Educating for Intellectual Virtue: a critique from action guidance

Virtue epistemology is among the dominant influences in mainstream epistemology today. An important commitment of one strand of virtue epistemology – responsibilist virtue epistemology (e.g., Montmarquet 1993; Zagzebski 1996; Battaly 2006; Baehr 2011) – is that it must provide regulative normative guidance for good thinking. Recently, a number of virtue epistemologists (most notably Baehr, 2013) have held that virtue epistemology not only can provide regulative normative guidance, but moreover that we should reconceive the primary epistemic aim of all education as the inculcation of the intellectual virtues. Baehr’s picture contrasts with another well-known position – that the primary aim of education is the promotion of critical thinking (Scheffler 1989; Siegel 1988; 1997; 2017). In this paper – that we hold makes a contribution to both philosophy of education and epistemology and, a fortiori, epistemology of education – we challenge this picture. We outline three criteria that any putative aim of education must meet and hold that it is the aim of critical thinking, rather than the aim of instilling intellectual virtue, that best meets these criteria. On this basis, we propose a new challenge for intellectual virtue epistemology, next to the well-known empirically-driven ‘situationist challenge’. What we call the ‘pedagogical challenge’ maintains that the intellectual virtues approach does not have available a suitably effective pedagogy to qualify the acquisition of intellectual virtue as the primary aim of education. This is because the pedagogic model of the intellectual virtues approach (borrowed largely from exemplarist thinking) is not properly action-guiding. Instead, we hold that, without much further development in virtue-based theory, logic and critical thinking must still play the primary role in the epistemology of education

The Arts and School Reform: Lessons and Possibilities From the Annenberg Challenge Arts Projects

The three Annenberg Challenge Arts projects (in New York City, Minneapolis, and a national consortium of schools) fostered a civic commitment to arts education in their local schools and communities, which led to an expansion in local ownership and investment in arts education. The report offers insights from arts education for school reform practitioners (build reform from within; make excellence equitable) and lessons from standards-based reform for arts educators (rethink accountability; begin with permanence in mind)

The Houston A+ Challenge: Staying the Course

With support from the Ford Foundation, the Houston A+ Challenge participated in Public Education Network's Gulf States Initiative, designed to enlarge the role of the public in school improvement in the Gulf States region. Public Education Network (PEN) is a network of local education funds (LEFs) across the nation. In PEN's view, "public responsibility" will not emerge from conventional, smaller-scale efforts to involve parents more closely with their children's schools or to inform the community about a superintendent's program. Instead, PEN initiatives take as their premise that in a democracy, public schools can only improve in a sustainable way if a broad-based coalition of community members pushes them to improve and holds them accountable. The Gulf States Initiative charged six LEFs, including the Houston A+ Challenge, with moving their communities toward different and more substantial forms of responsibility for their schools

"The Educational Value of the College Fed Challenge"

The College Fed Challenge, a competition between undergraduate students from different colleges and universities, is designed to enhance the development of research, critical thinking, and presentation skills. This paper analyzes the value of the competition as an instrument for improving undergraduate economics education. We present results from surveys of (a) students who participated in one district in November 2010 and (b) graduates from the University of Delaware who participated in past years. The results reflect the impressive effect on student learning outcomes. We conclude that the visibility of the College Fed Challenge can be an important factor in determining its impact and that the competition could conceivably have a significant and positive impact on economics education in the United States.economic education, undergraduate economics, education environment, experienced based education

Applying Rating Systems to Challenge Based Cybersecurity Education

As technology becomes a larger part of everyday life, it becomes increasingly more important for CS and CIT students to learn about cyber security during their education. While many cyber security oriented courses exist, it is also necessary that students must be able to work and learn in an environment that resembles a real world context. To address this problem it has become common to adapt cyber security challenges into the classroom as a method for students to put their knowledge into practice. One problem is that these challenges can vary considerably in levels of difficulty, which makes it problematic for students to be able to select a challenge that is an appropriate difficulty for their skill level. A potential solution to this problem could be to adapt a rating system to rank both the students and the challenges. This would then allow the students to easily select challenges that are appropriate for them to engage with by comparing their own rating with the rating of available challenges. In this project we propose methods that could be used to adapt a rating system to an existing cyber security education program. Finally we propose a method to survey students that interact with the program so that the effect of the rating system can be measured

