Teaching and Learning > DISCOURSE

The Critical Being of the Liberal Arts Student

Author: Stuart Hanscomb

Journal Title: Discourse

ISSN: 2040-3674

ISSN-L: 1741-4164

Volume: 7

Number: 1

Start page: 95

End page: 124

Return to vol. 7 no. 1 index page

This paper was written in conjunction with Angela McClanahan, Archaeology, Anthropology and Tourism, University of Glasgow, Crichton Campus, Dumfries.

Angela McClanahan was also the principle researcher on this project.1 You know you are not bad for wanting things done in a different way (Interviewee S5).

I: Introduction

In the two previous papers in this series for Discourse2 we have described both Crichton's liberal arts orientation, and the integrating role of the Core courses within its curriculum. It was explained how a superficial pick and mix of subjects is avoided by a curriculum design in which all students are required to take four philosophy-based Core courses. These have three broad academic aims: meta-understanding of the nature of specific disciplines and discipline areas; explicit focus on critical thinking and other generic academic skills; and education in (essentially philosophical) issues that are relevant to most or all disciplines (e.g. ethics and textual analysis).3

The paper that appeared in the previous edition of this journal explored some, so far unarticulated and/or undeveloped, links between these courses and personal development (or, more specifically, what Ronald Barnett calls 'critical being'4). Following Barnett, critical being was unpacked in terms of theoretical knowledge ('the contextualization of knowledge', 'reasoned thinking' and 'meta-awareness of academic knowledge and specific disciplines'); action ('critical thinking skills', 'communication', 'learning to learn', and 'awareness of what higher education means and what it can offer'); and self ('the habit of reflection and self-monitoring', 'autonomy', 'passion and ownership' and 'the contingency of values'). In a nutshell, for Barnett these 'domains' are inherently interlinked, such that any attempt on behalf of higher education to promote personal development needs to do justice to all three. One (fundamental) reason for this is that key to such development is the requirement for the individual to take responsibility for, and ownership of, their experiences as a student. This, in turn, requires a contextualization of their subjects and learning experiences in terms of their lives as a whole (no matter how tentative their life projects might be at this juncture, especially for young students). For example, they should be encouraged to ask questions like, 'Why am I in higher education (on this course, at this institution)?' and 'Why is this piece of learning important?' And these are asked partly as means to answering such questions as 'Am I clear about my personal goals and ambitions?' and 'Am I in charge of my life and my studies or am I just hoping it all will work out somehow?'.5

It is relatively easy to show how the Cores do (and, vitally, could do more to) promote many of the components of critical being listed under 'theoretical knowledge' and 'action', but the most interesting— and perhaps most controversial—issue is the relation of the Cores to the 'self' domain. It was argued that, from the point of view of what is taught, they might indeed contribute in two ways. The first springs from what Barnett refers to as 'freeing the individual from ideological delusion'. Our values are central to our identity, but they are also contingent. The Cores stress the centrality of values and ideology to both academic theories (including scientific theories), and to our lives; and underline their contingent status by placing them in a critical perspective. From here it is relatively straightforward to allow or encourage students to extend the ethical and epistemological critique of theory and values to their own ideas and values (we see this continually in the ethics course as, presumably, do all teachers of applied philosophy). The second is the more indirect stimulation of self-reflection via a student's extending the intellectual habit of contextualisation to themselves as a wider concern. In other words, it primes them to contextualise their learning and general higher education experience in terms of their lives as a whole.

It was argued that the Cores' suitability for developing critical being is demonstrated by their ability to avoid a potential conflict between PDP and the notion of authenticity. Authenticity, in certain important respects, must be self-generated rather than externally imposed. Among these respects, it is argued, is the act of taking a grip on oneself in the first place; of recognising for oneself that one needs to be reflective and autonomous. To attempt to teach this directly runs the serious risk of alienating the student, either from the idea of self development, or from themselves through engaging with self-development inauthentically (i.e. as solely a set of skills to be learnt). Comments from two students in a recent focus group at Crichton set up to help investigate what Glasgow University calls 'employability' captures this concern. The students are asked to comment specifically on a 'checklist' to prompt reflexivity, and one responds with,

I don't know. I think it's something that builds up within you and I think ... everybody needs to come to come to this point [of] ... reflection at a different time. I'm not awfully keen on checklists ... I've been involved with too many in my career and I think that's one of the good things about universities, that this is something that gradually grows within you at your own pace.

The other adds,

I think so as well. I think maybe even if at the end of your first year you were asked to reflect on ... what you've gained as a person ... At that point you might not be ready ... I think, as you say, it's more ... personal.6

There are a number of ways in which requirements of the 'self' domain of 'critical being' can be transmitted indirectly, including examples set by staff, and by some of the great characters and thinkers students learn about. Our contention is though that courses like the Cores can, in the ways described, also have a pronounced and relatively indirect effect on the personal development of students.

Such is the conceptual groundwork for the relationship between Core courses and critical being. It remains to be seen to what extent, to date, these courses have influenced students' perceptions of themselves as learners, as individuals, and as members of society.

II: Method,Approach and Analysis

Ways of investigating student experiences often take the form of pre-fabricated surveys, questionnaires, and self-directed end of course student evaluations. While such approaches may be useful in gathering some kinds of baseline data for rapid evaluation—for example, questions about age groups who choose to take specific kinds of courses—some instructors are questioning whether such methods are equipped to build an adequate, nuanced picture of students' experiences of higher education.

