Making the Case for Civic Learning: Trends and Emerging Practices

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Making the Case for Civic Learning Trends and
Emerging Practices
The International ConsortiumMarch 29,
2007Philadelphia, PA

• Caryn McTighe Musil, Senior Vice President
• Office of Diversity, Equity Global
  Initiatives
• Association of
  American Colleges Universities (AACU)

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Association of American Colleges and Universities
(AACU)

• Founded in 1915
• Focuses on the aims and purposes of undergraduate
  education
• Committed to advancing liberal education to all
  students, regardless of academic specialization
• 1100 colleges and universities are members

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Liberal Education

• A philosophy of education that empowers
  individuals, liberates the mind, cultivates
  intellectual judgments, and fosters ethical and
  social responsibility
• By its nature, liberal learning is global and
  pluralistic. It embraces the diversity of ideas
  and experiences that characterize the social,
  natural, and intellectual world.

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Terry Tempest Williams

• When minds close, democracy begins to close.
• Democracy invites us to take risks. It asks
  that we vacate the comfortable seat of certitude,
  remain pliable, and act, ultimately, in behalf of
  the common good.
• The Open Space of Democracy

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The Ultimate Global Challenge

• Our world cannot survive one-fourth rich and
  three-fourths poor, half democratic and half
  authoritarian with oases of human development
  surrounded by deserts of human deprivation.
• United Nations Human Development Report, 1994

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The Higher Education Challenge

• But what do college students say they are hoping
  to get from their time studying?

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Top Tier outcomes for college education in
student focus groups

• Maturity and ability to succeed on ones own
• Time-management skills
• Strong work habits
• Self-discipline
• Teamwork skills and ability to get along
  with different types of people

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Middle Tier Outcomes for Students

• Tangible business skills and specific
  expertise in field of focus
• Critical thinking skills
• Communication skills
• Problem-solving skills and analytical
  ability
• Exposure to business world
• Leadership skills

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Least Important Outcomes

• Values, principles, ethics
• Tolerance and respect for different cultural
  backgrounds
• Competency in computer skills
• Expanded cultural and global awareness and
  sensitivity
• Civic responsibility and orientation toward
  public service

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Oppositional Views

• Civic responsibility and leadership are
  qualities that individuals are born with. . .
• High School Student in an AACU Focus Group

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Benjamin Barber

• We may be born free, but we are not born
  citizenswe have to acquire the traits that
  enable us to participate effectively in the
  world.

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Making the Academic Case

• Colleges and universities in the U.S. agree on
  essential learning outcomes for the 21st century

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The Essential Learning Outcomes

• Beginning in school, and continuing at
  successively higher levels across their college
  studies, students should prepare for
  twenty-first-century challenges by gaining
• Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and
  Natural World
• Intellectual and Practical Skills
• Personal and Social Responsibility
• Integrative Learning

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Essential Learning Three

• Personal and Social Responsibility
• --Civic knowledge and engagementlocal and
  global
• --Intercultural knowledge and competence
• --Ethical reasoning and action
• --Foundations and skills for lifelong learning
• Anchored through active involvement with diverse
  communities and real-world challenges

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Major AACU Initiatives

• American Commitments Diversity, Democracy, and
  Liberal Education
• Greater Expectations A New Vision for Learning
  as a Nation Goes to College
• Shared Futures Global Learning and Social
  Responsibility
• Core Commitments Educating Students for Personal
  and Social Responsibility
• LEAP Liberal Education and Americas Promise

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College Learning for the New Global Century
LEAPs Principles of Excellence

• Aim High and Make Excellence Inclusive
• Give Students a Compass
• Teach the Arts of Inquiry and Innovation
• Engage the Big Questions
• Connect Knowledge with Choices Action
• Foster Civic, Intercultural, Ethical Learning
• Assess Students Ability to Apply Learning to
  Complex Problems

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Explosive Innovations on Campuses

• Living learning centers
• Curricular designs
• Rethinking the majors
• Engagement in local global communities
• New research centers
• Interdisciplinary centers
• Innovative pedagogies

