“The Road to Bailey"
A Vision for the Liberty Hyde Bailey Scholars Program
Frank A. Fear
Chairperson, The Liberty Hyde Bailey Scholars Program,
College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and
Professor of Resource Development,
Michigan State University
This paper was prepared in conjunction with the launch of the Bailey program, February 24, 1997
Prologue
Many of us who love teaching have learned our craft in the classroom. We experiment with new approaches and techniques, feeling our way around and through our subject-matter, our students, and perhaps most importantly, ourselves. So much of what we do in the classroom, we have learned not so much as a result of some grand plan, but by being resourceful, tenacious, and sometimes lucky. Many of us grow this way as teachers, supplementing what we learn through experience with attending workshops, adopting ideas recommended by colleagues, and taking seriously what students (current and past) tell us they like and do not like about our courses. We sift and sort through all of this and then decide what to teach and how to teach it. We do this time and time again over our careers…to the point that courses taught just a few years ago often bear little resemblance in substance and method to the same courses we teach today. And when we discuss our journey into teaching with colleagues, we are blessed; there may be nothing more fulfilling than sharing ideas with valued colleagues and learning from them. It is central to what the scholarly life is all about.
It is not my intention here to say much more about the way that many of us have learned how to teach. My intention is to shift the discussion entirely—from focusing on teaching to concentrating on student learning; and from discussing what and how we teach to asking what we hope to accomplish for students through our work as teachers. If we make this shift, perhaps we might conclude that what really matters does not fall within the confines of a teaching agenda, but speaks to a more compelling and exciting purpose.
The Context
The occasion of preparing this paper is the inauguration of a new undergraduate program in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at Michigan State University. The Liberty Hyde Bailey Scholars program will cross-cut the twelve departments in the College rather than function as a separate program or as an independent major. The program is named in honor of the legendary horticulturist and scholar of rural life of the late 19th through mid-20th centuries. Dr. Bailey was a person of many talents with wide ranging interests and avocations. Hailed as the "father of modern horticulture," he is also credited with stimulating the creation of the Cooperative Extension Service, as well as the field of rural sociology, by virtue of his work on President Theodore Roosevelt’s Country Life Commission. A Michigan native, Professor Bailey began his academic career as a Michigan Agricultural College faculty member before moving to Cornell University, where he served as dean of the agriculture college among other roles.
In the Summer of 1994, Vice Provost and Dean Fred L. Poston charged a group of College faculty members with the challenge of designing an active and connected learning program that would advance undergraduate education in agriculture and natural resources. The faculty group, which I chaired, produced its design report in early 1995. That report was distributed to faculty for their review and reaction. Based on their assessment of "let’s take the next step," an implementation committee was formed (four members of the first committee joined by a new member, a department chairperson) to recommend "what it would take" to put the program into operation. This report was produced in early 1996, and discussions about the plan were held throughout the College, department by department, during Spring Semester, 1996. Based on these discussions, the decision was made by the end of the semester to initiate the program.
About the Bailey Program
The program:
….is designed to be a dynamic, flexible program that involves faculty and students in an exciting, collaborative and growing experience that will continue the quest to transform society. The program embodies the values and spirit of one of MSU’s Guiding Principles, namely, to invest more significantly in the education of undergraduate students and to provide these students with active and meaningful learning experiences…. The program is grounded in a set of hallmarks. These hallmarks include core values (e.g., a systems approach to understanding problems and posing solutions) and skills (e.g., communicating clearly, expressively, and concisely using both written and oral forms of communication)…. The Bailey Scholars Program is an appropriate learning option for student who have the potential to engage in … active learning. It is not a separate major. As such, it is designed to complement existing College of Agriculture and Natural Resources undergraduate majors and to enhance students’ overall learning experiences The program will be offered as a 20-21 credit specialization to all students…. Traditional admission criteria (e.g., high grade point average) will not be the primary determinants for selection. The most important criterion will be degree of fit between a student’s needs…/and/…the ability of the program to assist a student in realizing his or her full potential (College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, MSU 1996: 2,3).
Purpose of this Paper
This paper will not cover topics treated in either the design or implementation reports (College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, MSU 1995, 1996). Topics addressed in those reports include the program’s philosophical underpinnings, structure, and implementation strategies (e.g., planning timelines and budget projections). The purpose of this paper is to address a topic that was unconsidered in either report: the scholarly underpinnings of the program. Professor Richard Bawden, who crafted and guided the renowned Hawkesbury program in agriculture in Australia, pointed out this deficiency soon after arriving at MSU in August 1996 as a visiting professor and consultant to the Bailey program. So, the purpose here is straightforward: to add a missing ingredient to the overall program architecture.
Audience for this Paper
The paper is written for faculty members and others who are interested in exploring teaching and learning as forms of scholarship. I remember all too vividly a letter that I received a few years ago from an administrative colleague who expressed in quite extensive terms why teaching was not—and could not possibly be—a scholarly activity. The writer was an associate dean for academic affairs. How sad, I thought! Here is the chief officer of college’s teaching program who feels that teaching is something other, and certainly something less, than scholarship.
But my colleague raises a provocative and practical question: What is scholarship? There has been a rush of activity recently regarding the answer to this question (e.g., Boyer, 1990). Because of this work, "research" is no longer viewed as the singular form of scholarship. Rather, scholarship is now generally thought to span a variety of functions, all of which possess similar characteristics. Those characteristics include a depth of understanding, the exploration of new questions and issues, the creation of new approaches and techniques, and an openness to new ideas and ways of thinking. Charles Glassick, interim president of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, summarizes another important feature of this broadened conception of scholarship, namely, how various forms of scholarship—knowledge generation, integration, application, and teaching—connect in a robust manner:
…without integration, knowledge becomes pedantry; without application, knowledge becomes irrelevant; and without sharing through teaching, the continuity of scholarship is lost (Glassick 1997: 1).
Organization of the Paper
This paper is organized in two major parts. In Part I, I describe the essence of the Bailey program. In doing this, I connect with—but seek to go far beyond—what has been written and discussed about "Bailey" thus far. The intention is not only to communicate clearly about what Bailey is and what it is not, but to lay a foundation for placing the "Bailey concept" in broader perspective. Then, in Part II of the manuscript, I discuss significant transitions, what I label as paradigmatic shifts, in teaching and learning. It is important to understand these transitions if we are to answer important questions: Why Bailey? Why Bailey now?