Bryman7 outlines some of the main critiques of quantitative research, three of which are relevant in this context. First is the failure of quantitative techniques to distinguish the social from the natural world; in other words, the social lives and behaviour of humans is treated as a scientifically testable range of actions that can be repeated, leaving little room for particularity and agency. In the context of evaluating educational experience, such an approach might over-simplify student replies to survey questions, simply fitting her/him into a predesignated category without explaining how or why s/he responded in the way s/he did. Asecond point underlines the flipside of this: the tools used to undertake quantitative research are highly structured, artificial instruments not normally encountered in daily life. This means that the respondent has a limited range of options in articulating their thoughts and actions. Thirdly, the well-recognised gap between what people say and what they actually do is inadequately exposed by surveys. This is, of course, also a problem for qualitative methods, but it is one that is mitigated by interviewers being in a position to encourage interviewees to develop their answers by, for instance, providing examples to illustrate their otherwise bald claims and opinions.

Bryman8 argues that the advantage of using qualitative research methods is that they allow the respondent to provide their own spontaneous, unique response to questions, allowing the subject to place emphasis on points or themes relating to issues they feel strongly about. As well as particular and nuanced responses concerning the issues identified above, in this study, important and relevant, but unsolicited matters concerning the Core courses and the Crichton curriculum in general were raised and are discussed in this paper.

The twelve subjects interviewed were all third and fourth year students who have taken all of the Core courses. Nine were female and three were male, and ages ranged from 19 to 73 (half were over 30).

They were asked a series of questions relating to their experiences of the Core course that fall into four broad categories: their views on the purposes of higher education and how the Cores fit into this; their views on the relationship between the Cores and other subjects they study or have studied; their view of the relationship between Core courses and skills (critical thinking, communication, employability in general), and their view of how the Cores have affected their approach to life outside of formal learning environments (e.g. values, citizenship and their approach to current affairs). They were also asked how they thought the Cores could be improved.9

The nature of the semi-structured interview is such that the questioning process differs slightly with each interviewee. It is quite common for answers to overlap, and so depending on the direction of responses, questions can be differently ordered or omitted, and subquestions probing unexpected avenues added.

Analysis of interview data involved transcriptions being both manually coded, and imported to the qualitative research analysis software QSR-N6, also known as 'Nud*st'. In both cases interviews were 'coded' into the taxonomies that have formed the basis of interpretations found in this article.

There are two clear limitations of this paper, the first being the number of students interviewed. Crichton is a small campus and even though these represent about a quarter of the liberal arts students available to us who have taken all of the Core courses, responses are less generalisable than would be the case with a larger study. The second is that such is the richness of data available from the interview transcripts that we have only chosen to comment on selected themes. A different kind of angle— one that discusses each course in turn for instance—would take the discussion in some different directions. These angles will form the basis of future in-house and, where pertinent, externally published, research.

III: Results

In terms of the central focus of this research, the relationship between Core courses and 'critical being', six clear themes emerged from the data: increasing confidence and autonomy; appreciation of multiple points of view; depth of knowledge and analysis; breadth of knowledge; the issue of demonstrating skills and knowledge versus articulating the possession of such skills and knowledge, and how benefits similar to those we suppose derive from the Cores also derive from other subjects.

1. Increasing confidence and autonomy

a. Questioning authority ('the dominant')

A common response to questions concerning the meaning and value of the Cores and critical thinking was a political or social slant. For instance, when asked to define the term 'critical thinking' S2 responds: 'It means to me, questioning the dominant'; and when asked about the specific impact of the Cores she says:

it's probably had an impact on what I think critical thinking is, because ... it's probably shaped my idea to be critical politically. Culturally, historically, rhetorically, argumentatively.

In terms of the application of critical thinking skills S1 says:

I use the skills ... to query people in authority ... the local authority and things like that you know. If I'm not happy ... now I would chase them up more than I would have done in the past.

And S9 says:

... things like the current war in Iraq. Before I probably would have supported the government's view ... Now I think about it a bit more deeply and I think was it really necessary ... what evidence did you have? Like the arguments from authority is maybe not the real authority at all ... So just think about things like that more deeply and I'm very critical of the whole thing and suspicious of everything now that's ... coming in.

S12 comments:

thanks to A-R-T [Argument-Rhetoric-Theory] I am now an argumentative pain ... who will not take 'just because' as an answer;

and responding to a question concerning the impact of the Cores on responsible citizenship S6 observes:

... it's better to question things that are going on around you. I don't know if that means you'd be ... a better citizen ... it's not like they make me want to go and be a rebel or whatever ... I think for me it makes me question them more ...

b. Media

Another authority-related theme emerging from the interviews concerns the media. Again, discussing the relationship between the Cores and critical thinking, S7 says:

Before I started ... university ... I would just take it at face value and accept that that was what was going on in the world but ... Text and Communication kind of makes you think 'wait a minute that's that journalist's opinion or that person's opinion, it's not necessarily what's going on.You've got to do more thinking ...

Similarly, for S9:

... it's made me more aware of advertising. It's probably saving me money now! (laughs) Because I was probably an advertiser's dream before and I'm actually getting quite negative about it now.

