Filipa M. Ribeiro

Este Manifesto apela à urgência de uma reestruturação dos curriculacom vista à implementação de novos  ciclos  de  estudo  que  incorporem  uma  visão  interdisciplinar,  pondo  fim  à separação  injustificada  e  dicotómica  entre  ciências  sociais  e  naturais,  as  quais apresentam apenas visões diversas, mas complementares, de uma mesma realidade.

This chapter examines how knowledge networks of academics shape epistemic authority in higher education institutions. The issue is addressed with the approach of funds of knowledge (Bensimon, 2009) and social network theory. Social networks (of collaboration, influence, friendship, etc.) have been mainly approached with an emphasis on their actual structure and the relationship between position in that network and other features. However, little is known about how those networks of ties affect how knowledge is embodied, encoded, and enacted within higher education institutions at the interpersonal level. Rather than examining the specific qualities of any researcher's fund of knowledge, the authors focus on showing how the approach of funds of knowledge can be operationalised by social network analysis to investigate epistemic authority and epistemic change in research agendas. Knowledge networks are described as epistemic conduits, and the challenges of research in this topic are also discussed.

There is a shift from a ‘unified science’ to ‘new ways of knowing’ or from ‘knowledge for its own sake’ to ‘knowledge society’, which has clear implications for ‘science’, such as the fixation of meaning of what knowledge should be produced and how to achieve an effective science communication or education. This paper argues that much more needs to be done to perceive what concept of knowledge and science could be useful to the multiple aspects affecting human life and the ‘new knowledge society’. This is particularly the case of the relationship between utopia, knowledge and communication. The theoretical research highlighted the existence of a metamorphosis of the communication as a concept and as a disciplinary field, but also of the science paradigm sustained by the expansion of an intimate relationship between communication, knowledge and utopia. This requires a link between creativity and utopia, which influences the ‘knowing path’ of emotion - knowledge - action. It is argued...

This paper examines the relation between department affiliation and interdisciplinarity in terms of knowledge creation. While the claims made for the benefits or limitations of interdisciplinarity are diverse, they have been largely related to modes of academic governance or to the bare nature of disciplines. Less is known on the precise role of social networks in fostering or hindering interdisciplinarity within intraorganizational contexts. Thus, to explore the influence of network structure, tie strength and nodal properties in interdisciplinarity within higher education institutions, we study the structure and dynamics of academic's personal knowledge networks. It is used a mixed methods approach combining the delineation of personal networks with the ties' content analysis regarding a conceptual model specifically developed for this study. Personal network data were collected and semi-structured interviews were held with 32 academic staff members of the academic and research system in Catalonia, Spain. Findings suggest that belonging to a department decreases interdisciplinarity and that institutional constraints are more significant than the strength of the ties. Researcher's network centrality and strength of ties are positively related to interdisciplinarity. Structural holes control for certain organizational rewards and individual attributes but are not directly linked to interdisciplinarity.

In Portugal, the development of the reform of higher education institutions governance in Portugal was made under the influence of the narrative of the New Public Management and the weakening of collegial governance. In other European countries, the institutional responses to these reforms have mitigated the effects of New Public Management, counterbalancing its most extreme consequences. In this article we analyse the implementation of the Legal Regime of Higher Education Institutions in Portugal. Based on documentary analysis, covering the period 2007-2011, we aim at identifying the extent to which elements of the New Governance narrative emerged in tension with the New Public Management. It became apparent that the characteristics of the New Governance assume some importance, particularly in what concerns the development of enablement skills
to deal with the challenges arising from meta-governance.

This paper is an interdisciplinary reflection on the relationship between social network analysis, namely egonetworks, and the funds of knowledge of researchers and teachers of higher education. It is argued that the creation of knowledge and its dissemination can be conceived as and through translation processes. These processes exist through and by means of the funds of knowledge, which can be measured and described, in its structure and content, through personal knowledge networks

This article investigates the form of European universities to determine the extent to which they resemble the characteristics of complete organizations and whether the forms are associated with modernization policy pressure, national institutional frames and organizational characteristics. An original data set of twenty-six universities from eight countries was used. Specialist universities have a stronger identity, whereas the level of hierarchy and rationality is clearly associated with the intensity of modernization policies. At the same time, evidence suggests limitations for universities to become complete, as mechanisms allowing the development of some dimensions seemingly constrain the capability to develop others.

