Download Free Reform And Renewal In Higher Education Book in PDF and EPUB Free Download. You can read online Reform And Renewal In Higher Education and write the review.

Why efforts to improve American higher educational attainment haven't worked, and where to go from here During the first decade of this century, many commentators predicted that American higher education was about to undergo major changes that would be brought about under the stimulus of online learning and other technological advances. Toward the end of the decade, the president of the United States declared that America would regain its historic lead in the education of its workforce within the next ten years through a huge increase in the number of students earning “quality” college degrees. Several years have elapsed since these pronouncements were made, yet the rate of progress has increased very little, if at all, in the number of college graduates or the nature and quality of the education they receive. In The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges, Derek Bok seeks to explain why so little change has occurred by analyzing the response of America’s colleges; the influence of students, employers, foundations, accrediting organizations, and government officials; and the impact of market forces and technological innovation. In the last part of the book, Bok identifies a number of initiatives that could improve the performance of colleges and universities. The final chapter examines the process of change itself and describes the strategy best calculated to quicken the pace of reform and enable colleges to meet the challenges that confront them.
This collection, now in paperback, explores how universities are coping with the range of reforms and changes taking place across higher education today. Analyzing areas such as leadership, quality management, strategic thinking, collegiality and academic work, and from the perspective of different agents within higher education including students, academics and management, this book examines the various differences between reform attempts and the actual changes happening in universities.
Harold Kwalwasser has put together a call to action for education reform that makes a clear case for what has to be done in order to educate all children to their full potential. He visited forty high-performing and transforming school districts, charters, parochial, and private schools to understand why they have succeeded where others have failed. The analysis in Renewal: Remaking America's Schools for the Twenty-First Century brings together all of the necessary changes in one dynamic strategy. Many schools, even though facing seemingly impossible odds, have succeeded brilliantly. But their histories also reflect that there are neither silver bullets or demons. The heart of successful reform is systemic change, which requires the patience, understanding, and commitment of every adult who has a role in the process, from parents and taxpayers, to the school board members, superintendents, and teachers, and on to state legislators and members of Congress. Renewal offers a clear picture of how to move away from the mass-production style of education that most schools offered throughout the twentieth century to a new, more innovative, and flexible model that can meet this country's promise of truly educating every child and preparing each of them for the challenges ahead.
University administrators, faculty, and students of higher education will find this volume an exceptional resource for understanding the history and politics behind U.S. higher education. Unique in their presentation, the authors address the policies, debates, and criticism that have shaped higher education.
Why a dumbed-down curriculum is bad for our democracy: “A persuasive, scientifically sound case for an education revolution.” — Shelf Awareness In How to Educate a Citizen, E.D. Hirsch continues the conversation he began thirty years ago with his classic bestseller Cultural Literacy, urging America’s public schools, particularly at the elementary level, to educate our children more effectively to help heal and preserve the nation. Since the 1960s, our schools have been relying on “child-centered learning.” History, geography, science, civics, and other essential knowledge have been dumbed down by vacuous learning “techniques” and “values-based” curricula; indoctrinated by graduate schools of education, administrators and educators have believed they are teaching reading and critical thinking skills. Yet these cannot be taught in the absence of strong content, Hirsch argues. The consequence is a loss of shared knowledge that would enable us to work together, understand one another, and make coherent, informed decisions. A broken approach to school not only leaves our children underprepared and erodes the American dream but also loosens the bonds that hold the nation together. Drawing on early schoolmasters and educational reformers such as Noah Webster and Horace Mann, Hirsch charts the rise and fall of the American early education system and provides a blueprint for closing the national gap in knowledge, communications, and allegiance. Critical and compelling, How to Educate a Citizen galvanizes our schools to equip children with the power of shared knowledge. “Concerned citizens , teachers, and parents take note! We ignore this book at our peril.” —Joel Klein, former Chancellor of New York City Public Schools
"Myth, Reality, and Reform bridges these critiques by balancing the importance of the four key functions of higher education: academic leadership, professional development, technological training and development, and general higher education. The book suggests how to consolidate the strengths of higher education systems while fundamentally reforming their weaker features.
Higher and tertiary education are crucial to modern nations. Vietnam has great potential, but its universities and colleges are poor-performing, under-funded and slow to change compared to those in neighbouring East Asian nations. This book analyses the problem and provides constructive solutions for the reform of higher education.
A conservative college professor's compelling defense of liberal education Not so long ago, conservative intellectuals such as William F. Buckley Jr. believed universities were worth fighting for. Today, conservatives seem more inclined to burn them down. In Let's Be Reasonable, conservative political theorist and professor Jonathan Marks finds in liberal education an antidote to this despair, arguing that the true purpose of college is to encourage people to be reasonable—and revealing why the health of our democracy is at stake. Drawing on the ideas of John Locke and other thinkers, Marks presents the case for why, now more than ever, conservatives must not give up on higher education. He recognizes that professors and administrators frequently adopt the language and priorities of the left, but he explains why conservative nightmare visions of liberal persecution and indoctrination bear little resemblance to what actually goes on in college classrooms. Marks examines why advocates for liberal education struggle to offer a coherent defense of themselves against their conservative critics, and demonstrates why such a defense must rest on the cultivation of reason and of pride in being reasonable. More than just a campus battlefield guide, Let's Be Reasonable recovers what is truly liberal about liberal education—the ability to reason for oneself and with others—and shows why the liberally educated person considers reason to be more than just a tool for scoring political points.
Leading School Renewal explores how school principal leadership behaviour impacts on school change endeavours, and in particular pedagogic renewal, which is a form of educational improvement that is primarily concerned with the growing of the knowledge, skills and beliefs of education in a manner that optimises students’ life options. The authors identify attributes of principals who have engaged in school renewal and examine the influences on their leadership behaviours and disposition towards renewing their schools while also acknowledging the influence of site-specific contextual variables. The authors propose that certain leadership behaviours exhibited by school principals are integral with renewing a school’s pedagogic focus. They argue renewal is a preferred form of sustainable educational change because it relates to deep-seated cultural changes in approaches to pedagogy, curriculum and school structures. Whilst also maintaining that leadership is at the heart of school improvement and principal leadership practices which are based on a clear sense of purpose, values and beliefs about learning and teaching can transform a school into a learning organisation. Including a foreword by Professor John Hattie, this book is appropriate for all school leaders and educators who want to learn more about school leadership behaviours and highly effective school change.
Where not so long ago professors "owned" the tools of scholarship, controlled the labor process, and certified the quality of our product, the process of McDonaldization has torn this relation asunder. Rapidly increasing student faculty ratios, mass classes, and the use of low-wage teaching assistants and adjunct faculty have changed the job of professor (p. 64 ff.). Faculty are pressured to recruit and retain students seen as "customers" (p. 67) and to compete with private for-profit [End Page 368] universities (p. 71-72). With declining government aid for higher education, students increasingly see education as a form of consumption and demand control, choice, and "edutainment" (p. 64 and elsewhere). This is seen most obviously in "course evaluations" which some of the authors refer to as "customer satisfaction surveys" (p. 36, 132, 147). At the same time, faculty are relentlessly pushed to publish, engage in funded research, and develop new technological competencies. Control over product is threatened as universities make demands on ownership of intellectual property including patents and licenses, publications and courseware (p. 79-81). From the perspective of faculty, McDonaldization represents a dramatic loss of pedagogical authority. Simultaneously, the state, which still pays for much of the cost of education as a "public good," is increasing demands for accountability and standards. This takes the form of schemes for standardizing promotion and tenure, quantifying and measuring the product being delivered, and attempting to assure quality.