student learning

In 1997, the International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA) crafted the visionary Hamburg Declaration on Adult Learning and Agenda for the Future (UNESCO, 1997) claiming that adult education could contribute to “a world in which violent conflict is replaced by dialogue, a culture of peace based on justice . . . and the creation of a learning society committed to social justice and general well-being” (2-3). What is the value of an idealistic treatise like the Hamburg Declaration? And what does it matter to theological education?

Religious education faculty want their teaching to impact student learners and to make a positive difference in their global communities. In an ever-changing world, it is essential that theological educators situate their teaching within the larger sociocultural milieu, recognizing how contextual realities inform and shape both the process and content of adult learning. The Hamburg Declaration demands that educators heed its call and answer its pedagogical implications.

Contributors to this current volume were invited to provide a critical analysis of the Declaration’s core themes, particularly in light of political, social, economic, and cultural transformations occurring throughout the world today (4). They chronicle the challenges and opportunities that adult education has had in issues surrounding democracy, women, literacy, work, environment, technology, international policy, and economics – particularly in the years since the declaration was published. While today’s pressing concerns may differ from those in 1997 – for example, the changing nature of work and unprecedented advances in technology – nevertheless, a review of these themes may be instructive for how educators might examine related issues within the context of religious and theological education.

The Hamburg Declaration follows from the emphases of adult educators such as Brookfield, Freire, Hooks, and Illich, who affirm the political nature of education. Political and social realities do indeed shape the context of student learning. In cultivating appropriate pedagogical strategies to address the most urgent global issues, Adult Education and Learning in a Precarious Age suggests that we pay heed to the process of framing problems and how these inform solutions. Reiterating the emphasis in Hamburg, co-editor Welton affirms an “ethic of dialogue respectful of the different moral and spiritual options” that is “best able to promote the learning process” (17). Such dialogue is essential as teachers engage students in critical reflection of relevant global issues. Yet, the preliminary analysis by the authors of this volume invites further interaction from an explicitly theological perspective.

Although one may question the actual progress made on the concerns identified in the Hamburg Declaration and the role of adult education, this work still serves as timely inspiration for values-driven religious educators who are motivated by the pursuit of truth, justice, and ethics; who long to foster transformative education with impact beyond the classroom. As Nesbit, this volume’s co-editor, asserts, “What is possible is shaped, in part, by our visions” (98).

Through a framework of three segments that set educational context, demonstrate integration, and provide planning models, Pamela L. Eddy’s edited volume of essays explores the question of learning across the institution by framing research around questions that consider stakeholders, institutional populations, and applicability of theoretical approaches to learning. Offering both a scholarly focus and practical applicability, this volume brings together and advances the way faculty think about learning, it highlights the common features that stakeholders share, and presents insight about how to support faculty learning and development.

In the initial section, “Setting the Context,” Barber’s essay “Integration of Learning Model: How College Students Integrate Learning” provides a helpful introduction to the study of integrated learning for undergraduate student populations. He identifies the issues contemporary students face – compartmentalization, expanding digital tools, lack of reflection – and urges faculty to develop a theory of learning that is both intentional and explicit in its awareness of these issues and mindful of the shifting demographics of the undergraduate. Further challenges to faculty vision are suggested by Eddy’s “Faculty as Border Crossers,” whose analysis of Fulbright faculty reveals that faculty are forced to confront their assumptions about teaching and learning in light of direct exposure to new environments, which can include language, systems, space, or values. Closer to home, Moor and Mendez’s “Civic Engagement and Organizational Learning Strategies for Student Success” proposes that a deliberate approach to cultivation of civic values both inside and outside the classroom holds great potential for integrated learning and student success.

After Leslie’s chapter on stakeholder impressions and demands regarding learning and assessment, Wawryznski and Baldwin’s essay encourages academic leaders (beginning with chief academic officers) to model and promote (both in and outside of the classroom) the types of “high-impact practices” that make for a holistic approach to higher education. Zakrajsek’s “Developing Learning in Faculty: Seeking Expert Assistance from Colleagues,” encourages a return among faculty to the types of learning cultures that are formulated within a graduate experience. In addition to seeking feedback regarding classroom teaching, Zakrajsek reminds the reader that disciplinary expertise aside, an interprofessional approach to the academic culture is recommended for both student and professorial success. The concluding essay in the second section, VanDerLinden’s “Blended Learning as Transformational Institutional Learning,” encourages thoughtful consideration of hybrid course models that include critical reflection at multiple levels in order to achieve the greatest level of success: student, professorial, and institutional.

The final portion of this collection addresses consequences of the theories and practices outlined thus far. While authors Amey, Neumann, and Bolitzer propose organizational frameworks and strategies, Chance identifies connections and key issues that bring all of the groups identified in this volume into conversation with one another.

The notion that faculty must scaffold disciplinary content with institutional and civic values is growing increasingly common. Irrespective of Fulbright activity, more and more faculty are being challenged to be “border crossers” within their field and across the campus. This volume of essays provides an excellent start to considering both the theoretical and the practical elements and implications of these shifts in higher education in North America.