And S10:

I didn't really have any opinions or view on how advertising and the media could coerce and influence ... It's sort of opened my eyes.

Referring to T&C and A-R-T S5 comments on how they help you deal with the news and ads: 'you get to make an analysis for yourself and it equips you to weigh if it's the truth or not ...'. S12 highlights ICS, that it 'in particular gave a platform from which to explore key aspects of today's climate and really get to the bare bones of an issue. And on the subject of the Core's effect on her perceptions of the media, S3 says,

I ... really was taken in by adverts and that sort of thing, but when I watch the news I think 'oh no', now I would think maybe there's something behind that in what they're actually saying, and now I read two or three different papers and see how they ... all say something different.

c. Self confidence

Questioning authority indicates the self-confidence that comes from increased worldly knowledge and increased self-knowledge, and several of the interviewees commented explicitly on these factors. For example, S5, in response to the question 'have the Cores changed you in any other way?' says 'Not to have people take advantage of you basically 'cause you listen beyond what the person is saying and you get if they want to take advantage of you ...' Later she says how,

... one thing that they brought up was because we are minorities we end up not putting ourselves forward because we are scared of going there, yet there are open doors for everybody. So in a way we make ourselves not equal to everyone by being scared to get out there. But now because of things like ICS [Issues in Contemporary Society] and the subjects that came up I'm quite aware of what's there and I'm now comfortable enough to put myself out there.You can help others that are not aware of that fact.

S8 says, 'In [ICS] you get more of a chance to express what your personal values are and ... it helps you to re-assess them as well', and S2 says:

I can put my point across. I don't need to feel as if I'm being talked down to. ... I don't think in any walk of life now, whatever I do in the future, that I'm never gonna be given something that I don't question if I feel it needs to be questioned.

An allied point, relating to citizenship, concerns the confidence in one's democratic powers. For S3:

... before I thought if I did something then it's not going to make an ounce of difference, but I started to think that well if everybody thinks like that then it never will make a difference so now if when I do do something then at least I'm trying to make a difference.

2. Appreciation of multiple points of view

a. Multiple points of view influencing one's own point of view

S2 says with regard to the Cores:

I'm definitely more responsive to other people's points of view ... for all [that] .. it's given me the ability to put an argument across better, it's also given me the ability to accept that there are always other points of view and that I'm not always right (laughs).

About ICS S4 says that it:

hasn't necessarily changed any of my habits or my general political orientation ... but once again, it's ... opened up the fact that there are different views.

And about the same course S7 says that it:

has taught me a lot more about ethics and listening to other people's opinions and ... just being able to take other people's and adapt your own opinion.

Amplifying this theme, S1's interview (which is infused with references to multiple points of view) describes how this has given her a different perspective on her views. She says:

I can see a lot more viewpoints than I probably would have ... there are so many diverse interpretations, and even when you think you've got it right someone will come along and say 'well did you think about it this way?'

This has made her 'less sure if you like', but seemingly in a positive way. Earlier in the interview she went to lengths to explain how the Cores have made her more proactive in women's groups, local politics and her children's education.

b. Tolerance

Aside from the emphasis on how an appreciation of multiple points of view affecting one's own views, a more straightforward theme of tolerance was evident. S7, for example, says, 'I definitely have ... a lot more respect for other people and other people's opinions now'; S5 dis- cusses how she's become more 'lenient' towards the views of others as a result of the Cores. 'Because of A-R-T' she says 'I've learnt that I have to listen to both sides.' And S6 says:

... usually I'd like to think I was open minded, I mean I suppose I was to a certain extent but it's helped me to [become] ... better because with things like fox hunting ... if I was so against something like that I just wouldn't listen to the opposing point of view. But even now if I don't think that I would change my mind I would still try and listen.

c. Relation to self-confidence

Falling somewhere between the implied confidence of a. (above) and the humility of b. is the effect of being exposed to multiple points of view on developing self-confidence. S5 says, 'you know you are not bad for wanting things to be done in a different way'; and S6 says:

It's also made me accept myself more ... with ICS when you ... find out about ... different opinions of things you can start to build your own opinions and ... I never used to think my opinion counted for anything. Whereas now I might think ... what I think has been thought through ... that it counts as a position.

3. Depth of knowledge and power of analysis

a. Depth

Responding to the question 'Do you think the Cores contribute to the [aims of] higher education?' S9 says:

I think they do ... I find myself looking at things ... more in depth ... for instance ICS, there are things that are in the news all the time that everybody's got an opinion about, myself included, but sometimes I don't actually know where that opinion has come from. ... T&C same thing ... looking a bit more deeply at what I'm reading in a newspaper thinking about if I'm writing something who it's for and what is the message ...

