Conceptual Framework for a Curriculum in Social Change

Colleges, universities, and many high schools are expressing their mission in terms of creating social change or contributing to the common good. Such a mission suggests that if they are going to graduate students who will fulfill this mission, they will need to consider how they will best prepare students to do this. The conceptual framework for a curriculum in social change in this article offers a holistic approach, taking into account what a student should know, be able to do, and what values and attitudes should be nurtured. To that end, the article identifies three competencies in the knowledge domain (scholarship, systemic thinking, and reflection), four in the skills domain (application, advocacy, collaboration, and political engagement), and three in the affective domain (ethics, commitment, and courage). Each of the competencies is supported by theory and illustrated in practice

Conceptual framework for a curriculum in social change

Colleges, universities, and many high schools are expressing their mission in terms of creating social change or contributing to the common good. Such a mission suggests that if they are going to graduate students who will fulfill this mission, they will need to consider how they will best prepare students to do this. The conceptual framework for a curriculum in social change in this article offers a holistic approach, taking into account what a student should know, be able to do, and what values and attitudes should be nurtured. To that end, the article identifies three competencies in the knowledge domain (scholarship, systemic thinking, and reflection), four in the skills domain (application, advocacy, collaboration, and political engagement), and three in the affective domain (ethics, commitment, and courage). Each of the competencies is supported by theory and illustrated in practice

Cultural Perspectives on Social Responsibility in Higher Education

The writers of the UNESCO document, Rethinking education: Towards a global common good? challenge educators to address their efforts to meet the current threats to sustainable life for all who share this planet. One way that higher education has been attempting to do this is through campus-community partnerships working to solve social problems locally or further afield. In this exploratory study, answers were sought to the question of why faculty members and administrators participate in these service partnerships, both in terms of what motivates them to do so and what they hope to accomplish, and how cultural context may influence their answers. Answers to these questions may have implications for faculty recruitment and support and for curriculum design and student preparation for serving the common good as well as for the larger vision of how institutions might fulfill their social responsibility. Using one-on-one semi-structured interviews in a number of different countries, some trends could be identified. Responding to a sense of duty was found across all cultural contexts as a primary motivator for faculty members and administrators, but how duty was interpreted and legitimized depended on their various religious and political grounds. Cultural context also influenced whether participants saw their impact as empowering their service partners or establishing social justice

Political Engagement in Higher Education Curricula

Political Engagement in Higher Education Curricula Submitted to the Teaching category of JOSC Abstract As more demands are made for universities and colleges to commit to public service, curricula in higher education may need to include the development of knowledge of and skills for political engagement. In an interview study, students, faculty members, and alumni at Walden University reflected on their understanding and experience of political action and working with policy-makers for social change. The responses overall indicated a general agreement that politics, political action, and policy making have roles to play in ensuring the lasting effects of social change activity, but they also indicated significant limitations to their effectiveness. Participants also showed a reticence to participating in political engagement. The findings suggest that understanding of and confidence in political engagement could be enhanced through connecting scholarly skills and knowledge to political activity and utilizing and stimulating personal interests and professional concerns as a basis for such activity. A curriculum that includes hands-on learning opportunities in social change may be most effective in preparing learners for political engagement

Metaphors for a Change:

Two premises guide this paper: first, music education, like all educational enterprises, is shaped by its grounding metaphors which affect its aims, pedagogies, curriculum, and administration. Second, music education, like all educational endeavors, is increasingly encouraged to address issues of social justice and contribute in real ways to the benefit of the community through positive social change. In this conversation, the authors, each of whom have written about metaphors and social change, build on these two premises to explore ways of bringing together the two lines of inquiry in search of metaphors that would guide an education for social change. In their dialogue they propose four metaphors but acknowledge that these alone do not address the full array of meanings a metaphor for social change would need to capture

Theoretical development, factorial validity, and reliability of the online graduate mentoring scale. Mentoring and Tutoring: Partnership in Learning.

In this study, we sought to confirm the theoretical framework underlying an Online Graduate Mentoring Scale by establishing the scale’s factorial validity and reliability. Analysis of data received from doctoral students and alumni/ae of the College of Education of one large, online, accredited university reduced the initial theoretical framework from seven to six attributes, and resulted in a revision of the scale. Further research is needed to test the theoretical framework with other relevant populations and to refine the scale itself by reducing skewness and attaining item balanc

If We Knew What Spirituality Was, We Would Teach for It

Two extraordinary recent experiences that the author would call highly spiritual are explored against the background of ideas provided by writers such as Friedrich Schleiermacher, Rudolf Otto, Paul Tillich, and Abraham Maslow to unpack what spirituality is, with particular attention to the emotions and the insights involved in spirituality. The description helps to clarify the distinctions and also the relationships between spirituality and both religion and morality—constructs that are frequently confused with spirituality. The description also suggests two moves teachers can make toward offering a spiritual education

The Pragmatist and Pilgrimage: Revitalizing an old Metaphor for Religious Education

A pilgrimage, an act of religious devotion, is a sacred journey. It has been a tradition in religions of both the East and the West and remains a popular element in religious discourse of the present - if not always in performance then at least in symbol. Philosophers, theologians, and poets have used it metaphorically the career of a human life. Some use it today to characterize the nature of religious education