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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Higher Education in Networked Knowledge Societies

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This conceptual chapter articulates an analytical synthesis: Networked Knowledge Society. This synthesis incorporates the role of knowledge, information and communication technology (ICT) and networks in order to better understand the dynamic nature of contemporary societies. It also conceptualises the relationships between contemporary societies and higher education. A traditional approach to examining the relationships between higher education and society is to consider this from the societal point of departure to interpret or explain change in higher education. Our approach, by contrast, is relational with respect to the dynamic role of higher education in societies and the ways in which higher education both transforms – and is transformed by – changing societies. We propose to briefly concentrate more generally on the nature of contemporary social order. We then advance the analytical synthesis Networked Knowledge Society, which both integrates a view of knowledge, ICT, and networks as the most important social phenomena in contemporary societies and that also illuminates the key relationships necessary to better understand twenty-first century societies and higher education.