Higher Education

Posts Tagged ‘Higher Education’

Principles and Practices for Developmentally Aware Teaching and Mentoring in Higher Education

Abigail Lynam

Understanding one’s own development as an educator, as well as the developmental diversity of students can have a significant impact on how educators approach teaching, mentorship, and design learning experiences. Developmentally informed educators recognize the phases of development that students are likely to be in and adapt their teaching accordingly. Recognizing developmental diversity, they adjust the outcomes, processes, and mentoring to meet the students where they are developmentally. Without this awareness and knowledge, educational programs are more likely to teach for particular forms of development, which provide an appropriate stretch for some students but not for others. In addition, educators may be more likely to project their own developmental needs onto students, teaching who they are, rather than who is in front of them. This article offers a review of adult development theory, specifically O’Fallon’s STAGES model, and its application to teaching and learning. It includes the results of research on the impact of learning about adult development for faculty and students in a graduate program and the findings of additional research on the meaning-making and perspective-taking of educators through the stages of development. It concludes with practical insights and principles for teaching and mentoring developmentally.

Tags: Lynam, developmentally aware teaching, constructive development theory, Higher Education, adult development, transformative learning., stages, adult learning, ego development

Creating Responsive Learning Environments to Develop Students’ Reflective Capacity

Patric Wallin, Jonathan Reams, Sven Veine, and Martha Kalvig Anderson

Abstract: In today’s society, rapidly changing conditions and expectations mean that students need to learn how to make reflective judgments, and there is a clear need to better understand how to create learning environments that scaffold student learning to make these judgments. Here, we explore the design of a learning environment that integrates an computerized scoring system into a large scale course to provide students with formative assessment of their cognitive complexity level. We discuss important aspects to consider when framing and integrating this technology and how the deployment allows for formative assessment practices in large scale courses found in today’s education.

Tags: metacognition, Wallin, Veine, Andersen, Higher Education, scaffolding, Reams, Cognitive ability, learning environment

A Complete Integral Education: Five Principal Aspects

Jeremie Zulaski

This article reviews the five principal aspects of a “complete integral education” envisioned by Sri Aurobindo and Mother Mirra Alfassa and elucidated in their writings. This innovative, learner-centered pedagogy encourages holistic development through acknowledgment and cultivation of the five dimensions of a human being—the physical, the vital, the mental, the psychic, and the spiritual. The article suggests that a complete integral education contributes a potentially corrective alternative to outmoded orthodox methods that privilege intellectual proficiency over the holistic knowledge potentially present, given authentic engagement of learning communities.

Tags: integral education, Mother Mirra Alfassa, holistic education, Zulaski, Higher Education, Sri Aurobindo

CIIS and American Higher Education

Joseph L. Subbiondo

Abstract: In this article a brief history of the California Institute of Integral Studies and its predecessor institution, the American Academy of Asian Studies is discussed, and several key founding figures of both institutions are introduced. It is argued that the role these unique institutions of higher learning have played have been crucial, initially in the cultural life of San Francisco Bay Area and the social and cultural movements it inspired, and currently in the context of the role that an integral, whole-person oriented education plays in higher education.

Tags: integral education, American Academy of Asian Studies, Louis Gainsborough, Paul Herman, San Francisco Renaissance, Higher Education, California Institute of Integral Studies, Joseph L. Subbiondo, Alan Watts, Haridas Chaudhuri

Trans-Dance: Disciplinary Cross-Dressing and Integral Education in a Language and Sexuality Course

Matthew C. Bronson

Abstract: This article showcases an integral approach to education through the lens of a transdisciplinary graduate-level class on Sexuality and Language. The graduate-level class was co-taught by two CIIS faculty whose backgrounds span the fields of social and cultural anthropology, psychology, sociology, social policy, linguistics, education and drama-centered expressive arts therapy. The class brought together students from six separate academic programs and drew from a wide array of performative and arts-based modes of inquiry to create a deep context through which to unpack the complex relationship(s) between language and sexuality. These practices were interwoven with theoretical exposition and discussion in a hermeneutic spiral leading up to students’ planned research projects. This “disciplinary cross-dressing,” where diverse students and faculty engaged each others’ points of view rigorously in a common inquiry, created powerful teachable moments and served as the foundation for a transgressive mode of scholarship and advocacy.