S5 says, 'Before the Core courses you just look at things like on the surface and never think of going deeper', and S6 explains, with specific reference to ICS and A-R-T, how the Cores help you to 'not just scrape the surface'.

b. 'Building blocks'

Several of the interviewees describe the Cores in terms like the 'building blocks' of the university experience (S6), and as the 'base for you to expand from' (S1). S12 describes each of the Cores as a 'set of tools with which I felt I could tackle the rest of my studies better prepared', and after discussing the integrating effect of the Cores ('I've got a sort of wider grasp'), S1 goes on to describe the Cores as a 'grounding and the base for everything else that comes after'. Citing more specific examples, S3 and S5 discuss how ICS prepared them for ethics issues that arise in their Health and Social Studies courses10 (including research ethics). With regard to the development of study skills S3 says that A-R-T made me look at ... essays in a sort of mathematical way.'

c. Use of argument and analysis, including specific reference to their application to other courses

S10 enthuses about A-R-T, saying it was 'very useful', and referring to the logic and reasoning skills they learn as 'universal tools' and 'transferable skills'. About the same course S7 says, 'it makes you look at all your other courses in a different way', and S1 tells us that she is now much more analytical than she was, and that, with specific reference to analysing texts, it has become 'second nature'. This, she says, has infused all the subjects she has studied. Similarly, S2 explains with regard to non-Cores courses how the requirement for logical structure to her arguments now 'jumps off the paper at me.' She also makes a similar point (referring explicitly to Science: History and Culture (S:HC)) about the historical context of what she is studying. S7 similarly highlights the role of history in expanding her analytical perspective.

Like S1, S2 also feels that analytical skills are applicable to all the subjects she studies ('they've impacted on every course'), and goes on to cite an example of their impact on her involvement in a wrangle over the building of motorcross track in her local community. She explains,

they ... rented this field and built it up into a wee club and then other people in the community started to complain about noise. So there became a battle which is still on going I have to say ... at the time it was in the papers every week and stuff. And I was doing AR- T down here, so it became really ... useful in putting a proposal together for the track to be like, a part of the community. And also to send letters into the local newspapers, like putting our point forward. ... So it was really really useful. And I've since used it as well for the campaign and the likes of that are just invaluable in making a point ...

Later she adds,

But anyway I think that, as I say about the motorbike track, and I've put two or three letters into the local newspaper which I probably wouldn't have had as good a letter before I came here. And I was contacted because of one of my letters in the paper to do with the university campus closing down. And ... the community council contacted me and asked if I'd sit on their committee! (laughs) So I thought well, at the end of the day I can go and see what it's like! So, at the end of the day, that's me, picked up, for the community council. ... that was a direct result of letters being in the paper. ... directly influenced by what I included in the letter, the way I structured the letter.... I just wouldn't have had the ability to do that before I'd been on the Core courses. I directed them to my audience, I was able to influence political things, cultural things, I was able to structure it, I was even able to include rhetoric in it, and, like, use emotive language (laughs).

S9 offers a similar kind of example,

if I'm doing a piece of written work and putting forward an argument or whatever. ... I recently ... put a complaint forward to a public service and I won my case. And that ... started before I had had AR- T but it continued throughout it so I was ... checking that my arguments weren't emotional because it's easy to be emotional ...

4. Breadth of knowledge

On the importance of breadth of knowledge, S4 says,

one doesn't live in a cocoon throughout one's life, so it's better to find ... what other things there are ... it's just a part of personal development. ... we're not just professional people, we're not just doctors or scientists or lawyers or whatever. We're human beings, so even if it doesn't relate directly to your professional choice, nonetheless, it's important.

S9's response to the question 'do you think the Cores contribute to the [aims of] higher education?' is 'I think they do ... if that is the objective, to broaden the mind'. The interviewer then enquires whether the Cores have made her a better learner and she speaks of the benefits of (making implicit reference to S:HC)

being more open minded ... when I'm researching stuff, looking far and wide, looking for different perspectives, not necessarily just concerned with the discipline that I'm writing the essay on but there'll be other things like history and sociology.

a. Exposure to other subjects

Regarding the role the Cores play in fairly straightforwardly exposing students to subjects they would not otherwise have chosen, S11 says

... they've been a big advantage because, rather than just going down one path and having, say, you only know about Environmental Studies',
and about S:HC S3 says it 'made me more interested in the history I took'.

Also concerning S:HC, S10 comments,

I did history ... and enjoy science ... as well ... so it was a combination of the two different disciplines and it was really quite interesting.

b. Challenge / disjunction

For some students the value of the Cores comes partly from the challenge it presents them with. For S8 for example:

To have a module like [A-R-T] at the end of second semester I had never done any philosophy at all so it's all really quite new which in a way was good to have that challenge

and S2 says how:

T&C and A-R-T [are] ... more difficult because you had to ... think, you had to be out of your comfort zone a bit.'

S4 indicates how via the Cores a shift in his perspective was, in a sense, forced on him:

I'm not philosophically inclined myself, but ... I found that they did raise a lot of interesting questions. Which were good to think about.

5. Demonstrating skills and knowledge versus articulating the possession of such skills and knowledge

Whilst apparent that students interviewed both knew about and made use of skills taught in the Cores course, it was also noted how the majority lacked the ability to identify or explain the notion of 'critical thinking'. For instance, when the interviewer asked, 'If you were to define the term 'critical thinking' what would you say?' S7 suggests, 'It's one of these terms you don't really think about ...' and S8 asks in return 'Am I supposed to know? Have I studied this in one of my ...' When asked to give an example, S10 faired better, saying,

... when you're trying to explain something to someone who doesn't understand the problem.You've got to think it out first and then explain it clearly and coherently so that they understand it as well.That could be critical thinking.

