Thesis advisor: Philip G. Altbach / The purpose of this study was to provide a scholarly baseline about the emergence of liberal (arts) education around the world. Liberal education is based on a philosophy that uses interdisciplinary curriculum to cultivate critical thinking, analytical skills, and a sense of social responsibility. Despite its Greek and 17th century Oxford/Cambridge roots, liberal education has long been considered a distinctly American tradition (Nussbaum, 1997; Rothblatt, 2003). Recently, however, interest in liberal education has been percolating outside the US. Programs and curriculum reforms have emerged in countries where specialized, career-focused postsecondary education has been the enduring norm. Very little is known about liberal education in places where it is a unique approach to undergraduate development. There is no comprehensive global research about the location and prevalence of liberal education programs, about the format and evolution of their development, about their accomplishments and challenges, or about the reasons why this education philosophy is being pursued in new milieus. Thus, this research was guided by the question: Where, when, how, and why has liberal education emerged globally? This study resulted in the Godwin Global Liberal Education Inventory (GGLEI), a database of 183 (non-U.S.) programs with 59 data points. Programs were selected for the inventory based on a hierarchical criteria analysis. Inventory data was collected online and came from primary sources published by the liberal education programs. Sources included program websites, course catalogues, strategic plans, accreditation certificates, and institutional agreements. The GGLEI was then analyzed in conjunction with disparate scholarly research, grey literature, and information from key informants. Findings include profiles of liberal education in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, Oceania, and North America (Canada only). Results were organized around the topics of program location, founding date, public/private status, institutional affiliations, students/faculty, language of instruction, and gender. A liberal education rationale schema is proposed for understanding the reasons for liberal education's global development. Challenges and critical questions related to liberal education's evolution in new cultural contexts are suggested for future research. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

Frequently, educational approaches are considered as a dichotomy – liberal versus professional. However, perpetuating this dichotomy may not best serve students or the workforce. We are at the forefront of an educational movement and it is critical that we think intentionally about who we are training our students to be and how do we best do it. Baccalaureate public health education is occurring in a range of locations including community colleges, traditional liberal arts schools, and schools of public health. Faculty and staff have a diverse range of training and experience in educational frameworks, In addition, this educational movement is occurring at a time when the disciplinary boundaries of public health are expanding and becoming less defined.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate, analyse and interpret the educational ideals of the ABF (Workers Educational Association) as they are understood by five members within ABF. The paper also examines how the educational ideals are represented in the national guidelines and statues of the ABF. The basic theoretical perspectives are intercultural theory and theories about Bildung and adult liberal education in a multi-cultural pedagogical environment presented by Bernt Gustavsson and Hans Lorentz respectively. The empirical study consists of five semi-structured interviews and a text study of the official documents of the ABF. The data is interpreted with hermeneutic and semiotic tools. Organisational theory focusing on organizational culture has also contributed to the study. The result of the study, when analysed in accordance to the methods, shows mainly four things. Firstly, the educational ideals within the contemporary ABF are the self-educational ideal and the civic educational ideal. Secondly, the analysis of contemporary society identifies social class as the main category of injustice with sex/gender ethnicity, disability, sexuality and age as subcategories. Thirdly, there is a lack of influence for people with a foreign background in the ABF. Fourthly, the ABF can make another world possible if the organisation consciously recruits people with a foreign background, is culturally aware when applying concepts, makes sure that the education emanates from every single participant, fights against stereotypes and builds networks. One of the main conclusions I draw from this study is that popular education within the ABF can promote learning of Intercultural competence but there is an uncertainty about where the organisation will go towards a universalistic or a particularistic direction. There is also a lack of discrepancy between the written policy and the actual practice.

This study explores the promise of student success in undergraduate education that exceeds its standard definition and measurement as retention and graduation rates. The research paradox framing this dissertation is: In what ways can universities support conceptions of undergraduate student success that escape measurement? This paradox is explored through two analytic questions: What do the orientations of student success in the American higher education literature produce? and What does the map of student success at Great State University produce? To explore these questions, this study utilizes assemblage theory, a theorization of the composition of the conditions that produce our social fields to develop a molecular sociology, the methodology by which this study opens up the determinate world to the map of the assemblage. A genealogy of the undergraduate education literature explores what the orientations of student success produce. This section first destabilizes the notion that student success is a collection of literature that moves forward linearly with the march of scientific measurement. Second, it provides the orientation of the current student success assemblage in American higher education, data-driven control. A cartography of student success at Great State University next maps the orientations and disorientations of the first year of GSU’s student success initiative to data-driven control. In this mapping, we explore the initiative’s continued production of the in/dividual student: the dividual, or data point subject produced by data-driven control through the justification of student-centered practices. We also explore the moments that escaped the capture of data-driven control, or liberal education. Through a compilation of cartographic locations, we come into relation with student success at GSU as an assemblage of indeterminate molecularities productive of determinate reality. This study concludes with a call for a fractal student success, a student success incommensurate with itself and its locations. This expansive success is fostered by critical methodologies and practices. Narrow policy changes suggested by many organizations active in student success serve to re/produce data-driven control. Change in our students’ lives and possibilities will come from unyielding experimentations in research, practice, and policy to warp and overthrow data-driven control, and all assemblages that follow.

