A New Agenda for Higher Education: Shaping the Life of the Mind for Practice (review)

When I first looked at A New Agenda for Higher Education, I was disappointed. I thought the book was only a report on some seminar the authors had held. Once I began to read, however, I became more and more excited about the book's central tenet: that we need to equip our students to enter the world after college armed with the skill of practical reasoning.

My 32 years of experience in college classrooms has taught me that teaching theory without tying it to experience is a useless endeavor and that the ideas I teach ought to be tied to the students' experiences for them to achieve lasting understanding and meaningful learning. My lifelong belief in the power of reflection and my use of reflective writing in my teaching underscores this deep conviction (Stevens & Cooper, 2009). Sullivan and Rosin believe that equipping students to combine the academic with the professionally practical constitutes an agenda that will reenergize the mission of higher education "in new and much needed ways" (p. 23).

In very general terms, Sullivan and Rosin propose a model of teaching for higher education today that focuses on the interdependence of liberal education and professional training. Their text lays out an ambitious agenda for institutions of higher education across the country to prepare today's college students for practical reasoning, thereby replacing the current goal of critical thinking.

The book begins with two chapters that describe the results of the Carnegie Foundation's seminar in the form of specific cases that include sample syllabi. The authors then describe the seminar process that brought together educators from six professional fields with faculty from the liberal arts and sciences. In the final chapter, they call for a new agenda for higher education.

The first two chapters describe the cases of six seminar participants, all from different fields, whose common purpose is to teach practical reasoning, defined as "the art of placing analytical concepts into a mutually illuminating relation with sources of meaning and responsibility in the world of practice" (p. 23). The courses that participants describe include "Issues in Jewish Ethics," "Ethics and Law" in medicine, "Foundations of Modern Education," "Engineering Cultures," "Advanced Legal Ethics: Finding Joy and Satisfaction in Legal Life," and "Scripture and the Moral Life" in religious studies.

Chapter 3 provides a narrative of the seminar that details both the failures and successes encountered along the way, as well as the reasons behind the pedagogical decisions that the seminar organizers made. Carnegie Foundation President Lee Shulman, senior scholar William Sullivan, and research scholar Matthew Rosin candidly describe their missteps, as well as their attempts to correct those steps, in refreshing and useful ways for others attempting to work with faculty on their own campuses.

Chapter 4 describes the agenda that dominates higher education today, the delivery of critical thinking skills, and the authors' alternative agenda: practical reasoning. While critical thinking teaches students to "pull the world apart analytically," practical reasoning teaches them "how to resolve provisionally, through dialogue and action, that which we pull asunder" (p. 92).

The discussion centered on four key issues: identity, community, responsibility, and bodies of knowledge. Sullivan and Rosin believe that education for practical reasoning teaches students how to navigate the world in the light of these four concerns. The goal here is to use practical reasoning as a foundation for participation or engagement with the world, a goal that marries the liberal arts and sciences with professional education in new ways to develop students to become "engaged selves"— those who embrace responsiveness and responsibility rather than remaining detached experts.

This chapter then provides an example from clinical medicine, one founded on a narrative mode of reasoning. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the purposes of higher education, including the failure of critical thinking to equip students to reenter the realm of concrete...