Creative innovations in higher education

Students will:

• Understand how the higher education sector can contribute to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
• Develop a global sense of various ways that colleges and universities are changing worldwide, and the underlying reasons for their evolution.
• Recognize diverse approaches and initiatives to generate sustainable innovations to teaching, research, outreach, and governance in higher education institutions.
• Critically evaluate applications of “innovation” discourse in light of the objectives of promoting social justice and sustainability in higher education.
• Understand how such concepts and approaches as “systems thinking” and decolonization can offer constructive critiques and engender new approaches.
• Produce research publications based on the course material.

[Note that these books are useful examples to examine, but the final reading list will be more focused, provided later for those accepted into the course.]

Aarrevaara, T., Finkelstein, M., Jones, G. A., & Jung, J. (2021). Universities in the Knowledge Society. Springer.

Adesola, S., & Datta, S. (2020). Entrepreneurial Universities: Creating Institutional Innovation in Times of Turbulence. Springer.

Brundenius, C., Göransson, B., & de Mello, J. M. C. (Eds.). (2016). Universities, Inclusive Development and Social Innovation: An International Perspective. Springer.

Fassi, D., Landoni, P., Piredda, F., & Salvadeo, P. (2019). Universities as Drivers of Social Innovation. Springer.

Hebert, D. G. (2023). Why Comparative and Decolonial Studies in Philosophy of Education?. In Comparative and Decolonial Studies in Philosophy of Education (pp. 1-13). Springer Nature.

Johnston, B., MacNeill, S., & Smyth, K. (2019). Conceptualising the Digital University: The Intersection of Policy, Pedagogy and Practice. Springer.

Thomas, E., & Pugh, R. (2020). From ‘entrepreneurial’ to ‘engaged’ universities: Social innovation for regional development in the Global South. Regional Studies, 54(12), 1631-1643.

Wennberg, K., & Sandström, C. (2022). Questioning the Entrepreneurial State: Status-quo, Pitfalls, and the Need for Credible Innovation Policy. Springer.

Participation at the BSRS is credited under the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS). Participants submitting an essay, in a form of a publishable manuscript of 10-20 pages, after the end of the summer school will receive 10 ECTS. Deadline for submission will be decided by your course leader.

It is also possible to participate without producing an essay. This will give you 5 ECTS. In order to receive credits, we expect full participation in the course-specific modules, plenary events and roundtables.

David G. Hebert, PhD is a Professor with the Faculty of Education, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Bergen. He is also Honorary Professor with the Education University of Hong Kong and Affiliated Professor with University of the Faroe Islands.

Additionally, he mentors postgraduate students with Kyambogo and Makerere universities and teaches a course on arts policy for China University of Political Science and Law. Author or editor of 10 academic books, he has taught for universities on each inhabited continent. With grant support from Norwegian government programs, he is now co-developing new doctoral programs in China and Uganda.