Chapter 4
Principles of Good Practice in the New Academy

We can reach the goals by...

modeling self-awareness and a clear sense of educational purpose. The goals are now clear: universal student access to and readiness for an empowering liberal education that prepares for life, work, and citizenship in the twenty-first century. How can these goals be reached? Pieces of the answer are in place on many college and university campuses and they point the way forward toward the New Academy, centered on learning. The next step in assembling these pieces into a systematic and systemic movement for change depends on many campuses examining how well their practices help students learn. Are they role models for the self-reflection and purposeful action—the intentionality—expected of students? Do their curricula, teaching, advising, and operations coordinate to encourage achievement of important learning goals? How seriously do they take their responsibility for educating all students well for an uncertain future?

Learning as the center

Teaching and learning may be intimately connected, but, as any student knows, they are not the same. Faculty members at all levels methodically identify what should be taught, but spend less time finding out what students have actually learned. With learning as the center, what students learn is of primary importance. Knowledge of how learning occurs is a resource to make it happen better. Since a diverse student body learns in equally varied ways, students learn from one another, as well as from their teachers, and, indeed, teachers also learn from their students: this mutuality characterizes a learning-centered education. Students are treated as individuals, but also as members of groups—multiple and often overlapping groups. Powerful learning is intentionally nurtured over time.

Focusing education on learning should not be a radical concept for schools and colleges. But, in fact, when taken seriously, it implies far-reaching changes. For example, college becomes most importantly a place where people learn, rather than where they teach. The value of the credit unit also comes into question. Do credits earned, which equate to time spent in class, really certify learning? Does sitting through and passing two three-credit courses mean a student can communicate well enough in a second language? If the triple goals of intellectual and practical skill mastery, knowledge gain, and personal responsibility growth are what count, shouldn't how long it takes to acquire them become secondary? With learning truly as the center of education, the current practice of fixing a constant time for learning could logically give way to a more flexible model in which students are allowed variable time to achieve the outcomes desired.

Just as time is seen differently in an education focused on learning, so, too, is place. Learning happens during formal classroom study, but also in other ways. So while two semesters may not produce competence in a second language, many other pathways might do so: a longer series of courses, living abroad, growing up in a bilingual family, or studying in an immersion environment. Likewise, leadership skills can grow by theoretical study, leading a group in class, holding office in the student government, or being captain of a sports team. With a stress on learning, a student's capacity or proficiency matters more than the subject matter taught, courses completed, or credits earned.

Coherent pathways for learning. Well-designed curricula are more than collections of independent courses; they are pathways for learning. Graduating intentional learners—empowered, informed, and responsible—calls for curricula designed to further learning goals in a sequential manner across all the college years. Goals for learning, transparent to students and professors, justify the curriculum"s design. For instance, a course or module is required at a certain point because it introduces students to the essentials of information retrieval and evaluation, in preparation for subsequent courses that assign research papers.

Traditionally, collegiate practice has separated general education, study in the major, and electives from one another. Preprofessional education has stood off by itself, only tangentially linked to other college programs. Yet the complex capacities and knowledge desired in college graduates can develop through all the courses and non-course experiences of a student's college years. Some lay the groundwork for learning, others advance it to a higher level. Since students' advanced work occurs in the major area of concentration, that seems the logical site for the most demanding assignments: demanding in content knowledge of the field, but also in the broad intellectual capacities of an intentional learner. While economics majors may learn the basics of college-level writing in a freshman composition course, for example, they will also need to write well about economics; the same holds true for business students or physicists.

In the New Academy, curricula will integrate general education and study in the major, including preprofessional programs, so that they form a consistent whole. But this does not mean that all students will take a common set of courses or that such a common core would provide all the necessary integration. The goals of liberal education are so challenging that all the years of college and the entire curriculum are needed to accomplish them.⁵² Responsibility for a coherent curriculum rests on the shoulders of all faculty members working cooperatively.

Student mobility makes the job of assuring coherence more difficult. However, most baccalaureate institutions require students to complete a certain number of credits at the home campus as part of the degree. This "curricular residency requirement," usually equal to the senior year, provides an opportunity for students themselves to find coherence in their learning. Just as high school seniors might be asked to complete a piece of independent work to demonstrate their abilities to colleges (and to external audiences), so, too, could college seniors during this residency period undertake a project or major piece of research. In such a capstone experience, that would vary in design from one field to another, students could draw on and provide evidence of their learning no matter where or how it had occurred.⁵³ Oversight of this final and summative work could then allow the degree-granting institution to assess and certify a student's achievement to employers and society. A similar type of assignment might be used to document student learning for transfer from community colleges to universities.

Teaching for powerful learning. Methods of teaching largely determine what learning occurs. Individuals who are empowered and informed are likely to arise from teaching that uses intellectual skills within rich disciplinary and multidisciplinary contexts. Complex capacities like creativity and reflection are honed as students encounter knowledge in new contexts and open-ended or unscripted problems. A student's sense of how knowledge relates to life grows by grappling with untidy social questions.

Teaching for powerful learning uses a range of methods, so each student can work up to his or her potential. Individuals turn information into knowledge through a process of translation, but their styles of doing so can differ widely. For some people, it works better visually, for others aurally or conceptually, and for still others through first-hand experience. Both reading and hands-on work—doing research or art, performing music or drama, serving local community groups—can deepen knowledge. A mix of individual and collective classroom activities teaches about independence and about interdependence. Group projects nurture negotiation skills, conflict resolution, teamwork, collaboration, and a practical understanding of people from diverse backgrounds. Since no one discipline monopolizes particular learning outcomes, a powerful education repeatedly exposes students to multiple teaching methods across the curriculum. Technology-based instruction can supplement and complement more traditional methods, just as learning by doing can enrich learning from lectures. Effective teachers use scholarly work on motivating a class as a resource to improve performance.