The purpose of this mixed methods sequential exploratory study was to develop an understanding of the ways in which graduates of liberal arts programs recognize, make meaning of, and apply the competencies developed as an undergraduate within the workplace. In the first quantitative phase of the study, the research questions addressed the association among liberal arts graduates’ perceived importance, academic preparation, and assessment of value attributed by employers of eight critical skills in the workplace and any differences based on participants’ academic domain. The data were collected via a self-developed web-based survey (N=328) sent to graduates of six institutions representing four different Carnegie classifications. The overall response rate was 9.4%. A chi-square analysis in conjunction with the Holm-Bonferroni procedure yielded a statistically significant relationship in five of nine academic domain relationships. A post-hoc contingency table analysis further revealed statistically significant results between academic domain and perception value categories. In the second qualitative phase, eight case studies, consisting of graduates of liberal arts programs from four Carnegie classifications and four academic domains, delved deeper into the results from the first phase. Four themes emerged during the within- and cross-case analysis related to participants’ perceptions of the use of critical skills in the workplace: (1) Personal accountability to the job, (2) workplace dynamics among coworkers, clients, and supervisors, (3) self-awareness of what is important in the workplace, and (4) employer support of the liberal arts in the workplace. The final phase of the study integrated the quantitative results and qualitative findings to determine broad-scale outcomes of the study. Based on the overall analysis, the study provides policy implications and recommendations related to practical skill development within liberal arts programs.

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Thesis advisor: Karen Arnold / Liberal education has long claimed moral education to be a chief aim of its educational format. Liberal education supporters regularly assert its unique ability to foster moral and ethical development in students, but data regarding higher education's efficacy in promoting moral development are limited. Additionally, the educational goal of moral development suffers important philosophical and epistemological critiques which bring into question its adequacy as a worthwhile aim of contemporary higher education. In order to discern whether higher education resources should be used to pursue this educational objective, liberal arts practitioners and supporters must identify clearly what moral education is, whether it is a facet of college student development worthy of our attention, and how to adequately measure it. This study offers a careful analysis of data related to student moral reasoning development gathered in an evaluation process of a liberal education course at a mid-sized research institution. The central research questions focus on aspects of student moral development and students' perceptions of the moral dimensions of coursework and highlight how these interact with students' abilities to receive and process course materials and activities. The research design employs a concurrent triangulation approach to quantitative and qualitative course assessment materials. James Rest's Defining Issues Test (DIT), a well-researched, neo-Kolhbergian measure of moral reasoning, and student writing were analyzed in pre- and post-course evaluations to investigate students' moral reasoning development as they entered, changed and left a year-long liberal arts course. Results reveal important features of student moral growth, illuminating how students at different levels of moral reasoning development and with varying degrees of change with respect to moral reasoning engaged with liberal education course materials and activities in quite distinct ways. This is an important step in uncovering the unique aspects of liberal education that may foster and sustain moral growth. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

This thesis compares the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf and John Gardner&amp / #8217 / s novel Grendel in terms of their generic relations within a framework of Bakhtin&amp / #8217 / s genre theory. The analysis restricts its theoretical framework to basically two essays by Mikhail M. Bakhtin, namely Epic and Novel and Discourse in the Novel included in Michael Holquist&amp / #8217 / s The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin (1981). This study argues that Beowulf represents a monologic world, which is hierarchically distanced from the present. As Bakhtin puts it, the epic presents an already completed world placed in an absolute past, which demands a pious attitude as it is hierarchically above the reader. Gardner&amp / #8217 / s Grendel, on the other hand, is a retelling of the Beowulf story through the monster&amp / #8217 / s eye in the contemporary world. It suggests a dialogue between the elevated world of the epic hero Beowulf and the novelistic world of Grendel to achieve multiplicity in a truly Bakhtinian sense. For Gardner&amp / #8217 / s version enables the monstrous other, which is Grendel, to raise its voice. By changing the temporal order and narrative perspective, Gardner succeeds in re-writing an epic story in the novelistic zone of maximal proximity to the present. This thesis, however, argues that although Gardner&amp / #8217 / s Grendel displays all the novelistic features, basically multiplicity and contemporaneity, as put forward by Bakhtin, it still celebrates the ideal world of the epic.