The purpose of higher education is widely debated, both inside and outside of the academy. The major contribution offered to these discussions by Robert Thompson, a professor of psychology with much experience in administration, lies in his summary and synthesis of findings from the fields of psychology and neuroscience as they relate to the cognitive development of students.

In Beyond Reason and Tolerance, Thompson focuses on students within the age range of “emerging adulthood” (late teens to mid-twenties), and he summarizes recent scholarship on this group in Chapter 2. He argues that colleges and universities have a civic responsibility to emphasize education that assists student development in three areas: personal epistemology, empathy, and self-authorship. Separate chapters are dedicated to discussing current research in each of these areas, and they form the core of the book. For example, in Chapter 3 Thompson argues that humans’ attitudes toward knowledge change as they age. First, they see knowledge in absolute, black and white terms. Around the time of emerging adulthood, most move to the opposite extreme, and see knowledge as mostly contingent, and based upon one’s perspective. Thompson says that higher education should work to help students reach the third stage, in which they recognize the contingency of knowledge but still understand that there are better and worse arguments, and better and worse forms of evidence one can use to validate one’s ideas.

The need to help students develop metacognitive skills about their own knowledge-making is related to one of the main themes of the book, which gives it its title. This is the notion that colleges and universities should be working to help students develop the skills needed to approach difference – ethnic, racial, cultural, and religious – in a more nuanced way than the uncritical position best exemplified by the now-common expression “It’s all good.” Giving students the opportunity to take positions and defend them with sound, rational arguments is essential for them as they develop their epistemology, empathy, and self-identity, all of which correlate strongly to increased levels of post-college success.

This book does an excellent job arguing for the continued relevance of higher education in society, and its summary of current work on cognitive development is stimulating. That said, the recommendations it gives on how to help students in their cognitive development are generally aimed at larger questions of university structure. Chapter 6 focuses on campus culture, especially in terms of diversity and the modes of diverse connections that most positively impact students’ development. Chapter 7 focuses on developing new curricula and the new degrees they may support. This chapter also emphasizes the positive benefits of undergraduate research, study abroad, and service learning. Beyond pointing to studies showing the benefits of these kinds of programs, little is said that is applicable at the level of the classroom. This was the greatest missed opportunity in the book. I would have liked to see more concrete suggestions about activities and strategies that could be incorporated into existing courses to encourage cognitive development. Classroom instruction does not appear to have been his primary target, however, and he should be praised for what he does do: give faculty and administrators useful ways to speak about the importance of education in terms of current cognitive science.

“How bad has it gotten in your class?” the first article’s author asks. “Students eating steaming plate lunches, kissing passionately, conducting loud phone conversations, playing video poker?. . . Asking to be excused from class to barbecue chicken at the go-kart track for a radio station where the student interned last summer?” (7). If these examples sound even remotely familiar, you may find this issue of New Directions for Teaching and Learning helpful. This volume addresses the challenge of teaching millennial students, born between 1982 and 2001, who are often labeled as coming to higher education with an attitude of entitlement that can frustrate professors.

The first three chapters explore the theory behind this volume. The first two chapters reframe the concept of entitlement by reflecting on the structure of higher education classrooms (chapter 1) and seeing the psychological vulnerability of students (chapter 2) as an opportunity for ego engagement – a process that the editors describe as “productively affirming student’s egos” to offer “new opportunities for deep learning and ever-strengthening intellectual rigor” (2). The third chapter is an empirical study that explores how students feel they deserve entitled treatment in higher education.

The second cluster of articles explore practice and application of reframing entitlement into ego engagement in specific areas. Chapter 4 explores ways to construct a syllabus that invite student engagement proactively, and chapter 5 lays out several practical suggestions professors can utilize to conceptualize their pedagogies. Chapters 6 and 7 provide case studies of actual classroom assignments that engage millennial students’ egos successfully: chapter 6 describes an assignment that immersed millennial students in discipline-based political activities to foster positive ego engagement and chapter 7 describes an assignment that engaged students in narrative pedagogy through digital storytelling. Chapters 8 and 9 explore ways to engage students through already existing classroom practices. For example, chapter 8 provides specific insights about engaging students through technological gadgets and provides practical suggestions for teaching. Chapter 9 explores ways to engage students before and after class periods to affirm their egos. The rest of the three chapters explore ways to engage the moral sense of millennial students by involving them in social justice issues and student-directed goal setting. The author invites faculty to consider their own reactions to student incivility as possibly a response to a professor’s bruised ego  ?  an over-dependence on official authority based on position rather than on their ability to help students learn effectively.

While graduate level professors may experience students’ sense of entitlement less bluntly than is described in some of the articles, I have sensed in my own teaching that the vocation of religious leadership tends to attract people with a sense of self-importance that poses challenges similar to those described in this volume. What the authors conceptualize as ego engagement is a model for empowering students who appear to be aloof to the subject matter but who are seeking meaningful engagement that leads them to deeper growth. From Entitlement to Engagement offers practical advice for fostering creative teaching that meets students’ psychological needs and motivates them to find growth through their own learning tasks.