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Three Major Educational Reform Movements in the US

• U.S. Diversity Movement
• Began with force in 1960s
• Civic Engagement Movement
• Began with new attentiveness in 1990s
• Global Education Movement
• Took off in 2000s

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Differing Lexicons

• Education for democracy
• Civic engagement
• Civic learning
• Community-service learning
• Social Responsibility
• Diversity and multiculturalism
• Human rights, civil rights, individual rights
• Global citizenship

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Differing Locations for Civic, U.S., and Global
Learning

• Offices
• Structures
• Personnel
• Histories
• Curricular
• Co-curricular
• Community-based
• Globally based

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DIVERSITY, GLOBAL, and CIVIC LITERACY

• WHO AM I?
• (knowledge of self)
• WHO ARE WE?
• (communal/collective knowledge)
• WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE TO BE THEM?
• (empathetic knowledge)
• HOW DO WE TALK WITH ONE ANOTHER?
• (intercultural process knowledge)
• HOW DO WE IMPROVE OUR SHARED LIVES?
  (applied, engaged knowledge)

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CONVERGENT LEARNING GOALS FOR CIVIC, GLOBAL, AND
U.S.DIVERSITY

• Gain a deep, comparative knowledge of the worlds
  peoples and problems
• Explore the historical legacies that have created
  the dynamics and tensions of their world
• Develop intercultural competencies to move across
  boundaries and unfamiliar territory and see the
  world from multiple perspectives

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Other civic, global, and U.S. diversity goals

• Sustain difficult conversations in the face of
  highly emotional and perhaps uncongenial
  differences
• Understandand perhaps redefinedemocratic
  principles and practices within an intercultural
  and global context
• Gain opportunities to engage in practical work
  with fundamental issues that affect communities
  not yet well served by their societies
• Believe that actions and ideas matter and can
  influence the world we live in.

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Levers for Change in Educating for Democratic
Engagement

• NGOs and Foundations
• The Kettering Foundation
• The Carnegie Foundation
• The Constitutional Foundation
• Democracy Focused-Networks
• The Democracy Imperative
• The Deliberative Dialogue Network
• Study Circles
• US Partnership for Sustainability

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Other Levers for Change

• Research Centers
• CIRCLE
• The Democracy Collaborative
• Students
• Disciplinary Societies
• Higher Education Associations
• AASCUs American Democracy Project
• Campus-based Centers
• both research and community based

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Wendell Berry

• Rats and roaches live by competition under the
  law of supply and demand it is the privilege of
  human beings to live under the laws of justice
  and mercy.

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Campus Practices
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American Commitments Recommendations

• Experience, Identity, and Aspiration
• The study of ones own particular inherited and
  constructed traditions, identity communities, and
  significant questions, in their complexity
• United States Pluralism and the Pursuits of
  Justice
• An extended and comparative exploration of
  diverse peoples in this society, with significant
  attention to their differing experiences of
  United States democracy and the
  pursuitssometimes successful, sometimes
  frustratedof equal opportunity
• Experiences in Justice Seeking
• Encounters with systemic constraints on the
  development of human potential in the United
  States and experiences in community-based efforts
  to articulate principles of justice, expand
  opportunity, and redress inequities.

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HIGHER EDUCATION CONSORTIUM FOR URBAN AFFAIRS
(HECUA)Education for Social Justice

• Sample International Programs
• Bangladesh Sustainable Development,
  Environment, and Culture
• Addresses the challenges and prospects for
  development in Bangladesh through intensive
  classroom and field study of development models,
  Bengali culture, and religion.
• Students are led to develop complex
  understandings of how Bangladeshi citizens,
  non-governmental organizations, development
  agencies and the government envision and
  implement plans for a more just and sustainable
  future.
• (combination of courses, field experiences, and
  internships)
• Northern Ireland Democracy and Social Change
• Students examine the historical, political, and
  religious roots of the conflict in Northern
  Ireland, the prospects for peace , and the
  progress being made. Through readings, lectures,
  discussions, internships, group student projects,
  and field experiences, this program invites
  interaction with people involved in social
  change.
• The program explores theoretical approaches to
  understanding conflict and its transformation as
  well as the processes underway in Northern
  Ireland to create a sustainable democracy.
• (combination of courses, internship, and seminar)