The present dissertation investigates pupil fraternities in the Swedish state grammar school system from 1850 to 1914, in an effort to contribute to the understanding of peer group socialisation as part of the overall pedagogical process. Focus is trained on the practice of liberal education (Sw. bildning ) and the construction of collective identity. Modern pupil associations emerged in the mid-nineteenth century from the ruins of outdated educational traditions. Due to sharpened discipline, institutional changes and external societal pressure, previously existing corporative modes of organisation successively disappeared. To fill the void, pupils began founding fraternities, thereby introducing a new organisational form and a new set of activities based on an ideological foundation more in sync with the ideals of the emerging industrial society. Infused with the liberal, neo-Romantic ideals of the day, the introduction of fraternal life laid out new tools for selfadministered socialisation. After analysing the growth of pupil associations in the mid- nineteenth century, the thesis concentrates on fraternal practice at one particular institution, Umeå State Grammar School. This case study shows that fraternal activity revolved around creating lending libraries and reading circles, assemblies, school magazines and aesthetic pursuits including musicmaking, singing, acting and dancing. The thesis suggests that the fraternity had a structuring impact on the student body as a whole, serving to homogenise the school experience and provide a viable alternative to the allurements of town life. Subjects favoured by the fraternity included philosophy and ethics, literature and history and, to a lesser extent, current events. A slight shift in interest toward the natural sciences can be detected at the end of the period under investigation. Furthermore, it is revealed that peer socialisation encouraged identification with the school. It transmitted a set of values stressing idealism and anti-materialism, patriotism and regionalism, intellectualism (as opposed to athleticism), religious and/or secular piety, historism, cultural and political traditionalism, an acknowledgement of the powers – and limitations – of youth and an idealisation of friendship and camraderie. Insofar as social mores and relationships between the sexes was concerned, peer socialisation also provided pupils with practical instruction on proper conduct, and laid the foundation for an ambiguous understanding of the opposite sex. It promoted an ideal of masculinity closely associated with what may be characterised as the civil servant ideal. The thesis finally reveals that strong links were forged between fraternities on a regional, nationwide and Nordic level, bearing strong resemblance to contemporary social youth movements regarding attitudes toward society, culture and knowledge. Upper secondary school fraternities considered themselves guardians of the nation and its culture and became a conformist force in late nineteenth-century Sweden. On the other hand, pupils also constituted an active force in the modernisation of Swedish institutional practice, in the vitalisation of the state grammar schools, and as forerunners in the conceptualisation of a new cult of youth.

Made available in DSpace on 2009-11-18T19:01:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2003 / The objective of this work is to know the possibilities of liberal education in the practice of Social Responsibility, working the hypothesis that only a liberal education can be a sustainable practice to help social excluded peaple to be free, with no assistance actions we usually see in companies, govemment and individuais. In the case study we'lI conclude that some actions cam contribute for social change, creating opportunities in education and sharing knowledge with poor comunities. In the intruduction the reader can see an introduction to the study, the theme contextual, the objectives of the work and the delimitation and relevancy of the study. In the second part, the theorical reference, where the principie publications of liberal education, mainly the ideas of the educator Paulo Freire will be analised. The third part shows the exploratory methodology of the survey, delimited by a case stydy in a matter called Gestão Social, at Fundação Getúlio Vargas. In the forth part the case study will be discribed the caracteristics of dialog methodology, used in the classes and the possibilities of liberal education in the practice of Social Responsibility. In the fifth part the datas colected in the study will be analised and the conclusions will be presented, as far as the differences of possibilities in tradicional education and liberal education. / o objetivo deste trabalho é conhecer as possibilidades da Educação Libertária na prática de Responsabilidade Social, trabalhando a hipótese de que, através da educação libertadora e emancipatória dos excluídos sociais, esta prática alcança sustentabilidade, sem recorrer a assistencialismos tão comuns no discurso e ação de empresas, governo e indivíduos. Ao longo do trabalho, mais especificamente no estudo de caso, poderemos concluir que existem ações de responsabilidade social voltadas para uma mudança nas relações sociais, onde o discurso é substituído pela práxis na criação de oportunidades através da educação e compartilhamento do conhecimento. Na introdução do trabalho o leitor encontrará a contextualização do tema e a formulação do problema, bem como os objetivos do trabalho, a relevância do estudo e a delimitação do estudo. Na segunda parte, no referencial teórico, serão analisadas as principais publicações sobre educação libertária, estudadas à luz de seus principais pensadores e representantes. A ênfase será no autor Paulo Freire, representante da Pedagogia do Oprimido, de quem podemos aprender bastante sobre ação e reflexão. A terceira parte do trabalho fala sobre a metodologia exploratória utilizada na pesquisa, delimitada por um estudo de caso na disciplina Gestão Social, oferecida aos alunos de mestrado da Fundação Getúlio Vargas. Na quarta parte, será descrito o estudo de caso, sendo apresentadas as características da metodologia dialogal empregada na disciplina e das possibilidades da educação libertária na prática da responsabilidade social. Na quinta parte serão analisados os dados coletados no estudo de caso e apresentadas as conclusões constatadas. Nesta parte serão também confrontadas as diferenças de possibilidades entre educação tradicional e educação emancipatória.