Part I:
THOUGHTS ABOUT "THE ESSENCE OF BAILEY"
What Bailey Is Not
How It Connects to What Exists Currently
What is Bailey not designed to do and be? First, the Bailey program will not replace, duplicate, or serve to correct deficiencies associated with the teaching programs (content and/or method) in the twelve departments. If Bailey is to be relevant, it must offer more than what is being offered currently in the departments. It must connect to what exists, for sure, but it must move well beyond what is being taught. Second, it would unfair to label this contribution as "value-added" to the existing majors, despite the fact that I used that label when writing the design report. Today, I think that referring to Bailey as a "value added" program trivializes its intent and scope: helping students attach meaning to what they are learning and to assist them in their maturation process—that is, to develop intellectually, to grow personally, to work effectively with others, and to make appropriate decisions as professionals. This approach to education seems to be the crux of Duke professor Jane Tompkins’ challenge in her recent book, A Life in School: What the Teacher Learned (1996):
The university has come to resemble an assembly line, a mode of production that it professes to disdain. Each professor gets to turn one little screw—his specialty—and the student comes to him to get that screw turned. Then on to the next. The integrating function is left entirely to the student.... It would be more helpful to students if, as a starting point, universities conceived education less as training for a career than as the introduction to a life (Tompkins 1996: 222-223).
How innovative is the concept that will evolve into the Bailey program? Although I believe there is no analogue for Bailey at Michigan State, much of what is happening currently with respect to undergraduate education at MSU and in my College is what I would call "stage setting" for the Bailey program. Many of the faculty I know take seriously their teaching responsibilities and are doing admirable jobs of helping students gain knowledge capacity. The picture of a 250-student class in a lecture hall exists, but is not the modal reality. Even when class sections are large, I know faculty who work hard to incorporate strategies for making these classes "smaller" by using group work and a variety of other teaching strategies. "Active teaching" is taken seriously by many faculty here, and new courses and co-curricular efforts are being undertaken, including innovative learning approaches in the residence halls, courses that include a significant field study component, entry and capstone courses, international study programs, service-learning courses and opportunities, and "co-op" experiences. This is important and vital work!
The Essence of Bailey: Whole-Student Development
Perhaps what is missing, especially in a single educational program, is a set of experiences that seeks to stimulate what I call whole-student development. Such a program would help students gain intellectually—building on what they are learning in other courses and other experiences—but also in other, critical domains: emotionally (intrapersonally), socially (interpersonally), professionally, and morally. This type of program would start where the student is, rather than have as its starting point knowledge that exists currently in a discipline, multidiscipline, or profession. The program would be developmental and learner-centered, one that asks students to exert a significant amount of direction to their own learning as they collaborate with faculty and other students in defining their learning needs and crafting their learning paths. This self-directed learning would include a challenge—for students to tackle increasing complex situations and problems. In this way, students would approach their field, the world, and themselves in increasingly sophisticated ways—analytically, creatively, and responsibly.
All of this, would facilitate students’ capacity in scholarly practice, that is, their ability to effectively and appropriately connect scholarship with practice. Students would develop into collaborative, reflective, and ethical scholar-practitioners: persons who enjoy connecting scholarship with practice; persons who appreciate the importance of involving, respecting, and learning from diverse audiences on problems; persons who are highly reflective—dedicated to learning from experience and acting constructively on what they have learned to improve the quality of their practice; and persons who strive in their work and in their lives to meet the highest standards of professional, civic, and personal responsibility.
What has stimulated my thinking in this direction? I recall vividly picking up and reading a book over a decade ago. That book was The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action (1983) written by MIT professor Donald Schon. Reading it changed the way that I think about and seek to educate students for professional practice. In his compelling follow-up book, Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions (1987), Schon tells us why Bailey-like efforts are needed:to address the limitations associated with educational programs. Most of these programs, according to Schon, are grounded in what he calls "technical rationality" as the primary means of solving problems. He begins the 1987 book with these words:
In the varied topology of professional practice, there is a high, hard ground overlooking a swamp. On the high ground…problems lend themselves to solution through the application of research-based theory and technique. In the swampy lowland, messy, confusing problems defy technical solution. The irony of this situation is that the problems of the high ground tend to be relatively unimportant to individuals or society at large, however great their technical interest might be, while in the swamp lie the problems of greatest human concern. The practitioner must choose. Shall s(he) remain on the high ground where s(he) can solve relatively unimportant problems according to prevailing standards of rigor, or shall s(he) descend to the swamp of important problems and nonrigorous inquiry? This dilemma has two sources: first, the prevailing idea of rigorous professional knowledge, based on technical rationality, and second, awareness of intermediate, swampy zones of practice that lie beyond its canons (Schon 1987:3).
Those of you with teaching experience might conclude that Schon offers us no option: we must descend into that "swampy lowland." If we respond to his challenge, we shall embrace a new way of thinking about education that is as frightening as it is exciting; that is as unknown as it is compelling; and that is as unconventional as it is necessary.
This is what Bailey might become. If successful, we would fulfill one of the responsibilities that we, in the university community, have to society: seeking better and better ways of educating the leaders of tomorrow’s professions, organizations, communities, and world. Of course, Bailey is only one of many ways to achieve this goal. But, through our existing undergraduate majors coupled with the Bailey program, we in our College might be able to do a better job of meeting the challenge framed by the words of the Michigan State University mission statement—to graduate students who "contribute to society intellectually … economically … socially …ethically … and productively… /who are/…active learners, ready to assume the responsibilities of leadership."
