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This book reinvigorates the philosophical treatment of the nature, purpose, and meaning of thought in today’s universities. The wider discussion about higher education has moved from a philosophical discourse to a discourse on social welfare and service, economics, and political agendas. This book reconnects philosophy with the central academic concepts of thought, reason, and critique and their associated academic practices of thinking and reasoning. Thought in this context should not be considered as a merely mental or cognitive construction, still less a cloistered college, but a fully developed individual and social engagement of critical reflection and discussion with the current pressing disciplinary, political, and philosophical issues. The editors hold that the element of thought, and the ability to think in a deep and groundbreaking way is, still, the essence of the university. But what does it mean to think in the university today? And in what ways is thought related not only to the epistemological and ontological issues of philosophical debate, but also to the social and political dimensions of our globalised age? In many countries, the state is imposing limitations on universities, dismissing or threatening academics who speak out critically. With this volume, the editors ask questions such as: What is the value of thought? What is the university’s proper relationship to thought? To give the notion of thought a thorough philosophical treatment, the book is divided into in three parts. The focus moves from an epistemological perspective in Part I, to a focus on existence and values in higher education in Part II, and then to a societal-oriented focus on the university in Part III. All three parts, in their own ways, debate the notion of thought in higher education and the university as a thinking form of being.
Each fall, thousands of eager freshmen descend on college and university campuses expecting the best education imaginable: inspiring classes taught by top-ranked professors, academic advisors who will guide them to a prestigious job or graduate school, and an environment where learning flourishes outside the classroom as much as it does in lecture halls. Unfortunately, most of these freshmen soon learn that academic life is not what they imagined. Classes are taught by overworked graduate students and adjuncts rather than seasoned faculty members, undergrads receive minimal attention from advisors or administrators, and potentially valuable campus resources remain outside their grasp. Andrew Roberts’ Thinking Student’s Guide to College helps students take charge of their university experience by providing a blueprint they can follow to achieve their educational goals—whether at public or private schools, large research universities or small liberal arts colleges. An inside look penned by a professor at Northwestern University, this book offers concrete tips on choosing a college, selecting classes, deciding on a major, interacting with faculty, and applying to graduate school. Here, Roberts exposes the secrets of the ivory tower to reveal what motivates professors, where to find loopholes in university bureaucracy, and most importantly, how to get a personalized education. Based on interviews with faculty and cutting-edge educational research, The Thinking Student’s Guide to College is a necessary handbook for students striving to excel academically, creatively, and personally during their undergraduate years.
This book examines the learning and development process of students’ scientific thinking skills. Universities should prepare students to be able to make judgements in their working lives based on scientific evidence. However, an understanding of how these thinking skills can be developed is limited. This book introduces a new broad theory of scientific thinking for higher education; in doing so, redefining higher-order thinking abilities as scientific thinking skills. This includes critical thinking and understanding the basics of science, epistemic maturity, research and evidence-based reasoning skills and contextual understanding. The editors and contributors discuss how this concept can be redefined, as well as the challenges educators and students may face when attempting to teach and learn these skills. This edited collection will be of interest to students and scholars of student scientific skills and higher-order thinking abilities.
Meditating on how and why we teach the humanities, Generous Thinking is an audacious book that privileges the ability to empathize and build rather than simply tear apart.
In the World Library of Educationalists series, international scholars compile career-long selections of what they judge to be among their finest pieces so the world has access to them in a single manageable volume. Readers are able to follow the themes and strands and see how their work contributes to the development of the field. Over more than three decades, Professor Ronald Barnett has acquired a distinctive position as a leading philosopher of the university and higher education, and this volume brings together 15 of his key writings, particularly papers from leading journals. This volume also includes, as his introductory chapter, an intellectual autobiography, in which Professor Barnett recounts the history of his scholarship and writing, traces its development across five stages, and identifies the themes and sources of inspiration that lie within his corpus of work. Ronald Barnett has described his corpus of work as a social philosophy of the university that is at once conceptual, critical, practical and imaginative. His concepts of criticality, critical interdisciplinarity, supercomplexity and the ecological university have been taken up in the literature across the world. Through telling examples, and with an incisive clarity of writing, Ronald Barnett’s scholarship has helped to illuminate in fresh ways and reorient practices in the university and in higher education. The chapters in this volume reveal all of these qualities so making this volume a compelling overview of a passionate and yet constructive critic of the university.
