What a Liberal Arts Education is ... and is Not 1 (original) (raw)
Related papers
A Historical and Global Perspective on Liberal Arts Education: What Was, What Is, and What Will Be
Godwin, K. A. & Altbach, P. G. (2016). International Journal of Chinese Education, 5, p. 5-22.
Debates about higher education’s purpose have long been polarized between specialized preparation for specific vocations and a broad, general knowledge foundation known as liberal education. Excluding the United States, specialized curricula have been the dominant global norm. Yet, quite surprisingly given this enduring trend, liberal education has new salience in higher education worldwide. This discussion presents liberal education’s non-Western, Western, and U.S. historical roots as a backdrop for discussing its contemporary global resurgence. Analysis from the Global Liberal Education Inventory provides an overview of liberal education’s renewed presence in each of the regions and speculation about its future development.
What is Liberal Education and what could it be? European students on their liberal arts education
2017
This volume is a collection of European students’ voices on their liberal education. It is not a comparative, scholarly study of student experience in liberal education programmes, although it might serve as a first step towards such an inquiry. Rather, it invites its readers to explore the nature, promises, and pitfalls of liberal education in Europe, and to initiate into the diversity of institutional and curricular arrangements, as they are perceived by those who took part in them. Researchers and journalists that are already covering liberal education will hopefully find in students’ insider perspectives valuable and original contributions to their field of interest. Their accounts might also offer inspiration and caveats to those administrators, faculty, and sponsors currently running liberal education initiatives or considering doing so in the future. Last but not least, prospective liberal arts students will get a better idea of what to expect, current ones will find that others perhaps share their joys and struggles, and former ones can remember a formative phase in their lives. ►►http://liberal-arts.eu/ebook/◄◄
Liberal Arts and Sciences Education: Responding to the Challenges of the XXIst Century
Voprosy Obrazovaniya / Educational Studies Moscow, 2015
This essay has two primary goals. First, it seeks to define liberal art and sciences as a system of higher education that involves curricular breadth as well as depth, student-centered teaching and academic and administrative structures which facilitate learning. Second, it makes the case for liberal arts and sciences education and why it responds to the demands of the XXIst century. The essay is informed by experiences of liberal arts and sciences education across not only in the United States, where it has found its greatest influence, but by the growing movement to experiments in Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and Asia. At its core, liberal arts and sciences education is concerned about the development of students and their capacity to learn, to express ideas and communicate effectively, and to adapt to changing circumstances. In countries where vocational training, hyper-specialization and didactic pedagogic approaches dominate higher education, liberal arts and sciences educa...
The Counter Narrative: A Critical Analysis of Liberal Arts Education in Global Context
Godwin, K. A. (2016). The Counter narrative: Critical analysis of liberal education in a global context. New Global Studies, 9(3), p. 223-244.
Scholars who study higher education describe globalization as an inevitable force in postsecondary systems and institutions worldwide. Resulting trends include massification, privatization, reduced public funding, competition, and unprecedented student and faculty mobility. In the last two decades, another small but important trend has developed: the emergence of liberal education (often called “liberal arts and science” or “general education”) in cultures where it has rarely existed before. Discourse about this phenomenon is overwhelmingly positive. Using critical theory to analyze this evolving global trend, however, provides a much-needed alternative perspective for policy and practice. In this article, I define liberal education and provide an overview of the current trend based on a 2013 empirical study. In reaction to a dominant economic framework that rationalizes the development of liberal education programs, I present several counter narratives related to history, students and faculty, learning and teaching, access and elitism, and cultural hegemony. This article emphasizes the importance of critically analyzing new international higher education developments to increase the propensity for creating socially just policies and programs. Finally, I illustrate the implications for the global emergence of liberal education by suggesting that liberal education as a higher education philosophy could both reinforce and resist neoliberal practices.
Ten thoughts on the competing conceptions of liberal arts in Western higher education
Draft of presentation on the Western conceptions of liberal education, and its relationship(s) with philosophy in different models, for June 2024 conference, "Bridging Chinese and Western Perspectives: Advancing Global Liberal and Humane Higher Education" at Hangzshou Normal University. The paper suggests that, alongside Kimball's (Platonist) dialectician-philosopher/scholastics and the Isocratean orator-citizens, the Stoic-Hellenistic philosophers present a third model, which places ethical formation as the highest end.* * Draft only for possible comment: pls email at my acu address.
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to challenge the assumption that liberal education as we understand it today, is alive and well in our institutions of higher education.
Liberal education may be dead but the magic will not die!
On the Horizon, 2014
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to challenge the assumption that liberal education as we understand it today, is alive and well in our institutions of higher education. Design/methodology/approach – This article is a reflective essay Findings – The spirit of liberal education is alive and well but has largely fled the university and taken up residence in less formal, more flexible educational contexts. Originality/value – This article plays the devil's advocate and argues that we need to rethink how we approach and signify “liberal education.”