But this still reveals a disjunction between his understanding of argumentation and its value and his understanding of this piece of terminology (which is wider than just argumentation).

Similarly, students were vague in response to questions about whether or not the Cores had helped them become better learners. S10, for instance, responded, 'it depends on what you mean by 'better learner'?', and could offer nothing else.

6. How similar benefits come from other courses as well.

There is little doubt about the strength of the themes discussed in terms of these interviewees responses to the Cores courses. However, several indicated that other courses affected them in similar ways. S4 says:

I think all courses ... if there's serious courses ... stimulate your interest and challenge your assumptions and your prejudice.

S8 says:

As you go through university you do realise that you have to think about things in depth. But I wouldn't say that one of the Core courses has helped me do that than any other course that I've done.

In response to the question 'do you think you've become more employable as a direct result of the Core courses?' S10 does not think you can 'narrow it to just the Core courses', and on the matter of whether he thinks he has become more responsible he says:

I wouldn't agree with that. I'd say, yes, I've become more responsible, but not necessarily because of the Core courses. I'd have to say it was because of the university experience in general.

IV: Other research into the Crichton curriculum

Before discussing these results it is worth making reference to some ongoing research into employability at the Crichton Campus. In Harvey et al (2007) the interim report includes an analysis and transcript of a focus group concerned with curriculum design, and there we can find several points emerging that support the findings reported above.

Students reported on how studying at the Crichton 'widens perspectives' and teaches them to 'challenge pretty well everything'.

Regarding the Cores in particular the comments are highly favourable, with a stress on the 'questioning' and 'scepticism' (a 'wonderful word') they engender. In a way relevant to 'disjunction', one student imagined that the history of science would be 'boring', and yet found S:HC to be 'brilliant'. Perhaps most significantly for critical being, one reported,

I have gained an awful lot more than a wider knowledge of facts.... I had expected [to challenge and evaluate] to a certain extent but not really to the extent that it might alter my personality, my whole outlook on life.

One new point found in this research concerns how the Cores offer a rare opportunity to mix and work with people from different courses. One says,

because ... we do these Core modules you meet up with students from ... completely different courses. ... And that I think too helps with employability because you don't just ... narrowly look at your own field, you're aware of what other people are doing too.

There will be further comment on how to maximize the potential benefits of this under 'Areas for Development' in the 'Conclusions' section.

V:Analysis and Conclusions

1.To what extent is the predicted link between the Cores and critical being upheld?

As far as I am aware, none of the students at the Crichton have stood in front of tanks.11 Several, though, walked 100 miles to the Main Campus in Glasgow to protest against the University's plans to pull out of undergraduate provision, and many more were involved in a sustained campaign against this policy, a campaign that lasted from January until August of this year (when the decision was reversed).12 Students believed they could make a difference and they worked intelligently and harmoniously using the media, direct action, lobbying MSPs and many other methods to achieve it. The passion that ran through the campus for some of these months was not hysterical or vain, and in the vast majority of cases it did not seem as if it was done for non-integral reasons (it could, after all, look quite good on a CV).

Of course it is not the whole story, but the responses from interviewees in this study make it hard to doubt that the Core courses had some influence on student conduct (see especially under 'Increasing confidence and autonomy' and 'self confidence'). In this case, it seems reasonable to suggest that ICS in particular, and to some extent T&C (notably its emphasis on news media), combined with the reasoning and presentation 'skills' aspects found in all four courses (and especially highlighted in A-R-T) have had a significant influence on student behaviour. What seems particularly important about this is precisely the holistic impact of the Cores. Students make it clear that other courses also teach them to think more deeply, reason more thoroughly, present more proficiently and so on, and this we would expect, but what this case suggests is that the Cores, as a unit, give them something extra.

The areas of critical being hypothesised to be influenced by the Core courses were: a) Contextual knowledge and meta-critique, b) The freeing of the individual from ideological delusions, c) Reasoning skills, and d) Stimulating self-reflection. What have we demonstrated? There is plenty of evidence that students have learnt to contextualise knowledge (e.g. references to multiple perspectives), and though evidence for meta-critiquing of other disciplines is ambiguous in terms of, say, looking for alternative paradigms, there are nevertheless examples under Depth of knowledge and power of analysis that make reference to S:HC (the course that best serves this end). More commonly though, the application of the Cores to specialist subjects in terms of meta-critique merges with an appreciation of them providing 'tools' or 'building blocks' (typically reasoned thinking and textual analysis).

As arguably illustrated by the student arm of the anti-closure campaign, the Cores' effectiveness regarding 'freeing the individual from ideological delusions' is considerable and cause for optimism. Social and political awareness is clearly expressed, and more positively still, clearly linked to reasoned thinking and textual analysis. Reasoning skills and students' appreciation of these was likewise a prominent theme (see Increasing confidence and autonomy and Depth of knowledge and power of analysis). Aside from what is described in the results section, at several points in the interviews subjects use the language of philosophical argument and analysis as if it were indeed 'second nature'. For example, S8, otherwise unimpressed by the Cores, acknowledges that she has used 'little things like 'it would be a sound argument to state that blah blah blah ... the basics of A-R-T I think are useful.' And S9 says 'I've learnt things like arguments from authority aren't necessarily valid'. Here we have a social science student happily (and accurately) using a term like 'valid' in the sense it is used in logic. Importantly, this habitual adoption of reasoning skills appears to play no small part in the development of self-confidence and personal identity (see further comments on the issue of confidence and autonomy below).