Explorations into the Meaning of Bailey: Refocusing Faculty Roles, Recasting Faculty-Student Relationships, and Better Connecting Campus and Field
If this is what we seek to accomplish, then our intentions will require a profoundly different type of faculty role. The traditional role—that of the faculty as substantive expert—will not predominate. Faculty will become facilitators by working with students to help them advance multidimensional capacities. This will occur not so much by what faculty teach or even how they teach it, but the extent to which they help students discover meaning—personal, social, as well as substantive meaning. To accomplish this, faculty will become co-learners as they search for new and renewed meaning in their scholarship, in their practice, and in themselves. Because of the compelling nature of this task, a faculty member will not be able to do it alone, as a single person working with a group of students. The challenge will require establishing a community of collaborative, reflective, and ethical scholar-practitioners, groups of learners dedicated to exploring knowledge, its appropriate application, and our role in the knowledge generation and application process.
In fact, I suspect that the label, "learners," will replace the traditional references to "faculty" and "students" because all in the community will become dedicated learners. "Faculty" will learn from students and their experiences, not only in terms of how their Bailey experiences might apply in other educational contexts (e.g., teaching in their home departments) but in terms of learning more about learning—the questions, the frustrations, the successes, and the pain. "Students" will learn from each other, not just about subject-matter, but about themselves as they observe their colleagues in action and learn from them about how to be more effective in dealing with the complexities associated with their learning experiences. No doubt this will include positive and negative role modeling as students observe and work with other students and faculty.
It is here that we need to begin to make explicit the often unspoken and unappreciated form of the "integrative function" referred to by Jane Tompkins. Integration must be conceived in a broader way. It will certainly include, but must go well beyond, disciplinary and even inter- and trans-disciplinary knowledge. If we seek whole-student development in Bailey, then integration must include, among other things, what Goleman (1995) describes as "emotional intelligence" and Kohlberg (1984) labels as "moral development." How does each of us respond emotionally when we find ourselves in challenging situations? That is a question Goleman might frame as important. What choices do we make, and what choices do we prefer, when faced with making a decision about what is "the appropriate thing to do"? That is a question Kohlberg might pose.
It is also possible to enhance whole-student development so that the benefits of learning extend to those who live and work outside the campus boundaries. In so doing, it is possible for a program like Bailey to contribute to our public university’s land-grant mission to serve society. To better understand how this might be done, let me to turn to some of the writings of the late Ernest Boyer, former president of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, and a person who has had an enormous influence on higher education over the last fifteen years. In 1994, Boyer articulated a vision for higher education in an article published in The Chronicle of Higher Education. He called this vision "the New American College":
I am troubled that, to put it simply, many now view the campus as a place where professors get tenured and students get credentialed, but what goes on there is not seen as relevant to many of our social problems. The overall efforts of the academy are not considered to be at the vital center of the nation’s work. And what I find most disturbing is the growing feeling in this country that higher education is a private benefit, not a public good…. The "New American College," as a connected institution, would be committed to improving, in a very intentional way, the human condition.... A new model of excellence in higher education would emerge, one that would enrich the campus, renew communities, and give new dignity and status to the scholarship of service (Boyer 1994: A-48).
Boyer’s final publications provide us with opportunities to gain a better understanding of this " new American college." He collaborated with Lee Mitgang on a state-of-the-profession assessment of architecture, Building Community: A New Future for Architecture Education and Practice (1996). It is a well-written and cogent book that speaks not only to architecture but to important issues facing many professions and applied fields, such as ours in agriculture and natural resources. The authors argue vigorously for a profession of architecture that embraces a new vision. For a profession that many of us might describe as being about the business of designing buildings, Boyer and Mitgang envision the challenge and responsibility more broadly:
To have an impact on the critical issues affecting community life, then, there must be a seamless connection between learning, the generation of new knowledge, and community service. It is not enough, in other words, for schools to provide students with community experiences for their own sake. The goal should be to provide opportunities for students and faculty to work together in communities to produce genuine scholarship with broad applicability, and to disseminate those findings so that others can benefit from the experiences (Boyer and Mitgang 1996: 138).
One of Boyer’s last speeches was delivered at a meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. That speech, in adapted form, was presented as the initial article in the inaugural issue of a new journal—The Journal of Public Service and Outreach. In that paper, Boyer took his thinking to the next level by giving the work he describes a label, the scholarship of engagement:
At one level, the scholarship of engagement means connecting the rich resources of the university to our most pressing social, civic, and ethical problems…. Campuses would be viewed by both students and professors not as isolated islands, but as staging grounds for action…. Increasingly, I’m convinced that ultimately, the scholarship of engagement also means creating a special climate in which the academic and civic cultures communicate more continuously and more creatively with each other (Boyer 1996: 19-20).
There is every reason to believe that Bailey can become a vibrant laboratory for the scholarship of engagement. Parker Palmer argues that, without engaging students in problems "out there," learning and knowing will not take place:
The distinction between "out there" and "in here" would disappear; students would discover that we are in the world and the world is within us; that truth is not a statement about reality but a living relationship between ourselves and the world (Palmer 1993:35).
Explorations into the Meaning of Bailey: Creating a Different Kind of Organizational Environment
If refocusing faculty roles, recasting faculty-student relationships, and better connecting campus and field are part of what Bailey is to be, it is appropriate to ask: What kind of organizational environment is required to make these things happen? I believe this is an important question, and I would not raise it unless I felt that Bailey would require an environment that is different from most environments in which we have worked in academe. Here, again, I am challenged by the words of Jane Tompkins:
Peaceable kingdoms aren't born; they are made. And that is why it seems to me that the university, like other places of employment, needs to become aware of itself as a social organism…. It would mean devoting time and effort to building good relationships. Right now, the culture of the research university militates against the quality of life because such concerns are regarded as peripheral to the university's main business…. But if research universities like the one I work at are going to become places where people like to come to work in the morning, where the employees have a stake and feel they belong, then they will have to model something besides the ideal of individual excellence--the Olympic pole-vaulter making it over the bar. By modeling the way that they do business, they'll need to model our dependence on one another, our need for mutual respect and support, acceptance, and encouragement. If the places that young people go to be educated don't embody the ideals of community, cooperation, and harmony, then what young people will learn will be the behavior these institutions do exemplify: competition, hierarchy, busyness, and isolation (Tompkins 1996: 193-194).