Tags: transdisciplinarity, identity, Assessment, educational reform, experiential education, interdsiciplin(arity), language and sexuality, Higher Education, linguistics, Matthew C. Bronson, integral education, learning

Coaching Ethics and Immunity to Change: A Response to Kjellström

David Zeitler

Abstract: The Immunity to Change coaching process has risen in popularity since creators Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey published their second book using this method, Immunity to Change: How to Overcome it and Unlock the Potential for Yourself and Your Organization (2009). Sofia Kjellström (2009) recently published an article taking a critical perspective on the ethics of using ITC in educational and vocational contexts. I argue herein that when used properly, the ITC process avoids most of the criticisms that Kjellström brings to bear on this issue. Furthermore, it is argued that private life and public life (Freud’s “love and work”) are already inextricably intertwined, and methods like ITC give employers and employees the tools needed to navigate what are often highly charged issues, that we might increase our quality of life and increase our efficiency. Finally, the article summarizes the relationship between Subject/Object Theory and ITC, while also addressing the issue of developmental transformations in the coaching process.

Tags: coaching ethics, coaching methods, developmental level, executive coaching, Immunity to Change, David Zeitler, Higher Education, Business consulting

Toward Integral Higher Education Study Programs in the European Higher Education Area: A Programmatic and Strategic View

Markus Molz

Abstract: This essay somehow arbitrarily freezes my ongoing attempt to grasp the present situation and future possibilities of higher education courses, programs, institutions and initiatives that are inspired by integral and likeminded approaches. The focus in this essay is on the European Higher Education Area and its specifics, whereas some implicit or explicit comparisons with the USA are made. My reflections are triggered by the recurrent observation that in Europe there seems to be i) more demand than offer of integrally oriented higher education programs, ii) an imbalance between overused but little successful and underused but potentially more promising strategies to implement such programs, iii) little or no learning from past failures, and iv) little mutual awareness, communication and collaboration between different activists and initiatives in this field. The context for this essay is i) the current societal macroshift, ii) the unfolding of academic level integral and likeminded research worldwide, and iii) the large scale reform of the European Higher Education systems brought about by the Bologna process, its (false) promises and the potential it nevertheless has for realizing examples of a more integral higher education. On this basis the consequences for attempts to overcome a relatively stagnant state of affairs in Europe are discussed. Given that; most past attempts to implement programs inspired by an integral worldview have failed from the start, or disappeared after a relatively short period, or are marginalised or becoming remainstreamed, this essay aims to devise a potentially more promising strategic corridor and describes the contours of the results that could be brought about when following a developmental trajectory within this corridor. This futurising exercise is inspired by principles shared by many integral and likeminded approaches, especially the reconsideration, integration and transcendence of premodern, modern and postmodern structures and practices of higher education.
This essay is programmatic and thus deliberately combines facts and values, past and future, summaries of first person observations and third person factual information, without the burden of systematic referencing required by scholarly writing. It does not claim to replace empirical surveys which, however, are still lacking to date regarding the actual state of affairs of higher education inspired by integral and likeminded approaches in Europe. Accordingly, at this stage, the essay is an exercise of awareness-raising to stimulate more and better collaboration across streams, disciplines and countries between those scholars, students and activists who are already inspired by integral and likeminded approaches and interested or already engaged in developing and sustaining higher education programs according to a more integral spirit.

Tags: knotworking, learning communities, macroshift, Higher Education, project-based learning, transformation, service learning, strategy, Markus Molz, study programs, Andragogy, vocation, European Higher Education Area, implementation, integral and likeminded approaches

The Development of Dialectical Thinking As An Approach to Integration

Michael Basseches

Abstract: This article offers a description of dialectical thinking as a psychological phenomenon that reflects adult intellectual development. While relating this psychological phenomenon to the various dialectical philosophical perspectives from which the description is derived, the article conceptualizes dialectical thinking as a form of organization of thought, various aspects of which can be identified in individual adults’ approaches to conceptualizing a range of problems, rather than as one particular stream of intellectual history. The article provides a range of examples of dialectical analyses, contrasting them with more formalistic analyses, in order to convey the power, adequacy, and significance of dialectical thinking for the sorts of challenges that this journal embraces. It suggests that events in all areas of life demand recognition of the limitations of closed-system approaches to analysis. Approaches based instead on the organizing principle of dialectic integrate dimensions of contradiction, change and system-transformation over time in a way that supports people’s adaptation when structures under girding their sense of self/world coherence are challenged. Higher education and psychotherapy are considered as examples of potential contexts for adult intellectual development, and the conditions that foster such development in these contexts are discussed. The article as a whole makes the case for consciously attempting to foster such development in all our work as an approach to integration.

Tags: development, psychotherapy, dialectic, Michael Basseches, constitutive relationships, interaction, multiple systems, open systems, metasystematic, epistemic adequacy, Higher Education, dialectical thinking, dialectical philosophical perspective, transformation, dialectical analysis

Integral Review

A Transdisciplinary and Transcultural Journal For New Thought, Research, and Praxis