At the heart of the relationship between Core courses and critical being expressed in the previous paper was the contention that a combination of academic contextualisation, meta-critique, freeing from ideological delusions, and reasoning skills would stimulate substantial forms of self-reflection and transformation. Barnett says,

In critique, quite different views of an object or a topic might be proffered as alternative perspectives are taken on board.This is real cognitive and personal challenge, and it may open up the way to a transformation of the individual student.13

And,

We are in the presence of critical thinking when a student comes to recognize the essential contestability of all knowledge claims. When that state of mind has been reached, the student understands not just that what she encounters in books and elsewhere ... as contestable, but that her own ideas are contestable too.14

The results reported under Appreciation of multiple points of view in particular shows the extent to which the Cores have achieved this aim, and this we consider one of the most exciting findings of this study. It seems clear that an appreciation of the 'contestability of all knowledge claims' extends to the personal lives of these students. When they make reference to fox hunting and remark on how they have 'a lot more respect for other people and other people's opinions now' they are talking about more than what goes on in the classroom.

Reflection borne of the 'disjunction'15 caused by confrontation with unfamiliar and/or incommensurable points of view is also demonstrated by largely positive comments on how, for example, the compulsory nature of A-R-T meant 'you had to be out of your comfort zone' (see Breadth of knowledge).

The last, and most ambitious, hypothesis regarding the Cores' critical self-reflection link is that the integration of disciplines and approaches promoted by the Cores extends to an integration of the self. Evidence here was not considered strong enough by either researcher to establish this as a theme, but, maybe portentously, one interviewee, replying to the question, 'Have any of your personal values that you hold changed as a result of the Core courses?' did say,

S:HC was a kinda funny one because I wasn't quite sure what the purpose of that was at the start ... But what it did was give a kinda background. I don't know it seems almost silly to say, but it almost made you make sense of your life, just things that have happened that you take as a given you don't really think about where it came from or why it's that way how things have developed you just accept it this is your kind's time and place this is where you are in the world and you don't question really what's gone before because it's like history. But again, it's something that's opened my eyes.

This is only one voice, and the meaning is not entirely clear, but there are suggestions that the Cores (notably S:HC) have the potential to at least play a part in an integrating effect on student personalities.

One other, highly important, aspect of personal development (and an implicit feature of critical being) features strongly in the results: their role in developing self-confidence. Tolerance and appreciation of multiple points of view are one upshot of Cores teaching regarding 'freeing from ideological delusions' (one that Barnett placed huge stress on), but another is the strengthening of personal identity and an individual's sense of personal worth. As the quote under the title of this paper suggests, the remark 'you know you are not bad for wanting things done in a different way' captures a pronounced theme that emerged from these interviews. (See under Increasing confidence and autonomy). Reasoned thinking and textual analysis are also shown to be linked to increasing confidence and autonomy—'I use the skills', says one, 'to query people in authority'. This certainly makes sense (it is a clear application of reasoned thinking and it is explicitly encouraged in ICS), it is something that we would hope for, and it is something the active student body displayed during the campaign described earlier. The net indication, it seems, is that the Core courses are significantly empowering.

2.Areas for development and issues regarding current provision

In the previous paper in this series16 four areas for possible improvement were highlighted. These were:

  1. An explicit questioning of learning and education and in particular higher education. This is already touched on in ICS and A-R-T, but could be expanded and made increasingly self-referential.
  2. Integrating T&C with study skills: for example seeing essays as themselves a form of communication, narrative structure, bias, authority, originality etc.
  3. Introducing critical thinking specifically in terms of academic (and other) writing skills, complimenting the reasoned thinking that forms part of S:HC, ICS and A-R-T.
  4. Being more varied in our teaching methods (e.g. peer assessment, problem-based learning, conceptual diaries, withholding formative grades (though not comments)).

Even if these turn out to be no more effective than traditional methods, if they are unusual or unexpected enough this might further encourage criticality (via disjunction) in the students.17

The first and third of these have been confirmed by this study (and by the other relevant piece of Crichton student experience research18). Only very rarely did interviewees suggest anything like this when asked explicitly how they would 'improve the Cores', but elsewhere it became clear that they were shaky on the question of the aims of education, and on how to conceptualise learning (and thus know whether or not the Cores had made them 'better learners'). The intention is for questions of education and learning to be added to the ICS curriculum from next year (2008-9), and ways of incorporating such topics into AR- T are being tabled.

Similarly, students struggled to conceptualise 'critical thinking' adequately, even though they exhibited so many examples of it. For instance, when asked 'If you were to define the term 'critical thinking' what would you say?' S8 asks in return 'Am I supposed to know? Have I studied this in one of my ...' The answer is, 'no you haven't', at least not explicitly in all its dimensions and meanings—and that is a failing. It is perhaps not such a serious failing because in many respects we are only largely talking about a matter of definition and categorisation here, but nevertheless a 'knowing-how' is often developed and honed as a result of 'knowing-that'; and if you want to impress, say, a prospective employer, a clear articulation of what you are able to do (especially concerning critical thinking) is of course a significant advantage. All the Core courses and especially S:HC and A-R-T can relatively easily adjust to accommodate this need.

