Higher Education Reconceived: A Geography of Change - Softcover

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