Developing the whole student - Oxford Learning Institute - University ...

Stimulus paper by Kathleen M. Quinlan 14
The co-curriculum is concerned with creating intersections between living and learning, for
example by encouraging students to engage in extra-curricular activities that connect and
extend their classroom learning 80 . Other authors 81 have also found out-of-class experiences
(such as interactions with peers and leadership opportunities) to be important contributors
to student growth.
Finally, Braskamp’s 82 campuses emphasised creating communities among various
constituents of the university and between the university and its larger contexts. Such
campuses had considered what it means to be a community and participants spoke about
it as an ‘embodiment’ of the campus. Student breakfasts with the president, involving
students in campus governance 83 and involving staff in the educational experience 84 are all
examples of promoting a sense of community.
Colby et al 85 also emphasise the importance of intentionality in creating a culture,
curriculum, co-curriculum and community, although they do not explicitly use this ‘4C’s’
conceptual framework. They studied 12 diverse American universities with successful
programmes of moral and civic responsibility. While Braskamp’s campuses were all faithbased,
only four out of Colby’s 12 campuses were. Furthermore, while all of Braskamp’s
campuses were liberal arts colleges (1,800 to 6,500 students), Colby’s sample includes a
range of institutional types and sizes from 650 to more than 20,000 students. Colby et al
found that across the institutions studied, leaders at the highest level made ‘intentional
efforts’ including serving as champions for, dedicating resources to and enacting a variety
of strategies to create and support a university-wide culture around a particular set of
shared values 86 . Thus their efforts went not simply on promoting particular curricula, but on
emphasising the values that underlie certain teaching approaches. Learning outcomes and
curricular and co-curricular reform were then based upon these shared values. While there
were common themes across the 12 universities in the values they embraced, institutions
expressed their missions in unique terms, reflecting their own particular context. Other
studies also support the importance of reviewing and making explicit the university’s core
values 87 and creating a distinctive mission and character 88 . In the third key study, the King’s
Warwick Project 89 reports on a large project analysing the curricular innovation process
at more than 20 research universities in five countries, through which they highlight a
number of points related to leadership. First, it is important that leaders articulate a clear
agenda with consistent messaging. Leaders must be strong champions for a chosen
strategic direction 90 . The agenda and messaging also need to be backed up with rewards,
such as teaching relief, small implementation grants or alignment in promotion and tenure
decisions. Rewards are not enough, however: leaders must find reasons why departments
would want to engage with the initiative. There were a number of drivers of change
identified across their study, including financial pressures, student learning, government
mandates or a focus on graduate attributes 91 . Leaders need to be able to communicate
how their agendas support departmental concerns and address larger drivers of change.
Relatedly, leaders in central administration must respect departmental autonomy, allowing
and encouraging departments to determine what the initiative might look like in their own
discipline 92 . In most cases, the innovations were part of the vice-chancellor’s mission and
vision, while a pro-vice-Chancellor actually led the initiative 93 . Typically, the major players
had experience with curricular change at a lower level, such as a department, faculty or
school. Building a consensus and a vision was important across the university, including
collaboration with student unions. Although all of the universities met a set of predetermined
inclusion criteria, each had a unique institutional context that was important to
the process; appreciating that context was vital to success 94 .
80
Ashlock (1996)
81
Kuh (1995)
82
Braskamp et al (2006)
83
Boland (2005)
84
Eubanks and Lynch (2005)
85
Colby, Ehrlich et al (2003)
86
Colby, Ehrlich et al (2003)
87
Arthur (2005)
88
Glenn (2005), Shipley (1996)
89
Blackmore and Kandiko (2010)
90
Fujita (1994)
91
Brandes and Stuber (2004)
92
Larrey and Larry (1999)
93
Gamsky and Oleshansky (1980)
94
Newsome (1997), Braskamp,
Trautvetter et al (2008)