I am deeply struck, as I read new literature in one of my fields (organizations), that there seems to be such a profound difference between what is being written about organizations and how most organizations actually operate. This gap is exactly as Tompkins describes: a literature that is all about creating organizations that have high levels of "community" juxtaposed with the reality of many organizations that exhibit high levels of bureaucratic rigidity and power-control leadership.
It is in this regard that a group of us, including Richard Bawden, recently advanced the idea of incorporating the concept of The Commons into the Bailey program. It is in the commons that we—all who seek to participate in Bailey—would be dedicated learners with the goal of advancing scholarship and practice regarding problems, issues, and opportunities in agriculture and natural resources. The commons would be a place of discourse. It would be a respectful place in terms of according respect for ideas and for those who share them. In the commons, it should not matter who is faculty and who is student because the messenger will not be more important than the message. Only learning will matter. At the same time, members of the commons would have a responsibility: to be active and diligent learners, always striving to achieve the highest standards of scholarship and practice.
Bawden describes the commons as a place where there is
…a constant and multidimensional flow of conversation between individuals who are intent not only on learning about the issue to hand, but also about the process of learning itself, plus the nature of that which is learnt as knowledge. …/the/…need (a) to know, (b) to know about knowing (meta-learning), and (c) to know about the nature of knowledge (epistemic learning) (Bawden 1995: 236,237).
What might be the learning outcomes of a "commons experience"? Perhaps nowhere is this question more eloquently answered than by Professor Bawden and one of his doctoral students, Robert Kay:
A formal group of people agree to…commit themselves…to learning about the organization, the people within it, the environments in which it operates, and in particular, the impact that different perspectives or worldviews have on that process. As they progress with their development as a group, they achieve profound understanding of systemic perspectives, such that they are able and indeed motivated, to explore the impacts that different worldviews have on the issues that they face…and on the way they face up to the process of facing up! They begin to appreciate their own sense of coherence and integrity as a group, and the importance of themselves as a whole "conversational system," which indeed proves to be different from the sum of the individuals who contribute to it. They begin to experience, and welcome, emergent surprises, discontinuities and synergies that arise, through their discourse, and they become increasingly comfortable with messy, fuzzy, and indeterminate problematic situations for which they seek improvements, rather than solutions. They become very accustomed to each others’ critical responses to most of what is said and done, while retaining a clear sense of the practical…. They are…continuously conscious of the process of learning and of learning to learn. They are…continually involved with both the "big picture" and the "local and immediate issues of concern." They find that their learning…is accompanied by a real "itch" for self-knowledge, and they are at ease with sharing personal insights, beliefs and feelings, as well as more "objective" knowledge with others within the group and, increasingly, beyond it (Kay and Bawden 1996: 2).
Parker Palmer might describe the commons as part of a program’s "hidden curriculum" (Palmer, 1993: 29-40). Palmer argues that students learn so much more from their teachers than what is being taught and what teachers expect students to learn. Students learn by observing teachers, as humans, as they teach. They learn what their teachers value, how their teachers think about a variety of things, and whether their teachers’ rhetoric connects consistently with their practice. Perhaps this is why Palmer selected the title, To Know as We Are Known, as the title of his influential book on educational epistemology, ethics, and pedagogy.
I find the notion of the "hidden curriculum" important because it encourages us to think about the fact that virtually all decisions we shall make regarding the Bailey program are learning-ful. Two decisions already illustrate this point, I think. The Bailey program design team (College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, MSU,1995) decided that an array of constituents should have an opportunity to influence the program’s direction. So, it recommended inviting a diverse group of persons to provide corporate leadership for the Bailey program as members of the Bailey Board of Directors. Board members would include students, parents, alumni, employers, and civic leaders, for example. The Bailey program design team also affirmed the notion that faculty participation in the program should not be limited to MSU faculty. Learning occurs everywhere, and much of the most important learning for students will likely come from the relationships that they forge with persons outside of the MSU community. Consequently, the committee recommended inviting practitioners from the private, public, and nonprofit sectors to participate as Bailey faculty members.
Obviously, there is much more that can be (and needs to be) said about how Bailey might function as, what some might call, a "democratic community." And, certainly, more thinking needs to be done about how "the Bailey commons" will work in reality. Add to these challenges a third dimension associated with thinking about Bailey organizationally: how it might become a learning organization. Many authors have written about learning organizations recently, stimulated most assuredly by the pathsetting work of Peter Senge (1990). Organization consultant and author David Noer (1996) recently described the learning organization as an organization that has
…the ability to grow and learn from experience…a readiness to learn and a capacity to change. This is a combination that will result in a significant competitive advantage and ensure any organization’s survival…. In the Organizational Learning Cycle: How We Can Learn Collectively (1994), Nancy Dixon does an effective job of demystifying organizational learning and putting it in an operational context…. At the collective level, we might use the term "learning" as a process to ask: What do we need to do to be able to correct our mistakes as we go along? Organizational learning is the processes the organization employs to gain new understanding or to correct the current understanding…. Dixon postulates four competencies for learning organizations: stimulating innovation, applying lessons learned, implementing change, and challenging assumptions (Noer 1996: 127).
In a learning organization, dedication to learning is raised from the individual to the organizational level. This means that collaborative, reflective, and ethical scholar-practitioners focus their attention on their communal environment. They evaluate their collective actions and, through evaluation and feedback, seek to improve what they do and how they do it on an ongoing basis.
Making the Vision a Reality
All of what I have said thus far is, of course, much easier said than done. Nobody wants to participate in a fraudulent experience, where vision outstrips what might be reasonably accomplished. If this is to be Bailey’s fate, then it would be better not to initiate the program. I am optimistic, but also recognize that Bailey represents a paradox of sorts. On the one hand, I think that we are setting our sights quite high, seeking to achieve things that will challenge us enormously. By the same token, one of the things that draws me to Bailey is that it holds the promise of bringing us closer to what I thought university life would be, but a life that I have experienced all too infrequently. Bailey, if it becomes reality, would be—to borrow an idea from the late Bill Readings (1996)—an "open space" in the University where Thinking (the emphasis on "T" is Readings’) is paramount, and where all of us can grow intellectually, professionally, and personally.
