Thinking And Rethinking The University

In the World Library of Educationalists series, international scholars compile career-long selections of what they judge to be among their finest pieces so the world has access to them in a single manageable volume. Readers are able to follow the themes and strands and see how their work contributes to the development of the field. Over more than three decades, Professor Ronald Barnett has acquired a distinctive position as a leading philosopher of the university and higher education, and this volume brings together 15 of his key writings, particularly papers from leading journals. This volume also includes, as his introductory chapter, an intellectual autobiography, in which Professor Barnett recounts the history of his scholarship and writing, traces its development across five stages, and identifies the themes and sources of inspiration that lie within his corpus of work. Ronald Barnett has described his corpus of work as a social philosophy of the university that is at once conceptual, critical, practical and imaginative. His concepts of criticality, critical interdisciplinarity, supercomplexity and the ecological university have been taken up in the literature across the world. Through telling examples, and with an incisive clarity of writing, Ronald Barnett’s scholarship has helped to illuminate in fresh ways and reorient practices in the university and in higher education. The chapters in this volume reveal all of these qualities so making this volume a compelling overview of a passionate and yet constructive critic of the university.

The basic structure of universities and colleges in Ontario - one focused primarily on expansion and greater access and put in place in the 1960s - is outdated. The system is now large enough, the eligible age group for entering post-secondary studies is shrinking, and participation rates are as high as they are likely to go. In Rethinking Higher Education, George Fallis argues that policy-makers should shift their attention away from growth and towards improving and diversifying the range of programs available and creating new means of program delivery. He calls for increases in honours undergraduate programs and polytechnic education and envisions a group of research-intensive universities responsible for doctoral education. The existing design, Fallis contends, neglects the specific needs of graduate education and research, layering it on top of a system designed for undergraduate education. In addition, there is disconnection between Ontario's Ministry of Training, Colleges, and Universities and the research missions of the universities and colleges themselves. Fallis recommends that Ontario establish a system for documenting and assessing the quality of research published at universities. Thought-provoking and thoroughly argued, Rethinking Higher Education provides a detailed design for higher education in the twenty-first century.

This book is intended for faculty and faculty developers, as well as for deans, chairs, and directors responsible for promoting teaching and learning in higher education. Intentionally non-technical, it engages readers reflectively with a process for developing teaching and details the planning necessary to apply this process to teaching within disciplines.The book centers on McGill University’s week-long Course Design and Teaching Workshop that the contributors have offered together for more than ten years. It follows the five day format of the workshop–covering the analysis of course content, conceptions of learning, the selection of appropriate teaching strategies, the evaluation of student learning, and evaluation of teaching–in a way that reflects the spontaneity of the debates it has engendered and the workshop’s evolutionary changes. The structure shows faculty members conceptualizing new courses or re-examining their teaching of existing courses, and translating the insights gained from the workshop to specific disciplinary content and learning outcomes. In addition four previous participants of the workshop write about its influence on their personal thinking about the practice of teaching.The final two chapters describe the structure and evolving role of McGill’s Centre for University Teaching and Learning. The authors describe its objectives in fostering an evidence-based teaching culture and providing a practical support structure with limited resources. They highlight achievements in disseminating teaching expertise across their campus, and their vision for the future role of faculty development.This book provides faculty developers and administrators with valuable non-prescriptive models and challenging ideas that promote faculty development in general and university teaching in particular. It engages faculty members in the process of course design in a way that is learning centered and can lead to deep student learning.

Universities have often been associated with higher learning and the spirit of free inquiry but in many developed nations they are being subtly transformed to do other jobs for the state and the economy.

Discover how creativity depends on inside-the-box thinking-that's right, not outside the box-and a new perspective on creative thinking.

Canadian universities are being slowly but inexorably corporatized. Casualizing academic labour, remaking students into consumers of education, implementing corporate management models and commercializing academic research all point to the ascendance of business interests and values in Canada’s higher education system. Academia, Inc. examines the tensions that result from the merging of two fundamentally incompatible institutions — the university and the corporation. Brownlee argues that moving from liberal education to corporate job training, public service to profit-making and critical research to commercial invention radically undermines the goals of higher education. Investigating the history, causes and impacts of corporatization, this book explores how this transformation has taken shape and its ramifications for both universities and society as a whole. Brownlee suggests several strategies for resisting this process.

Author's note -- Preface -- Dreaming, not doing -- The upside of dreaming -- Fooling our minds -- The wise pursuit of our dreams -- Engaging our nonconscious minds -- The magic of WOOP -- WOOP your life -- Your friend for life -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- Index

This distinguished collection of essays, edited under the direction of David Lyle Jeffrey and Dominic Manganiello, emerged from the discussions that surrounded the 1995-1996 McMartin Lectures. Dedicated to studying the relationship and contributions of historic Christian thought to the intellectual life of university disciplines, this series of lectures served as an occasion for scholars to rethink the present crisis in the relationship between the historic identity of the university and the development of the modern university. Published in English.