A good proportion of the interviewees said that their communication via essay writing had been improved by the Cores. This is encouraging. Regarding oral communication, the feeling was that, as they stand, the Cores have no special role in what they also see as definite improvements in this respect since being at university. This is unsurprising in light of the current assessment methods on these courses (two out of four include presentations, which is nothing outstanding considering many other Crichton courses also include them). This could of course be changed, but perhaps more pertinent would be theoretically supported practical classes on presentations and public speaking integrated into the curriculum (including issues of voice (tone, variation of volume, speed and pitch etc.), technical aids, the risks of information overload, variations on content (which is already covered at the level of theory in A-R-T e.g. the place of enthymeme and examples in speeches)). This would be entirely commensurate with the communication studies elements of T&C and A-R-T.

3. Further questions and issues

Are such courses necessary for critical being?

The short answer to this question is of course 'no'. Some students, indeed some people, will of course acquire criticality without formal education at tertiary level. The more appropriate question is: are the Cores the best way to make a significant difference to levels of criticality among the student population. If it is agreed that the broad content and approach of these courses is vital, the alternative is to incorporate them into established specialist curricula. There is, of course, a case for this, but arguably this approach raises more practical problems (staff motivation, staff competencies, incoherence of course content) than having them as separate (interlinked) courses.

Perhaps the major concern about our set-up is their compulsory status.19 To have them as non-compulsory, but strongly recommended by advisors, could work though. Also, if just the first one is compulsory (and even possibly its role as a study skills course exaggerated), the others could be sold on this experience (i.e. students' experiences motivate them to take more, and their functioning as a coherent unit is advertised).

Core courses and philosophy curricula

Most university students do not study applied ethics and political philosophy, but at the Crichton, most have to. In cases where a student at another institution has studied applied ethics, two things to bear in mind are these: firstly, they may never take any more philosophy (e.g. it could be a subsidiary subject), and thus the potential effects at the level of critical being would presumably be diluted. Secondly, in my experience, few such courses include sections on topics like democracy and direct action. The Cores are deliberately and proudly interdisciplinary (as are its teachers), and the inclusion of rich and informed factual/historical information of the kind more typically at home in a politics or history departments—the very kind that is likely to tip learning towards self-development—is what it promotes.

Not by any means does all philosophy engender self-development, and even where it might, the way it is taught,20 and the lack of cohesion in most undergraduate syllabuses, will tend to leave even your average philosophy student under-developed in this respect. The four Core courses aim to be cohesive, and they are generated by a team with shared ideals. Some of these aims are readily apparent, and, it seems, readily apparent to the students as well:

sound reasoning, a wide knowledge base, and a 'democratic intellect' for example. Others are more subtle, such as the tendency to find connections between disparate areas of study both within and out-with the Cores, but in both instances the aim is to instil an integrating approach to knowledge through a structure that is itself integrated. Receiving similar messages once a semester over the first four semesters seems a near-minimum effort required to achieve this effect. The interdisciplinary nature of many of the courses and degree designations at the Crichton (e.g. Humanities, Health and Social Studies) raises us above this near-minimum, and our study suggests that the overall impact is along the lines we are hoping for.

Teacher Education

An announcement from the Scottish Executive on 20th August 2007 assured Glasgow University's continuing undergraduate presence at Dumfries' Crichton Campus. Part of this assurance comes from extra funded places being provided by the Scottish Funding Council for teacher education21 provision. It is intended that these new degrees will have a 2 X 2 structure; two years of liberal arts education and two years of dedicated teacher education.

For several years now Crichton's liberal arts curriculum has attracted attention from the Department of Education; its form of integrated interdisciplinarity, offering as it does a mixture of breadth and depth that spans not just arts subjects, but sciences and social sciences as well, being considered an ideal higher educational experience for prospective primary teachers. The 'Core courses' have been singled out as having particular relevance to this end.

Future Research

This research project has unearthed rich data and there are a number of matters that require further investigation. These include a longitudinal study to assess the longer-term impacts of the Crichton Liberal Arts degree in general, but also the Cores in particular. This will include an assessment of individual Core courses and other combinations other than in a complete package.

The research subjects have all taken all of the Core courses as part of their Liberal Arts degree, in which all of them are compulsory. However, as the campus has grown, some new degrees, which are outwith the Liberal Arts degree, have been developed. These new degrees, in particular the undergraduate MA in Health Studies and the undergraduate MA in Environmental Sustainability have incorporated only a section of the Cores suite as compulsory features of their degree programme. Each of the new degrees has selected a different combination of Cores (in the case of the first new degree, T&C and S:H&C and in the case of the second, T&C and ICS).

Whilst there has been some discussion about the difficulties of disentangling Core courses which are supposed to operate as a cohesive whole, it does nonetheless allow research possibilities to assess in a comparative study the impact of different combinations of the Cores in producing critical being. Future research will be undertaken comparing student learning experiences to see whether a more minimal provision of Core courses, as against the current package of four, has a similar, improved or weaker impact on students' autonomy, confidence, analytic skills, reflectivity and breadth of knowledge. Whilst such research will be primarily undertaken for in-house analysis, if the data is considered to be externally valuable, further circulation will be sought.