If this happens, then I cannot think of a better laboratory than Bailey for real-time faculty development and administrative development. Bailey will offer an intense, sophisticated, and profoundly constructive means for helping faculty members develop their scholarship and for would-be administrators to learn how to participate and help lead others in collaborative, enriching ways. In addition, Bailey will represent a real-time, contextual experience unlike the out-of-context seminar/workshop settings to which we often send people for the purpose of faculty and/or administrative development. In Bailey, there will be no "talking at" by experts. Only those who seek to participate, collaborate, and act should seek admission.
Part II
PARADIGMATIC TRANSITIONS
THAT HAVE IMPLICATIONS FOR BAILEY
Just as many of the current and recent undergraduate initiatives in the College and at MSU set the stage for Bailey so, too, is the stage set by what is happening in the broader environment. I have chosen to use the word, transitions, as a way to capture the metaphor of a journey. In our case, it is about transitions that have had an impact on the journey that leads us to Bailey. I could address many transitions here, but will concentrate on how our thinking has changed over the years about teaching and learning.
The purpose of Part II of this paper is to identify and comment about paradigm shifts associated with moving from knowing to teaching to learning. I argue that we have gone through two transitions—from knowing to teaching, and from teaching to learning. We are now at the early stages of the second transition—from teaching to learning. In the emerging paradigm—the learning paradigm—I believe that there are two mooring points (anchors): learning theory and learner development. These mooring points are especially relevant for helping us better understand how to engage successfully in whole-student development.
About Paradigms and Paradigm Shifts
Not too long ago, a colleague of mine who works at another institution shared a story with me. She was in her provost’s office meeting with the provost about an organizational matter. At the end of the meeting, the provost asked: "Would you mind not using the "p" words so much when you talk with the faculty? These are overused words and using them tends to confuse rather than to clarify things." Of course, my colleague asked: "What do you mean, the "p" words?" The answer: pedagogy and paradigm.
Our discussion about Bailey is all about pedagogy. What about "paradigm"? How does that factor into our thinking about Bailey and the corresponding practice associated with Bailey? I hope that, after reading this section, you will conclude that the answer is, Significantly.
Many of us have read, or are at least familiar with, the classic work of the late Thomas Kuhn, author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which was published more than twenty-five years ago (Kuhn, 1970). Paradigms serve, above all else, as a means to demarcate the parameters of acceptable practice. A current commentator, trainer, and author on paradigms, Joel Barker, defines a paradigm this way in his book, Paradigms: The Business of Discovering the Future (1993): "a paradigm is a set of rules and regulations (written or unwritten) that does two things: (1) it establishes or defines boundaries; and (2) it tells you how to behave inside the boundaries in order to be successful" (Barker 1993:32).
One of Kuhn’s major contributions involved helping us better understand how paradigms change, that is, when a dominant paradigm gives way to another. Barker also focuses extensively on paradigm shifts. This is part of what he has to say:
A paradigm, in a sense, tells you that there is a game, what the game is, and how to play it successfully. The idea of a game is a very appropriate metaphor for paradigms because it reflects the need for borders and directions on how to perform correctly. A paradigm tells you have to play the game according to the rules. A paradigm shift, then, is a change to a new game, a new set of rules (Barker 1993:37).
One of the things that struck me as I read Barker is that he gives a number of examples about paradigm change and why you do not need to be the paradigmatic innovator to reap benefits from aligning yourself with an emerging paradigm. You need to be aware of trends, look for evidence that paradigm change has taken place, and then move quickly. The operant words are: anticipate, then innovate.
How does this thinking apply to Bailey? There is abundant evidence that over the last twenty years—certainly within the span of my professional life—the dominant paradigm has changed more than once. When I was in graduate school, what I call the knowledge paradigm guided what we did and how we did it. By the time I was a tenured associate professor, the teaching paradigm ascended to prominence. Now, I believe, we have just moved into what might be called the learning paradigm. These transitions, from knowing to teaching to learning, will be discussed now. Keep in mind that, if we take Barker seriously (to anticipate, then innovate), awareness of these transitions means that we should wrap the Bailey program around the emerging paradigm, the learning paradigm.
From KNOWING to TEACHING to LEARNING
One of the problems about discussing paradigms and paradigmatic change is that the subject-matter can have a lifeless, impersonal feel to it. If paradigms are as important to us as we are told, then they should have an enormous influence on our professional lives. We may not always know or feel the force (it is like the air we breathe and take for granted), but it is real and abiding. However, it is virtually impossible to avoid feeling the force of a paradigm shift. Let me start this section by putting a human face on the shift from knowing to teaching to learningby sharing two personal experiences.
In the 1960s, I was an undergraduate student going to school, living, and working in a state "back East." It was Summer Semester, and I was taking a summer evening course at a college near my hometown. Taking an extra course in the summer helped to reduce my Fall and Spring loads, and also offered a diversion from the work that I did five days a week, managing a shift at a local restaurant. I enrolled in a course in English literature this particular semester. The readings were good (I recall reading Shakespeare and enjoying it), and the class discussions were enjoyable. One evening, as I left campus to drive home, I noticed a bright light in the distance. It appeared to be a flaming ball of enormous intensity. I thought at first that an aircraft had crashed, the regional airport being in that general direction. As I stopped the car to get a better look, I thought—upon closer inspection—that it might be a multi-alarm fire. Indeed, it was. I turned on the car radio to learn that part of the inner city was on fire, set deliberately. This was my introduction to the urban riots of the 1960s.
The college I was attending was located in the suburbs, miles from the central city. The campus employees and students were not in jeopardy. So, evening classes continued. I am struck now, as I think about this experience, that things went on as though nothing was happening in the city only a few miles from campus. I drove to class each night, taking a different route to avoid the riots, and attended class. There we engaged in our appointed task: discussing English literature. There was no discussion about what was happening in the city in relationship to the material that we were studying. I am not sure that a linkage could have been made, and certainly felt that I was in no position to make it. The instructor never did. I would leave class nightly, retrace the drive to my hometown, and see that fireball burning in the distance.