The implementation of the governance reform of Portuguese higher education
has been developed under the influence of ‘new public management’ resulting
in the loss of collegial governance. Additionally, the need for meta-governance
of the higher education system and institutions to monitor institutional
performance against policy objectives has become evident. By examining the
implementation of the legal framework for higher education on the basis of
document analysis covering the period from 2007 to 2011 the ‘new governance’
perspective allows a broader interpretation of the governance reform outcomes.
This has implications for the enhancement of institutional autonomy induced
by governance reforms impacting on European higher education systems and
highlights the tools approach in public management.

This article focuses on the interaction between the European dimension driven by the creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and the development of national reforms to fulfil that objective. On the basis of data gathered in eight countries involved in EuroHESC project TRUE (Transforming European Universities), the curricular and the governance reforms are examined in order to identify the tension between the European dimension and the implementation of reforms in national contexts. European higher education policies take the momentum of the implementation of the Bologna Process at national level and European Union (EU) governance brings to the forefront the need for political coordination.

This paper aims at looking at governance instruments beyond managerial technicality.It intends to do so by analysing the impact of governance reforms on the universities autonomy assumed as a regulation instrument to politically steer systems and institutions. The regulation efforts undertaken at the European and national levels reflect a trend towards coordination of devolved governance processes (meta-governance). Although there is a wide consensus about awarding autonomy to universities and increasing self-governance, governments need to
ensure that their goals are actually pursued, enhancing their regulation frames and meta-governance efforts. This paper focuses on how the governance reform interacts with institutional contexts. The changes promoted by the governance reform are an
opportunity to understand how far these apparently contradictory forces operate in three selected Portuguese universities with regard to institutional autonomy.

This paper addresses the interaction between European Union policies and national higher education sectors in the countries involved in the TRUE project (England, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Switzerland) making the case for European governance. Relevant for this matter is the role of political processes that evolve at European level shaping political discourses and practices, thus creating a common grammar for European higher education governance. By empirically focusing on evaluation and funding policies the paper argues that European governance reflects in how this common grammar is being created and reconfiguring the environment within which European higher education systems and institutions are developing.

This paper undertakes an utopian approach in the context of the practice of science journalism. We analyze to what extent can science communication (trans) form identities. It is argued that, within the relationship between utopia and science and between utopia and communication, utopia emerges as a force of motivation to achieve new knowledge through communication, because utopia challenges science, communication and ethics. Regarding the relationship between utopia and journalism, we conclude that utopia is an element of self-renewing of journalism introducing an utopian questioning (utopian) in the exercise of journalism, going beyond the ethical ambiguities of the profession. Thus the new role of the science journalist is one of designer, modeler, systemic thinker combining aspects of communication of the 'self”' and promoting the transformation of values and identities.

This paper argues that one should move forward a new science paradigm, considering that the post-modern science paradigm has actually been a transitory stage in the evolution of science perceptions from a science essentially based on a dilemmatic thinking to what is here called the contemporary science. The argument advanced here is that there is an emergent paradigm of science that, in its core, results from the introduction of another complex concept – utopia. This article will explore how this is possible and will also identify other elements that coexist with each other or overlap within this paradigm. The intention here is to tease out three “archetypes” that will assist and promote analysis and discussion of the conceptual and practical development of science in relation to each individual and in a public sphere.
Keywords: Science; Knowledge; Utopia; Consciousness; Modernity.

The novel Antibodies, by David J. Skal, explores a dilemma between the body as a dispensable space and the technology as the utopian answer for the body’s insufficiency. Considering that the disembodiment is just one more version of the issue concerning the continuity man-machine, this paper argues that a body’s place which is only connected with technology is a mistake. Instead, this paper sustains the need for an ethical and inclusive model of the posthuman that shall encompass the idea of the body as a utopian space, in the sense that the body is a transitorily utopian space. This model overlaps the pluri-scalar use of technology and has some points in common with the transhumanist view of human nature as a work-in-progress, which means that the current humanity is not the endpoint of evolution. This paper concludes with a theorization of the “wrong place” or “mistake”, a speculative and heuristic concept of imagining a new model of belonging-in-transience where the body fits.

Este ensaio consiste num uma orientação teórica em evolução que se pretende simbiótica entre a ideia de sustentabilidade e a preparação do futuro, com relevante ênfase nos Direitos Humanos, na Ética da Terra, no desenvolvimento e na cultura.

