Abstract:

Education as realized in tertiary institutions today is still very much dependent on knowledge transfer from faculty to students. The kinds of knowledge that can be transferred in this way face limitations that challenge their usability as required by the student for real-world, on-the-ground applicability.

Michael Polányi has written extensively, focusing especially in his Personal Knowledge (1958), on the different kinds of knowledge and their transferability. His focus on the art of doing something, rephrased since as tacit knowledge, experiential knowledge, procedural knowledge or embodied knowledge, is what he gathered in the term connoisseurship. While our understanding of such knowledge has developed through different fields since his original writing, the problem of how to effectively transfer such knowledge within an institutional education setting remains.

Having founded the Transdisciplinary Doctoral School at the University of Győr eight years ago, we now have extensive experience with nearly a hundred students as they made their way through our program. Following them with semi-structured interviews, informal conversations and seeing them develop through their work, it has become obvious to us that while the school provides valuable education, there are key problems that hinder student progress and applicable knowledge acquisition.

The structuring of the curriculum plays a key role, but finding the right one or ones is a continuous adjustment, as neither having prescribed courses nor granting full student autonomy seemed efficient. In the same way, bringing in the “big gurus” of the business world could prove too challenging, while the “homegrown” supervisors did not provide enough substance or provoke interest. Similarly, “dry” materials are ineffective, while having students “get their feet wet” could feel like being “thrown in deep end” for many. It seems there is a need for a more fluid and dynamically organized system of education that still fits into the academic structural requirements.

The direction that is emerging for us is what could be called a kind of co-created education, the goal of which is applicable on-the-ground knowledge; Michael Polányi’s connoisseurship. We have seen a hybrid reality emerge in the way our students make their way through the program and the world, blending in-person with digital interactions, as well as collaborating with persons mixed with using digital tools such as AI. Add to these the dimensions of stakeholder responsibility, the new workplace, and industrial networks, and one sees the emergence of a very complex picture of what the connoisseurship of an individual entails.

Such complexity requires constant dialogue, either real or metaphorical, between the different participants of the doctoral program, which leads to the constant shaping, within given constraints, of content and form. This insight is our starting point for the rebooting of our program.

Choosing this direction, we realize that a new kind of education may require a new kind of student. Group dynamics and soft-skills move from the side to the center, and we are aware that such skills are not taught in the traditional education systems leading up to our doors. As we set about the challenge of the new iteration of our school, we realize that will have to build such skills and structures into our curriculum.

Keywords:

Education, knowledge, connoisseurs​hip, co-creation.