I thought about this several months ago as I was reading Jane Tompkins’ new book. Most of the time, I read books like Tompkins’ as a means to stay abreast of my fields. Rarely does what I read have an emotional and personal impact. But, as I mentioned earlier, paradigm transitions do affect us. So, as I was groping for a way to express my feelings about my undergraduate experience in relationship to what I believe the undergraduate experience should be, there were Tompkins’ words:
What I would like to see emerge in this country is a more holistic way of conceiving education—by which I mean a way of teaching and learning that is not just task-oriented but always looking over its shoulder at everything that is going on around. Such a method would never fail to take into account that students and teachers have bodies that are mortal, hearts that can be broken, spirits that need to be fed. It would be interested in experience as much as in book knowledge, and its responsibility would be the growth of whole human beings, in harmony with the planet and with one another…. A holistic approach to education would…not leave us alone to wander the world armed with plenty of knowledge, but lacking the skills to handle the things that are coming up in our lives (Tompkins 1996:xiii, xvi).
Let me take you more than ten years in the future from the event just described. I was now enrolled in my doctoral program. I entered the program as a teaching assistant. Much to my surprise, I won two awards after my first semester for my work in the classroom. I remember, with pride, that one was a teaching award, named after a long-dead hero of the institution, a person with significant stature who was known for being an outstanding teacher. This experience was very important for me because it was public affirmation that I could teach and be successful at it. For as long as I could remember, I always wanted to be a professor (even when I was not completely sure what that meant). I wanted to work at a university. I wanted to teach.
I also remember being taken out to lunch by two professors shortly after winning the awards. One of the messages shared with me during the lunch was, "Now that you know you can teach, we recommend that you concentrate on research." I had thought I would be assuming responsibility for teaching a much more significant course the following year—moving from teaching several sections of an elective course to teaching an introductory, required course for students in the department. That never happened. The next year I was a research assistant.
I offer these stories to you because they illustrate several things that, for me at least, are very important. Throughout most of my participation in higher education—from undergraduate college through graduate school—emphasis was placed on acquiring knowledge. In almost all cases, though, knowing was defined in terms of gaining expert knowledge by reading, attending lectures, and generating knowledge through scientific inquiry. Competency was assessed by showing that I, indeed, had read the readings, had taken good lecture notes, and, later, could write a good dissertation. I slaved at writing papers to show that I was "advanced" at whatever the topic might be. I was pleased that one of my first papers written as an undergraduate student appeared in a school-sponsored publication, that a paper on what I was teaching as a doctoral student appeared as a book chapter, and that a paper from my dissertation was published in scholarly journal.
But, what did I know, really? What were the limits of my knowledge? Was I prepared to enter the classroom as a teacher? Teaching is the role I sought to play and I now had my chance; I had earned a doctorate in my field. Enter Tompkins, again, with personal commentary:
I entered the classroom armed chiefly with the notion that I must know something, since I’d been to Yale, and that I must be able to teach, since I’d been hired to do so. In the early to mid-sixties, graduate schools didn’t train people to teach—most of them still don’t, really—the presumption being that you would walk into a classroom and do more or less what had been done to you. At least, that’s what I guessed the presumption was; the matter never came up…. The absence of information about teaching was mysterious, but after a while I stopped wondering how or when I was going to learn what to do. By the time I started my first job, I had forgotten or repressed the fact that I didn’t know anything about teaching, because no one had ever suggested there was anything to know (Tompkins 1996: 85, 86).
Through personal reflection and quotes from Tompkins, I have tried to highlight what might be called "the first era" in the transition: the knowledge paradigm--knowing the substance of your field as attested by experts in the field. This "attesting to" had little, if anything, to do with the teaching role. If you had a credential that declared "you know" (that is, the doctorate), then you had the license to share what you knew with others.
One of those knowledge sharing venues is the classroom. In my case, as a not-yet-30-year-old person, I was unleashed upon graduate students—many of whom were senior to me in age and well beyond me in practical experience. For example, my first doctoral advisee was a man in his 50s, a dean on leave from his university, who in the years following graduation has served as president of two universities. I not only "taught" him and many others but did so in my role as co-designer and coordinator of a graduate program. Most of what I know today about teaching I learned from that experience. It was on-the-job training.
Because so many of us have had experiences similar to the one I just shared, it is no wonder that we moved from emphasizing knowing to emphasizing teaching. In other words, we made a transition to a new paradigm, the teaching paradigm. Put crassly: we needed to learn how to teach. Knowing a great deal about your field was now considered to be necessary, but not sufficient, for being effective in the classroom. We were taking the teaching role more seriously and, consequently, most of us can remember attending teaching workshops, reading articles on teaching that were circulating among colleagues, and experiencing annual evaluations where teaching seemed to be taken more seriously by administrators.
Had things changed? In some ways, yes. But at least in one way, it may not have been so different. In the knowledge paradigm, homage is paid to the knowledge base. Knowledge is a commodity. You need to acquire it to be proclaimed "competent." Then, as a teacher, you transfer the knowledge to others so that they may possess it and, in the process, become competent. For example, one of the most important functions of examinations in the knowledge paradigm is to measure the extent to which students know what you, as expert, already know. In the teaching paradigm, focus continues on acquiring knowledge and skills, but not exclusively on the subject-matter associated with your area(s) of expertise. Significant emphasis is placed on teaching as an important subject-matter in its own right: we gain role-relevant knowledge and skills and then seek to apply that knowledge and skills in the classroom. So, there is still emphasis on knowing, it is just knowing more than the substance of your field. It is knowing about teaching the substance associated with your field.
The major difference in the two paradigms, of course, is the extent to which teaching is valued and viewed as an important function. The late Ernest Boyer took the appreciation of teaching to a new level in his provocative, widely read, and influential book, Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate (1990). In it, he declared that the scholarship of teaching is one of the four, major scholarly functions of the academy. In his final publication, Boyer referred to this function as the scholarship of learning (e.g., Boyer, 1996). You can detect the transitions from knowing to teaching to learning in Boyer’s words:
As a scholarly enterprise, teaching begins with what the teacher knows. Those who teach must, above all be well-informed, and steeped in the knowledge of their fields. Teaching can be well regarded only as professors are widely read and intellectually engaged…. Teaching is also a dynamic endeavor involving all the analogies, metaphors, and images that build bridges between the teacher’s understanding and the student’s learning. Pedagogical procedures must be carefully planned, continuously examined, and related directly to the subject taught…. /Teachers/…stimulate active, not passive, learning and encourage students to be critical, creative thinkers, with the capacity to go on learning after their college days are over. Further, good teaching means that faculty, as scholars, are also learners. All too often, teachers transmit information that students are expected to memorize and, then, perhaps, recall…. …Teaching, at its best, means not only transmitting knowledge, but transforming and extending it as well. Through reading, through classroom discussion, and certainly through comments and questions posed by students, professors themselves will be pushed in creative new directions (Boyer 1990: 24-25).
