, courage, self-confidence, and maturity. These states ‘cannot be brought about intelligently and intentionally’, although they can be achieved indirectly, as the conditions that cause them can be brought about intelligently and intentionally (Elster 1983: 56). The peculiarity of states that are essentially by-products is that they are normally assumed to arise spontaneously in individuals, which places them outside the realm of direct commands; it is impossible to follow the command ‘Be spontaneous!’ (p. 60). Personal reflexivity in the form of a critical response to the discrepancy between the symbolic forms and state of affairs of a particular practice is, if we follow Boltanski’s theory, also a state that arises spontaneously in individuals. It follows that an institution like education cannot directly command its subjects to be personally reflexive—that is, to transcend institutionalized forms of thought and action—without undermining the legitimacy of its practices and thus itself.

The impossibility in principle of commanding, or instructing, students to be reflexive can be illustrated by the common teaching strategy of introducing ‘critical’ literature and asking students how they might use that literature to reflect critically on a practice, institution, or social order. When such a strategy is successful, it brings about a behaviour that appears as personal reflexivity, as the student actually begins to use the literature to critically evaluate an object. But this is only an appearance—the student is not personally reflexive, as the behaviour is merely an enactment of a script provided by the educational institution. Or, to use Boltanski’s terminology: when the student follows the instruction, he or she essentially remains in a pragmatic mode and does not make the shift in perspective that characterizes metapragmatic registers of thought and action. (The problem clearly remains even if the teacher directly instructs the student to enter a metapragmatic register, for example, by instructing them to ask themselves why they are simply accepting their instructions).

Education could, however, indirectly cause a state of reflexivity in students. This would be the case when students enter a metapragmatic register of thought and action without being encouraged to do so. From the teacher’s perspective in an ‘aligned’ educational environment, such a response to teaching would likely be perceived as disruption. What is not recognized in the ‘aligned’ model of education is that paradoxical commands, while difficult to follow, can also be fulfilled if not followed: ‘It is as if someone told another person “Be autonomous!”, and was told in reply “Fuck you!”’ (Elster 1983: 65). In Elster’s analysis, this response is caused by the command and it also fulfils it, but not according to the expected mechanism (i.e. following the command). When a teacher tries to induce a state of personal reflexivity, students might react critically to such attempts: ‘What is the point of this exercise?’, ‘Do you call this a seminar?’, etc. This kind of reaction would mean that the teacher’s instructions have indeed caused a state of reflexivity, though unintentionally, by creating a situation that has provoked students to break free from their entrapment in the learning trajectory intended for them. This means that the model of constructive alignment fails while, at the same time, achieving what is often seen as the general purpose of higher education.

Reflexivity and maturity

The model of constructive alignment, in which all aspects of education are designed in relation to predetermined goals, is a technique for making the journey through university studies as smooth as possible, minimizing the risk of disruption and conflict that complicates the transition from the role of school pupil to working adult. Understood as an essentially technical endeavour of optimization, ‘aligned’ teaching does not require any moral concepts, such as a notion of what it means for a person to reach maturity. However, what is not recognized in this model is that it nevertheless has moral implications. Its moral message is that an adult should work to achieve the goals set by others. In this respect, goal-oriented higher education seems to be just a continuation of the restricted life that Kant called Unmündigkeit, ‘nonage’. The idea inherent in models such as constructive alignment is that higher education is a place of learning, not maturation.

If higher education institutions do not introduce young people to a state of maturity in a stronger sense than qualifying them for the labour market, this could lead to a variety of social problems. One obvious danger is the problem of heteronomy: subjects could shirk the responsibility of critically reflecting on the tasks assigned to them at work and in other areas of life, possibly leading to unethical practices. But there is also a danger of a more subjective nature: without a sense of maturity, life can be experienced as directionless and meaningless. This danger is explained in more detail by Alain Badiou in his book The True Life, which is aimed at young people. He states that today there are no longer any initiation rites separating youth from adulthood. Initiation rites are typically harsh and can involve ‘bodily markings, daunting physical and moral tests, or activities that were prohibited before and permitted afterwards’ (Badiou 2017: 17–18). One example that has persisted into modern society is military service, although it has been largely abolished in many countries. The disappearance of initiation rites, according to Badiou, coincides with the emergence of a ‘cult of youth’, an ideology that presents youth as the model for all while obscuring the fact that adults are nevertheless in power. The result of these developments is that young people tend to enter adult life without a sense of maturity and easily fall into careerism, fundamentalism, or other ways of avoiding a state of emptiness.¹

If we accept Badiou’s interpretation of the situation, could contemporary university education compensate for the disappearance of initiation rites, and what would this entail? If education were to function as an initiation into adulthood, it would have to permanently change the subject’s perception of itself. The change would have to mean that life should now be different than before. When it comes to the question of critical thinking, I would like to suggest that achieving a high level of reflexivity, that is, that students turn their critical perspective on their own efforts to fulfil the goals set by others, could function as a form of initiation into adulthood. Since such a shift in perspective cannot be brought about directly by teachers, students would have to do it themselves. Recognizing the importance of this task, however, educators would not seek to prevent students from deviating from the planned educational trajectory, but rather open avenues for unexpected outcomes.

The Kantian notion of Mündigkeit, or maturity, clearly does not fit very well with today’s goal-oriented university education. This is because this type of education aims to produce individuals who function well in society, both in a private and professional context. It embraces the notion of critical thinking, as it is believed that critical thinking contributes to innovation and productivity and protects against disinformation and radicalization. In other words, it educates individuals for society. This ideal is, however, radically opposed to the ideal of education for the individual themselves, despite their embeddedness in society. Such an ideal does not seek to justify education in the present order of institutions but aims to educate a person disposed to think for themselves beyond this order. As we have seen, the pedagogical practice implied by the ideal of education for the individual themselves is paradoxical—especially when one tries to operationalize it in terms of a learning outcome—but it is nonetheless ethically superior, since students are treated as ends and not as means.

Conclusion

Educational theorists have been arguing about the definition of ‘critical thinking’ since the 1940s and have proposed various pedagogical approaches to its realization. In my discussion, I have identified a theoretical problem associated with the demand for critical thinking as an educational goal, namely that any substantive form of critique that might be expected from higher education presupposes a state of personal reflexivity that can only be understood as a by-product of education. The problem is salient in the contemporary university, where learning activities are increasingly expected to be ‘constructively aligned’ to predetermined goals.

To what extent can we expect goal-oriented university teaching, as advocated by influential educators such as Ference Marton, Noel Entwistle, and John Biggs, to instil in students a spirit of critical assessment towards established truths and ideologies? Teachers who strive to emancipate their students are generally aware of the mechanism of indirect goal fulfilment and know that the fundamental purposes of education are essentially by-products of education. Emancipatory teaching proceeds by creating an open learning environment where unexpected reflections and insights are allowed to emerge. The problem with constructive alignment is that it does not recognize by-products; it is hostile to learning experiences that deviate from the predetermined learning goals and seeks to eliminate them. This does not mean, however, that ‘aligned’ educational environments cannot produce states that are not normally intentionally produced, such as personal reflexivity. Although goal-orientation clearly limits the scope for teachers and learners to ‘courageously strive in any direction’, as Humboldt put it, it does not necessarily succeed in doing so. On the contrary, the more universities function as manufacturers of certain forms of knowledge, the more critical reactions might be expected from both staff and students. In other words, one could at least expect such environments to provoke a state of reflexivity from which novel forms of critique could emerge.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Barbara Schulte, Sverker Lundin, and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on earlier versions of this article.

References

Footnotes