Dr. Deanne Gannaway
Senior Lecturer in Higher Education, Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation, The University of Queensland, Australia
In this post in the Australian daily higher education news update, Senior Lecturer for Queensland University’s Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation, Dr. Deanne Gannaway urges Australia’s post-secondary educators to reconsider the value of Humanities and Social Science (HASS) Education. Deanne is an Associate Professor in the University of Queensland's Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation and leads their partnership with WINCan.
Deanne expresses concern about Australia’s focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Education is “short-sighted”. She explains the necessity of HASS Education for the future, a future which “will need flexible, fluid, global workers, who can switch between different kinds of knowledge and different ways of thinking, who can be responsive and innovative.” According to Deanne, HASS educated graduates are ideally suited for such a future:
The quintessential element of innovation, and intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship is human: as developers, designers, users, consumers… And who knows and understands humans better than social scientist and humanities specialists? Humans past, present and future. Who better trained in working through multiple choices, in flexible patterns, through and across diverse disciplines than Bachelor of Arts (BA) students …
Deanne concludes her post by insisting adding Arts to create STEAM is not enough to demonstrate the “vital contribution that HASS education can and should make to an unknown future.”
To read Deanne Gannaway’s full article, please click here to read the original post on the Campus Morning Mail.