When I think about Boyer’s words, and then reflect upon my own experience as a teacher, I conclude that several, terribly important things are still underemphasized, if not missing altogether. First, very little attention is accorded to the student, the learner. Moving from a knowledge-centered to a teaching-centered era can take place, and I believe that it has, without the learner being a central player in the transition. Saying that faculty, too, are learners is important but misses the mark. How so? One of my areas of expertise is community development. It has become axiomatic for people working in the field that you need to "start where the people are, not where you would like them to be." As it applies to this discussion, when we start with knowledge, we start with a commodity; when we start with teaching, we start with the process to be used in a learning context; but when we start with the learner, we start with people and their life situation.
Not only does Boyer’s description underemphasize the importance of the learner, he does not speak at all to teaching’s "larger purpose." Good teaching is more than helping learners acquire knowledge; and it is more than creating a high quality learning environment through the application of effective teaching techniques. Teaching is an ennobling activity. Through it, teachers serve society in a fundamental and valued way: helping people grow as individuals and as citizens. If we do what society expects us to do, then our graduates will make the world a better place to live. What, how, and why they will make the world a better place will somehow and some way be connected to what they learned in school. I was struck, recently, with the response to a question that I posed to the finalist for a college presidency. I asked him what, above all else, he hoped to accomplish if he was selected for the position. The response: "I want our students to change the world."
It is impossible for me to think about my role as a teacher without considering teaching’s larger purpose. Just consider what college means for students. It is, among other things, a place were they often make significant progress on finding out who they are, a place where important things in life happen or, at least, are set in motion—a defining experience for many. Not all of this happens in the classroom, of course. Indeed, one of the criticisms currently is that too little of it may be happening in the classroom. More of it may be happening in co-curricular activities and in the dormitory, among many other venues.
Given this, Bailey has to be more than "about teaching." It has to be about teaching’s larger purpose. Many persons have written about this topic, and John Campbell is among them. I select Campbell’s work strategically because he is a former dean of agriculture (Illinois), a former state university president (Oklahoma State), and a writer who focuses on the land-grant experience. In his 1995 book, Reclaiming a Lost Heritage: Land Grant and Other Higher Education Initiatives for the Twenty-First Century, he writes:
Teaching is a professional activity that flowers over time. Teaching excellence requires a thoughtful, caring teacher who is committed to the lives of students. Good teaching is not something that can be readily scripted, planned, or prescribed. It is in large part a matter of love—love of students, love of subject-matter, love of life. Teaching is an act of hope for a better future…. The ultimate reward of teaching is knowing that your life has made a positive difference in the lives of others. What could be a more noble career than being part of the educational experiences of the nation’s most precious asset, our young citizens? Teaching is more than communicating truths. It also is preparing the mind to see truths by virtue of its own capacity. Few students rise higher than the teachers who inspire them…. Excellence is best realized in an environment where ordinary individuals are inspired to strive for and accomplish extraordinary deeds (Campbell 1995: 114-115).
Moving from knowing to teaching and, then, from teaching to learning—these are the paradigmatic transitions I see. I believe we are just entering an era that will be learner-centric in nature where, in Bailey terms, "whole-student development" becomes the robust expression of what we seek to accomplish by and through being learner-centered. It will be a time, I think, where the paradigmatic boundaries of "effective teaching" will be defined by the extent to which a teacher is a scholar-practitioner of learning and learner development, and a time when the larger purpose of teachingwill be centerstage. De-emphasized will be such things as "how much the teacher knows" and "how well the teacher teaches." In the emerging paradigm—what I call the learning paradigm—teachers will become, as Patricia Cross and Mimi Steadman argue recently, researchers of the learning context. They write: "Teachers are—or should be—lifelong learners of the teaching-learning connection" (Cross and Steadman, 1996:19).
Making the Transition to the Learning Paradigm: From ACTIVE Learning to Active LEARNING
What an enormous challenge: to move from focusing on teaching to organizing everything around learning. Most of us know more about teaching now than we knew when we started teaching. Part of that, certainly, is a result of our teaching experience. Much of it, though, is associated with the fact that many of us have become students of teaching. Now I am saying that, in effect, we need to become familiar with the literature on learning theory and we also need to know a great deal about learner development.
As we think about this about moving across the paradigms—from knowing to teaching to learning—it is important for us to appreciate an important point: namely, that as we experience the transitions from knowing to learning, we really do not leave anything behind. We still recognize and fundamentally respect the importance of knowing about the content of our area(s) of expertise; we just do not emphasize our knowing as primary. We still recognize and fundamentally respect the importance of teaching the content associated with our areas(s) of expertise; we just do not emphasize our teaching as primary. We do, though, recognize and fundamentally respect learning as our primary focus. It becomes our center of gravity.
However, in offering this, we face a dilemma. Words often carry with them multiple meanings and those meanings can reside in multiple paradigms. Consequently, we have to be careful about not falling victim to what I call cross-paradigm confusion. This happens when we "talk the talk" of one paradigm but "walk the walk" of one or more other paradigms. Let me take one example of cross-paradigm confusion that is pertinent to this discussion: active learning. One of the frequently heard refrains these days is to improve undergraduate education through active teaching and learning for students. We have adopted this goal at Michigan State as part of our University’s Guiding Principles. But just what is "active learning"? Alexander Astin, one of the leading researchers in the field of undergraduate education, defines it this way:
The term active, which is used to distinguish certain learning strategies from the more traditional and passive forms of learning, such as listening to lectures and reading, is meant to encompass a wide range of activities in which students are either (1) actively involved or engaged or (2) required to take a good deal of initiative in enhancing their own learning (Astin 1995: 38).