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Arcadia University

• Current Core
• Two Courses
• ID 111 Global Justice
• An interdisciplinary course designed to give
  students strategies for exploring and thinking
  critically about issues of justice on a global
  scale. It is meant to enable them to see the
  place of their culture, nation and beliefs in the
  context of major encounters between the West and
  the other parts of the world.
• ID 222 Pluralism in the United States
• This course is designed to provide students with
  an understanding of life in the pluralistic
  society of the United States. Using concepts
  grounded in the social sciences as an analytical
  framework, the course will develop skills for
  moving beyond ethnocentrism to an appreciation of
  diversity in society.

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Arcadia University
A proposal now being considered First
Year Course on Globalization Second Year US
Pluralism Third Year Global Justice Fourth
Year Problem-Based Courses (and
Experiential Learning)
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Beloit College Changing the Religious Studies
Major

• Beloit offers two foundational coursesUnderstand
  ing Religious Traditions in a Global Context and
  Understanding Religious Traditions in
  Multicultural Americathrough which students
  consider the historical diversity of religious
  expressions in both global and local contexts.
• The primary goals of these courses are
• to enable students to develop critical
  perspectives on diverse religious phenomena and
  the power of religious worldviews in a global
  context and in the North American environment,
  and
• to encourage students to exercise their global
  citizenship and civic responsibility by engaging
  in experiential learning projects.

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Drury University

• In 1995, Drury University introduced Global
  Perspectives for the 21st Century (GP 21), a core
  general education program focused on global
  studies.
• As an integrated, developmental sequence of
  interdisciplinary courses, the Global Studies
  program helps students synthesize the
  perspectives and insights of many disciplines
  into a coherent understanding of the world, its
  peoples, and future possibilities.

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Drury University A. GP21 Core

• (FR) American Experience Requirement (GLST 101
  102)
• This yearlong course explores the roots of
  American traditions and contemporary expressions
  of those traditions, with special emphasis on the
  experiences of minorities.
• (SO) Global Awareness Cultural Diversity (GLST
  201)
• Students develop cultural analysis skills by
  examining representative examples of the worlds
  cultures. Students become familiar with specific
  cultures by examining (a) nonmaterial culture
  (religious beliefs, social values and norms) (b)
  material cultures (arts, way of life, technology,
  etc.) and (c) specific cultural and social
  issues.
• This course is required of all students and
  provides a framework for understanding cultures
  and peoples that will be further developed by
  in-depth studies under the category of
  Minorities and Indigenous Cultures.
  Prerequisite Completion of either GLST 102 or
  GLST 200.

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Drury University A. GP21 Core (cont.)

• (SO) Values Inquiry (GLST 210)
• - In values inquiry courses, students come to
  understand the important concepts in analyzing
  values and value systems. They gain a clearer
  understanding of their own values and learn to
  apply various ethical approaches in specific
  situations.
• (SO) Science Inquiry (NSCI 251)
• - This course is designed for non-science majors.
  (Science majors take the more traditional
  introductory science surveys). This is a six hour
  course team-taught by one physicist, one chemist
  and two biologists. A case study approach is
  used, with topics related to real world issues of
  science and technology, such as environmental
  issues and human health issues. The course will
  have a significant laboratory component that is
  open-ended to make use of the methods of science
  and experimentation.
• (JR) Global Futures (GLST 301)
• - Beginning with the concepts of utopia and
  dystopia, Global Futures asks students both to
  consider the futures imagined by others and to
  imagine the real, twenty-first century future in
  the context of globalization, environmental
  issues, and political and cultural trends.

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Mesa Community CollegeAcademic Certificate of
Global Citizenship

• Select one of four tracks
• -Impact of other cultures on American life
• -Political/economic world interdependence
• -Global study of cultures, religions, or
  values
• -Science, technology, and the world
• Capstone course
• -Research project, study abroad, or
  participation in model UN

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