Variety in Challenge-Based Learning in higher education

Increasingly higher education programs are made open and flexible to face challenges demanded by societal changes. Challenge-based learning (CBL) is perceived as an educational concept shaping these open and flexible programs. However, CBL as a field of research is still in its infancy. The present study searches for all-embracing commonalities of CBL in engineering education. We propose an evaluative framework that both includes commonalities and allows for variety in CBL characteristics between study components. This framework, labelled CBL-compass, serves as a methodological approach for educational staff and researchers to visualise the local colour of CBL in higher education institutions. With this study we aim to advance the field by contributing to a conceptual basis in flexibility in CBL. Our research question was: How can we assess the variety of CBL implementations in engineering education experiments? This question was answered by an evaluative case study. First, existing literature on CBL was scoped. The characteristics following from this review were perceived as dimensions, each with associated indicators. Empirical data were collected from an evaluation of six CBL experiments. The variety of scores on the CBL-compass gave an impression of how teachers implemented CBL in their course or project and can thus be used as an evaluation mechanism to improve this implementation. Filling in the CBL-compass triggered reflection among teachers about their course and CBL. The added value of the CBL-compass is the attention for, amongst others assessment or teacher skills and support, which are important for the overall quality of study components

Fostering Learning with Challenge-Based Innovation in Higher Education : Case CERN Bootcamp

This article presents findings on learning with challenge-based innovation (CBI) in higher education. It describes how different dimensions of Significant Learning are enhanced with challenge-based innovation among multidisciplinary students in higher education. It is based on a case study on designing and implementing a master’s-level course for learning service design by solving societal challenges related to United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDG) with challenge-based innovation at CERN IdeaSquare. As a result, this article describes how the case CBI enhances Significant Learning, and what is critical for instructors and organizers of challenge-based innovation.This article presents findings on learning with challenge-based innovation (CBI) in higher education. It describes how different dimensions of Significant Learning are enhanced with challenge-based innovation among multidisciplinary students in higher education. It is based on a case study on designing and implementing a master’s-level course for learning service design by solving societal challenges related to United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDG) with challenge-based innovation at CERN IdeaSquare. As a result, this article describes how the case CBI enhances Significant Learning, and what is critical for instructors and organizers of challenge-based innovation.Peer reviewe

Challenge-based learning and the Barcelona ZeroG Challenge: A space education case study

Challenge-Based Learining is a STEM Education methodology that has been used as a collaborative and hands-on approach to encourage students to put their knowledge in practice by addressing real-life problems. Space Education is a field particularly suited to apply it, with hands-on research projects which require students to take actions and communicate their efforts in a multicultural, international scenario in order to produce an optimal response a specific goal. We herein present a successful Challenge-Based Learning Case Study which involves designing, implementing, and actually flying a microgravity experiment in parabolic flight. The Barcelona ZeroG Challenge is an international competition addressed to University students worldwide. It challenges students to build a team with a mentor, propose, design, build and fly their experiment in microgravity and finally communicate their findings. The experiment has to meet the requirements of a unique microgravity research platform available in Barcelona for educational and research purposes. More than fifty students have flown their experiments on board an aerobatic CAP10B aircraft in Barcelona in previous educational campaigns; having published their results in relevant symposiums and scientific journals. These campaigns have always attracted media attention. The current edition is underway with the winner team expected to fly their experiment before the end of 2022. This edition is jointly organized by Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, the Barcelona-Sabadell Aviation Club and the Space Generation Advisory Council. Up to fifteen projects have been submitted to this edition, an unprecedent number so far. A panel of experts from the European Space Agency Academy conducted the selection of the winner team, who receives a 2500 euros grant to develop its experiment, aside from the opportunity to fly it in parabolic flight. Furthermore, students from our own University have also the opportunity of designing and testing their microgravity experiments during their studies. Principles of Challenge-Based Learning are herein described as well as how this methodology is applied to this Case Study. Results from our experience are very satisfactory as most of the students who have been involved in it perceive this experience as a boost for their careers. Three key factors to success have been identified: a strong involvement from students' associations, a need for international cooperation and the quality of the students’ mentoring. The experience can be of interest for other organizations to conduct a successful CBL educational projec