In Higher Education Reconceived: A Geography of Change, authors Sherrie Reynolds and Toni Craven examine the process of change in higher education as they engage the reader in conversation about how we relate to ourselves and to one another. They draw on modern and post-modern elements of higher education as well as personal narratives to address personal change, emergent change, and changing ideas about learning, curriculum, and communities of learning. The traditional view in higher education is that teaching causes learning. However, these authors assess how, as our ideas of student learning, research, and disciplines have developed, our understanding of teaching has evolved as well. Throughout, the authors intimate a sense of the spiritual in the processes of teaching and learning.
This holistic volume encourages meditation on the multi-dimensional journey of teaching and learning, sheds new light on current paradigms of education, and presents ways of living together in a pluralistic and globally connected world. Opening each chapter with a labyrinth illustration to depict the winding and porous nature of the topic, this book should find a place on every educator’s bookshelf. As teacher-scholars together discover a new understanding of higher education fit for our times, they should never forget that—as Reynolds put it—“Being a university professor is a sacred trust.”
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter One Personal Change
Sherrie Reynolds: Change
Toni Craven: A Story of Change
Chapter Two Emergent Change
First and Second Order Change
Change as Fractal
Seeing through Old Ideas
Chapter Three Changing Ideas about Consciousness
Bedrock Ideas
The Mechanical Universe
A Transition
How Does This Affect Teaching and Scholarship?
Chapter Four Changing Ideas about Learning
Modern Learning
Turning Points in Modern and Post-Modern Learning
Post-Modern Learning
Chapter Five Changing Ideas about Curriculum
Curriculum As Sequence
Post-Modern Curriculum
William Doll’s Curriculum As Matrix
Curriculum as Autobiography
Relationships in a Complex System
Who Are Our Students?
Chapter Six Changing Ideas about Communities of Learning
Caring Relationships
Preparing Myself for Class
Using Feedback
Faculty and Community
Searching for Excellence
A New Story
Metaphors for Teaching
Seeing and More
Caring about Students
Relationality in Process
