Changing the Conversation about Higher Education ed. by J. Robert Thompson Jr. (review)

In Changing the Conversation about Higher Education, Robert Thompson’s (Duke University) goal was to open up a larger discussion in higher education from the “critique,” to directly focus on “systematic improvement” within undergraduate education programs—specifically, “teaching” and “learning.” The initial impetus for discussion was the results of a research project funded by the Teagle and Spencer Foundations, in which 13 institutions participated. The original underpinning for the study was derived from the work described in Derek Bok’s Our Underachieving Colleges (2006) and Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa’s Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (2011) (p. xi).

Bok’s assertions in Our Underachieving Colleges about “improvements in student learning,” “faculty” and “institutional culture” were central to the work that the Teagle and Spencer Foundations set out to accomplish. In response, both foundations came together to “co-sponsor a $1.4 million multi-university collaborative research project,” with the goal of “establish[ing] a culture of experimentation and evidence” specific to undergraduate liberal education programs in research institutions (p. ix). They selected 13 research-based universities to participate in the study and established two areas as investigation targets: “writing” and “critical thinking” (p. ix).

The initial goal of the Teagle and Spencer Foundations was to investigate if there were changes on the selected campuses in the areas of “faculty” and “culture,” due primarily to the investigators’ understanding that no pedagogy changes were possible without changes in faculty and institutional culture. The research project focused on achieving two overarching goals for undergraduate liberal arts education programs: (a) “Establish a continuous cycle of experimentation and evaluation” and (b) “Improve the education practices by incorporating advances in our understanding about cognitive developing and processes.”

The foundations sent invitations to administrators in research institutions who were members of the Association of American Universities. Twenty-eight submitted proposals, from which the foundations selected 13 participants. The major purpose was to “improve educational practices” by increasing the understanding of “cognitive development,” “the processes of learning,“ and effective models of pedagogical and “assessment practices” (pp. x, 4–7).

The four major findings that emerged from the 13 institutional projects established the framework for analysis of the study. These themes were also used to develop the four sections of the text: ”Effective Teaching and Learning Practices,” “Approaches to Assessment,” “The Role of University Centers in Fostering Professional Learning Communities”, and ”Next Steps in the Continuing Efforts to Transform the Culture of Undergraduate Education” (p. xi). Each section provided an introduction to the work represented in the following chapters.

In Part 1, “Effective Teaching and Learning Practices,” Robert Thompson identifies an underlying theme consistently woven throughout the book, which is “learning as transformation” (p. xi). He extrapolates from the research: “Learning is no longer understood as simply ‘acquisition of knowledge,’ but as ‘construction of understanding and meaning’” (p. xi). He concludes by discussing the current movement in undergraduate education, beginning with the traditional model (“acquisition of content knowledge”) and continuing with the more up-to-date model, which engages learners in specific subject areas by using alternative learning strategies. The ultimate goal of this current shift is to increase metacognition for all learners (p. xi).

In Chapter 1, “From Bottlenecks to Epistemology in History: Changing the Conversation about the Teaching of History in Colleges and Universities,” Leah Shopkow, David Pace, Joan Middendorf, and Arlene Diaz (Indiana University) conducted interviews with faculty members at their institution, thus identifying several “bottlenecks” that delayed teaching and learning in history courses. They presented alternative assessment strategies, with the ultimate goal of breaking through the bottlenecks that history students may experience. The authors contend that the goal for faculty teaching in history programs should be about mentoring and teaching students toward critically analyzing and formulating ideas from a historian’s perspective.

Their data study reports on two critical areas. First, the bottlenecks’ interconnecting points revealed the locations where faculty were not teaching “the knowledge base” of historical...