Liberal education has been under siege in recent years. Far-right ideologues in journalism and government have pressed for a uniform curriculum that focuses on the achievements of Western culture. Partisans of the academic left, who hold our culture responsible for the evils of society, have attempted to redress imbalances by fostering multiculturalism in education. In this eloquent and passionate book a distinguished scholar criticizes these positions and calls for a return to the tradition of independent thinking that he contends has been betrayed by both right and left. Under the guise of educational reform, says David Bromwich, these groups are in fact engaging in politics by other means. Bromwich argues that rivals in the debate over education have one thing in common: they believe in the all-importance of culture. Each assumes that culture confers identity, decides the terms of every moral choice, and gives a meaning to life. Both sides therefore see education as a means to indoctrinate students in specific cultural and political dogmas. By contrast, Bromwich contends that genuine education is concerned less with culture than with critical thinking and independence of mind. This view of education is not a middle way among the political demands of the moment, says Bromwich. Its earlier advocates include Mill and Wollstonecraft, and its roots can be traced to such secular moralists as Burke and Hume. Bromwich attacks the anti-democratic and intolerant premises of both right and left--premises that often appear in the conservative guise of "preserving the tradition" on the one hand, or the radical guise of "opening up the tradition" on the other. He discusses the new academic "fundamentalists" and the politically correct speech codes they have devised to enforce a doctrine of intellectual conformity; educational policy as articulated by conservative apologists George Will and William Bennett; the narrow logic of institutional radicalism; the association between personal reflection and social morality; and the discipline of literary study, where the symptoms of cultural conflict have appeared most visibly. Written with the wisdom and conviction of a dedicated teacher, this book is a persuasive plea to recover a true liberal tradition in academia and government--through independent thinking, self-knowledge, and tolerance of other points of view.
Bringing insights from research in developmental psychology to pedagogy, Kuhn argues that inquiry and argument should be at the center of a "thinking curriculum"--a curriculum that makes sense to students as well as to teachers and develops the skills and values needed for lifelong learning.
This volume addresses the important problem of understanding good university teaching, and focuses on the thinking, beliefs, and knowledge, which accompany teachers' actions. It is the first book to address this area and it promises to become a landmark volume in the field - helping us to understand a complex area of human activity and improve both teaching and learning. It is for education researchers, staff/faculty developers and educational developers.
The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Thinking in Higher Education provides a single compendium on the nature, function, and applications of critical thinking. This book brings together the work of top researchers on critical thinking worldwide, covering questions of definition, pedagogy, curriculum, assessment, research, policy, and application.
How traditional learning institutions can become as innovative, flexible, robust, and collaborative as the best social networking sites. Over the past two decades, the way we learn has changed dramatically. We have new sources of information and new ways to exchange and to interact with information. But our schools and the way we teach have remained largely the same for years, even centuries. What happens to traditional educational institutions when learning also takes place on a vast range of Internet sites, from Pokemon Web pages to Wikipedia? This report investigates how traditional learning institutions can become as innovative, flexible, robust, and collaborative as the best social networking sites. The authors propose an alternative definition of “institution” as a “mobilizing network”—emphasizing its flexibility, the permeability of its boundaries, its interactive productivity, and its potential as a catalyst for change—and explore the implications for higher education. The Future of Thinking reports on innovative, virtual institutions. It also uses the idea of a virtual institution both as part of its subject matter and as part of its process: the first draft of the book was hosted on a Web site for collaborative feedback and writing. The authors use this experiment in participatory writing as a test case for virtual institutions, learning institutions, and a new form of collaborative authorship. The finished version is still posted and open for comment. This book is the full-length report of the project, which was summarized in an earlier MacArthur volume, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age.