[P2P-F] Fwd: Rethinking Curricula for the 21st Century #1

Wed Jul 13 10:31:28 CEST 2011

hi franco,

can you also republish this post-dated to july 20, to the regular blog, many
thanks,

see
http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/profiles/blogs/global-curricular-reform-for'

(something went wrong in that edit)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Thomas Greco <thg at mindspring.com>
Date: Wed, Jul 13, 2011 at 3:11 PM
Subject: Fwd: Rethinking Curricula for the 21st Century #1
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>

**
Michel,
This (a global curriculum reform movement) seems extremely relevant to our
work.
Thomas

Thomas H. Greco, Jr.thg at mindspring.com
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local bookshop.

-------- Original Message --------  Subject: Rethinking Curricula for the
21st Century #1  Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2011 19:47:06 -0700  From: Tom Atlee
<cii at igc.org> <cii at igc.org>  To: cii at igc.org (undisclosed list)

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Dear friends,

As I was preparing another bulletin for you, I stumbled on a very
remarkable initiative -- a global curriculum reform movement -- that I
want to share right away.  It seems a revolution is brewing in some
parts of mainstream higher education.  Here is a significant piece:

A "Science Daily" article "Higher Education Curricula Not Keeping Pace
With Societal, Tech Changes"
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101018174416.htm
describes this "
<http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/10/101018174416.htmdescribesthis>global
movement to abolish the archaic disciplinary isolation and static
teaching practices of the 19th and 20th centuries, and replace them
with pedagogy that addresses the complexity and diversity of
perspective of a global community in the 21st century."

The epicenter of this movement is http://curriculumreform.org.  A
group of academics -- from college students to university presidents
-- have created a Manifesto (see below) that has so far been endorsed
by two universities in Europe and one in the U.S (Arizona State
University, Jacobs University Bremen, and Leuphana Universität
Lüneburg).  These universities are now testing specific curricula
based on the Manifesto's principles.

I am extremely impressed with the principles these academic innovators
have come up with.  More information is available at their website,
including some excellent comments following the Manifesto itself.

If you are concerned about education and the state of the world, take
a look, and spread the word...

Coheartedly,
Tom

==========
http://curriculumreform.org/curriculum-reform-manifesto/

from

Curriculum Reform Manifesto:
Principles for Rethinking Undergraduate Curricula for the 21st Century

.... Here we present a set of eleven overlapping principles designed
to inform an international dialogue and to guide an experimental
process of redesigning university undergraduate curricula worldwide.
There can be no standard formula for implementation of these
principles given the huge diversity of institutional structures and
cultural differences amongst universities but these principles, we
believe, provide the foundational concepts for what needs to be done.

	• As a central guideline teach disciplines rigorously in introductory
courses together with a set of parallel seminars devoted to complex
real life problems that transcend disciplinary boundaries.

	• Teach knowledge in its social, cultural and political contexts.
Teach not just the factual subject matter, but highlight the
challenges, open questions and uncertainties of each discipline.

	• Create awareness of the great problems humanity is facing (hunger,
poverty, public health, sustainability, climate change, water
resources, security, etc.) and show that no single discipline can
adequately address any of them.

	• Use these challenges to demonstrate and rigorously practice
interdisciplinarity, avoiding the dangers of interdisciplinary
dilettantism.

	• Treat knowledge historically and examine critically how it is
generated, acquired, and used. Emphasize that different cultures have
their own traditions and different ways of knowing. Do not treat
knowledge as static and embedded in a fixed canon.

	• Provide all students with a fundamental understanding of the basics
of the natural and the social sciences, as well as the humanities.
Emphasize and illustrate the connections between these traditions of
knowledge.

	• Engage with the world’s complexity and messiness. This applies to
the sciences as much as to the social, political and cultural
dimensions of the world. Such an engagement will contribute to the
education of concerned citizens.

	• Emphasize a broad and inclusive evolutionary mode of thinking in
all areas of the curriculum.

	• Familiarize students with non-linear phenomena in all areas of knowledge.

	• Fuse theory and analytic rigor with practice and the application of
knowledge to real-world problems.

	• Rethink the implications of modern communication and information
technologies for education and the architecture of the university.

Curricular changes of this magnitude and significance both require and
produce changes in the structural arrangements and institutional
profiles of universities.  This is true for matters of governance,
leadership, and finance as well as for systems of institutional
rewards, assessment, and incentives; it is bound to have implications
for the recruitment and evaluation of both professors and students as
well as for the allocation of resources and the institutional practice
of accountability. The experimental process of curriculum reform we
hope to stimulate by offering these guiding principles will thus
require the collaboration of scholars and educators willing to
transform their scholarly and educational practices and of
administrators willing to support experimentation and to provide the
necessary structural conditions for it to succeed.

These principles are the conclusion of deliberations by a working
group of scholars that met at theWissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin during
the academic year 2009/10. Some were fellows at the Kolleg, others
joined the group because of their interest in these issues. The
Wissenschaftskolleg supported the work of its fellows. The principles
have already been adopted by a first group of institutions as a
blueprint for local curriculum reform. The group involved in drafting
these principles represented diverse disciplines (from the natural and
social sciences to the humanities), geographical origins (Europe,
North America, and India) as well as career stages (from former
university presidents to students). They invite their colleagues
around the world to join in this effort of re-thinking and re-shaping
teaching and learning for the university of the future.

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97440http://www.co-intelligence.org  /  http://tom-atlee.posterous.com
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