My argument is that active learning to many people may or may not mean what Astin asserts. I believe that the meanings vary according to paradigmatic reference point: knowledge or teaching or learning. For example, we might interpret active learning with emphasis on the modifier, active, meaning to move away from viewing knowledge as a commodity to be transferred from the expert (the professor) to the novice (the student) using passive pedagogical techniques (e.g., the lecture). Most of the criticisms I hear about non-active learning in this regard come from those within the Academy rather than from those outside of it. The "public" many not be bothered as much and, perhaps, for a very good reason: faculty are expected to be authorities about subject-matter. So, it might not be "all bad" if students listen to what the experts have to say. My guess is this is exactly what many students are hearing from their parents. It gets translated into: Pay attention! Take good notes! Read what the professors assign! Sit in the front of the class! Perhaps what we have here is a tug-of-war over different meanings of active learning. In the first case, teachers seek to teach in ways that stimulate the active involvement of students in their learning. In the second case, parents encourage their children to take active means in their quest to gain knowledge and get "good grades." If so, this tug-of-war is between active learning as it might be interpreted in the teaching paradigm and active learning as it might be conceived in the knowledge paradigm.
Active learning has other meanings, of course. It can and does mean connecting what happens in the university classroom with activities that are taking place in the "real world." Sometimes in this regard, the label "connected learning" is used in place of, or in combination with, active learning. Interestingly, I have found that those outside of academe seem to be especially enthusiastic about this type of learning. The argument often runs something like this: active learning will help students make the transition from the collegiate life to the work world following graduation. The impressive growth of, and importance accorded to, service-learning is but one example of this type of active learning. Ironically, some of my academic colleagues raise questions about the "rigor" associated with service-learning by questioning its authenticity as "legitimate learning." This is the knowledge paradigm "speaking," I think. Service-learning is a major approach associated with the learning paradigm. Consider its definition and potential outcomes as described by Barbara Jacoby of the University of Maryland:
Service-learning is a form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs together with structured opportunities intentionally designed to promote student learning and development. Reflection and reciprocity are key concepts of service-learning…. Service-learning affords students opportunities to develop…skills…/in synthesizing information/…creative problem solving, constructive teamwork, effective communication, well-reasoned decision making, and negotiation and compromise. Other qualities that can be developed through service-learning include initiative, flexibility and adaptability, openness, and empathy (Jacoby 1996:5,21).
Of all the ways that active learning might be interpreted, I believe that the most important distinction involves whether emphasis is placed on active or learning. Does ACTIVE mean what the teacher does in the classroom to stimulate learning or to motivate learning? If the answer is yes, then my suspicion is that active learning, when used this way, falls within the teaching paradigm. If emphasis is placed on the word LEARNING, then I believe active learning is associated with the learning paradigm. So, in effect, I believe that one can emphasize the importance of "active learning" but do so without "wrapping it in the blanket" of the learning paradigm. In fact, I frequently read what institutions have to say when they talk about active learning to better understand where they stand. Most revealing is analyzing information about the institutional goals and implementation strategies associated with active learning.
Obviously, my intention here is to focus on the modified word, learning, rather than to emphasize its modifier, active. The shift in focus is made for several reasons. I am worried about the fact that active learning has now come to mean so many things to so many different people that, in effect, it may mean virtually anything and nothing at the same time. It is also being used superficially by many, often with emotional appeal—something that you can mention in an after-lunch speech and expect the audience to applaud.
In point of fact, all learning is active—we do something when information or knowledge is presented to us, even if we decide to do nothing. For example, material presented in the "passive" lecture is not always acted upon by the potential learner passively unless we believe that processes such as interpretation, "conversation with self," or the attempt to apply knowledge are passive. Indeed, some of the most inspirational, provocative, and influential learning experiences in my life have been associated with being a person in an audience listening to a lecture. The lecturers challenged me, either pointing out a flaw in my thinking or helping me think about a topic in an entirely new and different way. Notice that I made reference to ME in making this interpretation, the impact that the lecture experiences had on me as a learner. I get very upset when people automatically conclude: "We shouldn’t lecture!" What if learners’ learning needs are better served by lecturing?
I also prefer to avoid giving primary attention to the word "active" in active learning because much of what I see applied in its name tends to be technique- and tool-driven. As important as tools and techniques are, applying them may have a dysfunctional effect. Let me offer an example from the field of organization development. Often, I have seen managers grab a new organization development tool (e.g., total quality management) and apply it without a deeper understanding of organizational culture and the process of introducing organizational change and innovation. All too often, the application fails and "the tool gets blamed." That seems to be happening frequently now with strategic planning. Yet, perhaps strategic planning ought not have been implemented in a particular work environment in the first place.
I worry about this because, once learned, tools often are applied even when they should not. Rather than engage in a thoughtful analysis and interpretation of the context in which the tool is to be applied, and then deciding which tool or tools should be used, we can simply dip into our tool bag and pull out what we know, whether or not it is most appropriate for the setting. I get especially concerned about using tools that learners seem to enjoy. What concerns me is that satisfaction with a learning situation is not equivalent with having an impact on the level, scope, and intensity of the learning that takes place. That is why I have come to view learner satisfaction evaluations for what they are—an indication of how satisfied a learner is with the learning situation, not necessarily an indication of how much a learner has learned.
So, what does it mean for faculty to place emphasis on active LEARNING rather than on ACTIVE learning? I have tried to dedicate my life to learning and to help my students grow, mature, and develop. Without question, I believe that many of my colleagues, indeed most of my closest colleagues, seek this identical goal. How are we doing it? We are practitioners who try to learn as much as we can about a craft that may be fundamental to what we do and what we hope to accomplish, but secondary to the work associated with advancing scholarship in our selected substantive field(s). The time has come for us to move beyond this way of thinking and practicing. We must embrace a larger goal: becoming students of learning and learner development. In other words, we must make the transition from teaching to learning and, in so doing, become scholar-practitioners of the learning paradigm.
A Teaching-to-Learning Framework