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09 Developing the whole student: leading higher education initiatives that integrate mind and heart 47 Dey and Associates (2008) 48 Different aspects of development may be more important in different contexts. In the USA, for instance, the underlying rationale of preparing citizens for a democratic society (Colby et al (2003)) resonates well with campus leaders, thus an emphasis on the intertwining of moral and civic learning is received enthusiastically. In that context, the term holistic student development is often received as too soft and vague (Tom Ehrlich, personal communication 9 May 2011, Palo Alto, CA). 49 Pascarella and Terenzini (2005) have done an exhaustive review of the American literature on how university affects students and, specifically, how university contributes to changes. Most of the studies they review have the difficulty of confounding age, maturation and cohort effects, ie in establishing that student change over time can be attributed to the university itself rather than to other factors such as growing up. Nonetheless, there is evidence to suggest that in the realm of attitudes and values, students change during university in many ways. 50 Pascarella and Terenzini (2005) 51 Pascarella and Terenzini (2005 2. Cultivating personal and academic integrity: recognizing and acting on a sense of honor, ranging from honesty in relationships to principled engagement with a formal academic honor code. 3. Contributing to a larger community: recognizing and acting on one’s responsibility to the educational community and the wider society, locally, nationally, and globally. 4. Taking seriously the perspectives of others: recognizing and acting on the obligation to inform one’s own judgment; engaging diverse and competing perspectives as a resource for learning, citizenship, and work. 5. Developing competence in ethical and moral reasoning and action: developing ethical and moral reasoning in ways that incorporate the other four responsibilities; using such reasoning in learning and in life 47 . In this section, I illustrated several meanings of holistic student development, largely by appealing to the language of virtues and ethics to define more concretely what a well-developed young person might look like. Holistic student development is a broad term encompassing many aspects of student growth as a person. Its core notions are contestable, though it is beyond the scope of this paper to explore this. Following Palmer et al’s (2010) lead, a tight definition might be counterproductive to opening a conversation about alternative ways of conceptualising higher education’s role in relation to its students. The intent is to invite a community – whether national or local – to choose the concepts and associated language that best capture their values and priorities 48 . The next section offers a brief introduction to the empirical evidence about the effects of university on particular dimensions of students’ holistic development. To what extent does ‘a university experience’ influence students’ holistic development? The experience of university affects students in many ways, including prompting changes in attitudes, values and beliefs associated with character or greater personal and social responsibility 49 , 50 . In US studies undertaken from 1970 to 1990, university students showed increases in: I Cultural, aesthetic, and intellectual sophistication; I Interest in the visual and performing arts; I Placing intrinsic value on a liberal education and exposure to new ideas, while attaching less value to the instrumental and extrinsic outcomes of education; I Importance of the intrinsic benefits of employment (eg creativity, job autonomy and intellectual challenge) and reductions in most extrinsic benefits (except money itself ); I Openness and ‘other-person’ orientation; I Humanitarian and altruistic values; I Political and religious tolerance; I Individualisation in religious beliefs (less doctrinaire views); I Support for egalitarian sex-roles 51 .
Stimulus paper by Kathleen M. Quinlan 10 Studies in the 1990s focused more on civic engagement and racial/ethnic attitudes. University-educated citizens: I Vote more and are more knowledgeable about democratic processes and socio-political interests; I Engage in more political activities, social activism and support for civil liberties; I Are two to three times more likely to engage in community service than non-university-educated citizens 52 . There are also increases during the university years in: I Positive attitudes toward racial equality and tolerance; I Awareness and understanding of other cultures; I Interactions with people of different cultural or ethnic backgrounds; I Commitment to fostering racial understanding 53 . Based on longitudinal studies, students also make significant gains during the university years in their level of principled moral reasoning. In their first year, students are more likely to rely upon authorities in deciding what is right (ie conventional moral reasoning), whereas by graduation they are more likely to apply universal moral principles (ie principled moral reasoning) 54 . 52 Pascarella and Terenzini (2005) 53 Pascarella and Terenzini (2005) 54 Pascarella and Terenzini (2005) 55 Arthur, Wilson et al (2009) 56 Belfield, Bullock et al (1999) 57 Arthur, Wilson et al (2009) 58 Such as Gamson (1991) and Ambrose et al (2010) 59 Colby, Ehrlich et al (2003) Two major studies we have located which address student development in the UK are both based on students’ or graduates’ perceptions of the contributions of their higher education to their character 55 or general development 56 . In Belfield et al’s (1999) survey of 12,000 UK graduates, graduates perceived that the strongest contributions of higher education were to getting an interesting job and securing a good income, as well as to increasing their self-confidence. Further analyses showed that arts and humanities degrees led to greater reported contributions to general personal skills (communication and selfconfidence) than job-related variables (income and interesting jobs). The opposite pattern was true of science graduates. Meanwhile Arthur’s interviews with higher education students in 2009 57 indicate that they do not see higher education as having a strong contribution to student character. Thus, while a reliance on graduates’ views suffers from some methodological difficulties with respect to establishing the impact of higher education, together these two studies imply that UK higher education does not currently have a strong impact on students’ holistic development. Yet it would appear that university education has the potential to impact on some key aspects of students’ holistic development; but, how and under what conditions? The answers to these questions are crucial for leaders who wish to create university environments that lead to holistic student development. I turn to these questions in the next section. What educational activities support this type of development? Active, engaged pedagogies, such as experiential education, service learning, problembased learning and collaborative learning are all effective not only in supporting academic learning, but also learning moral and civic engagement. All share a foundation in basic principles of learning 58 . Colby et al 59 argue that ‘the development of values and goals, moral and civic identity, and a sense of efficacy, hope and compassion is even more
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