This paper examines the tension between the roles played by the European Union (EU) in promoting European level higher education policies and the national higher education policies. The analysis is based on a transversal study focusing on the interaction between the European Union policies and the national higher education sectors in the countries involved in the Eurohesc project TRUE – Transforming European Universities (UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Switzerland). This study has focused on three analytical dimensions: i) the Bologna process as an instrument for the creation of the EHEA; ii) the reform of higher education governing and governance; iii) the doctoral degree reforms.
Curriculum and governance, pointed out by the European Commission  (EC) as areas of “possible reform”, are examined in order to identify the tension between the European dimension driven by the creation and consolidation of the EHEA and the national implementation reforms. In other words, the tension between the re-nationalisation (Musselin, 2009) processes and the EU creeping competencies process (Amaral and Neave, 2009) with respect to the Bologna process are examined.
The EC has been playing a central role in the coordination of higher education reforms. The paper emphasises the impressive coordination networking between projects, programmes, agencies and bodies to coordinate and follow-up the Bologna process in charge of developing the EC political drivers and inducing benchmarking and convergence processes at national and institutional levels. Even though higher education is not formally an EU competency, and national governments have widely used the Bologna process to address domestic issues and reforms, there are in place a set of EU coordinating devices, bodies and agencies whose coordination effects can hardly be denied across the national European higher education sectors.
The increasing involvement of the EC with higher education has created the conditions for making its ‘loose coordination’ more active and efficient by means of their expanding programmes and tools. This loose coordination, or a coordination of coordination mode (Dale, 2007b), was put in motion by means of governance networking between bodies, agencies and groups in charge of the ‘soft laws’ in the implementation process. The workings of this coordination governance structures and processes reflect upon the establishment of standards, guidelines and procedures, not only in curricular organization reforms, but also in the field of institutional governance. For instance, with regard to quality, this happens by means of institutional evaluation and accreditation, let alone the production of educational indicators (training included), that are being used throughout European higher education systems.
The Bologna and the Lisbon Agenda processes have accelerated national, institutional and sub‐institutional debates on higher education curricula and governance reforms in the countries involved in this study. Moreover, one might say that, along with the curricular reform, the European higher education is witnessing a level of change never seen before. The most immediate impacts in the national contexts are probably those due to the widespread of the two‐cycle structure that, among other things, has brought important changes in the configuration and certainly, in a major or minor scale, in contents of curricula. However, the impacts on the higher education structures, processes, actors, stakeholders and their internal and external relationships are on the way.
The paper argues that the European level policies rely, on the one hand, on the establishment of a common ‘grammar’ (ECTS, Diploma Supplement, qualifications, competencies, learning outcomes, etc.), allowing the re-scaling (Dale, 2007b) of national policies to the European level and providing a stronger legitimacy to national higher education policies. On the other hand, the conflation acted out by the EC between the Bologna process and the Lisbon agenda, based on the assumption of the need to consolidate the ‘Europe of knowledge’ in a global knowledge economy, has provided the legitimacy cement of the ongoing curricular and governance narratives.

What do Mark Edmundson, English Professor at the University of Virginia (USA) and Daniel Pennac, a French teacher and writer, have in common? In different ways they address what is at stake in any educational system or level: individual and, then, structural transformation. Currently, universities are lost in the translation of labels such as “elite universities”, “corporate universities”, “entrepreneurial universities”, “academic capitalism”. Nevertheless, teaching and learning are still the backbone of any endeavour to resist the confluence of forces in higher education that are leading to greater conformity and consumerism at the expense of inquiry, inspiration and challenge. As any transformation process, teaching and learning must have a permanent ground basis to orient and guide curriculum and personal development within a community. This paper proposes that this common ground should be based on a theoretical orientation drawn upon the idea of sustainability and preparation of the future, with a significant emphasis on the human rights, on the ethics of the Earth, on development and culture. Thus, this paper aims at: 1) presenting and explaining each one of these ideals considered as structural social factors; 2) justifying these ideals with empirical evidence from 30 knowledge networks from scholars based in Catalonia. Our purpose is to show how strong teaching and learning in any field must share some permanent and transdisciplinary values and ideals so that universities become places of a true ubiquitous education where everything that is taught and learnt cracks the shell of convention.