References

Appendix 1: Interview Questions

Preliminaries:

What is your degree designation? (If Humanities, main subject(s))

Which core courses have you taken?

  1. What do you think are the purposes of higher education? (In what ways does/ought higher education transform people?)
  2. How do you think the cores aim to contribute to this?
  3. In your case, do you think that have the core courses contributed to these ends?
  4. Do you think that the cores have enhanced your understanding of the other subjects you have studied?
  5. Have the cores helped you understand the relationship between subjects studied (including subjects studied at school, and areas of academic interest outside of formal education)?
  6. What do you understand by 'critical thinking'?
  7. Do you think that the cores have: a) Made you more aware of the nature and value of critical thinking? b) Improved your critical thinking?
  8. Do you think that the cores have made you a better learner?
  9. Would you say that your communication skills have been improved by the core courses (in ways distinct from other courses)?
  10. Do you think you have become more employable as a result of the core courses?
  11. Have the cores changed your perspective on current affairs?
  12. Do you think that you have become a more competent citizen as a result of the core courses?
  13. Have any of your values changed as a result of the cores?
  14. Do you think that the cores have changed you in any other ways?
  15. Which core course did you enjoy most?
  16. How do you think the cores could be improved?

Appendix 2:The Content of the Core Courses

The precise content of these courses can change slightly from year to year, but the lists below (taken from academic year 2006-7 (except in the case of ICS (2005-6))) are typical.

Text & Communication (T&C)

Linguistic and structural features of texts and their relation to meaning (inc. ideology)
Authorship and intertextuality
Problems with translated texts
News texts
Advertising texts
Literary texts (Kafka's Metamorphosis)
Science texts
Political texts (The Communist Manifesto and Swift's A Modest Proposal) Film as text (Night of the Living Dead)

Science: History and Culture (S:HC)

Overview of the history of knowledge and science from pre-historic times to early 20th C., with particular focus on:

Aristotle
The Scientific Revolution
Science and Magic
Medicine as science
The Enlightenment (and anti-Enlightenment)
Darwin
Psychology as science

Issues for science in 20th-21st C., such as:

Public perception
Commercialism
The State
Warfare
Nuclear power
Anti-science movements
Science and feminism

Issues in Contemporary Society (ICS)

Questioning Life and Death

Moral theory
Organ donation and theories of consent
Euthanasia
The allocation of medical resources

Questioning Equality

Forms of Equality (inc. Singer, Rawls, Nozick and Honderich)
Positive discrimination
Moral relativism

Questioning Violence

Forms of democracy and why it matters
Apathy and disengagement
Direct action and civil disobedience
Just war theory / terrorism

Questioning Nature

Animals
The concept of nature
Environmental ethics

Argument-Rhetoric-Theory (A-R-T)

Informal logic (the nature of arguments; truth, validity, soundness; fallacies; argument reconstruction)
Rhetoric (Plato on rhetoric, Aristotle on rhetoric, modern theories)
Theories and meta-critiques of arguments and rationality (including pragmadialectics and post-modernism)

Endnotes

  1. My thanks also go to Ben Franks, Sean Johnston and Ralph Jessop for their comments on drafts of this paper. They go doubly to Ben Franks for his input into the Analysis and Conclusions section.
  2. Franks, B. 'Interdisciplinarity and Philosophy', Discourse: Vol. 6, No. 1, Autumn 2006; Hanscomb, S. 'Philosophy, Interdisciplinarity and Critical Being', Discourse: Vol. 6, No. 2, Spring 2007.
  3. The course content of each of the Cores appears in Appendix 2.
  4. Barnett, 1997.
  5. These latter two questions come from Stella Cottrell: see http://palgrave.com/ skills4study/pdp/about/index.asp
  6. Harvey, Pattie and McFarlane-Dick, Reflections on Employability: Current Strategies for Employability in Higher Education, Interim Report, February 2007, p.56.
  7. 2001, p. 77.
  8. Op cit, pp. 264-5
  9. For complete questionnaire, see Appendix 1.
  10. Health and Social Studies is one of the degree designations at the Crichton Campus.
  11. Barnett (1997) uses the students in Tiananmen Square as a paradigm of critical being.
  12. For more information go to http://www.geocities.com/glasgow_at_crichton/02.htm
  13. Barnett, 1997: 19
  14. Barnett, 1997: 71
  15. The term used by Peter Jarvis (1992) to describe this personally and emotionally disruptive feature of the leaning processes.
  16. Hanscomb, 2007
  17. Hanscomb, 2007, p. 181
  18. Harvey et al, 2007.
  19. This has though been whittled away over the past few years.
  20. For example, moral relativism backed up by, at best, cursory anthropology; Renaissance and Enlightenment philosophers given next to no intellectual, let alone historical, contextualisation; utilitarianism taught in the kind of historical and political vacuum that can turn it into a virtual straw man. We need to ask, not just what kind of intellectual example we are setting, but what kind of message are we sending regarding how we are to think about anything at all, including ourselves.
  21. What used to be called 'teacher training'.

Return to vol. 7 no. 1 index page

 

This page was originally on the website of The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. It was transfered here following the closure of the Subject Centre at the end of 2011.

 

-
The British Association for the Study of Religions
The Religious Studies Project