It is through education that we are equipped to become effective and flourishing members of our society. Education is directed to creating the kind of society which we believe best benefits us; educational goals, values, and practices are defined by what are perceived to be a society’s needs. Education therefore is at the forefront of social change: educators’ visions are the blueprints for change, and education practice enables change to be implemented. This enterprising and original volume is the product of the vision of Haiqin Yu, Senior Editor at the Journal of University of Jinan (Science and Technology) at the University of Jinan. Haiqin was a visiting scholar at Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) in 2014–2015 and was inspired to capture what she saw as the best ideas and practices in higher education and make them available to Chinese educators.
I was very privileged to host Haiqin during her visit. She decided to take on the wonderfully rich project that this book reflects: interviewing a wide range of people, mostly associated with Harvard, whose ideas and work have led educational thinking and practice in the U.S. and globally, or whose practice reflects how such ideas are actually implemented. Haiqin had the assistance especially of the talented multilingual Justin M. Thomas (Zheng Tao) who was then a recent graduate of Harvard’s Regional Studies-East Asia master’s program, and a team of interviewers, gifted young scholars, many from China, who were studying at Harvard. They conducted 20 interviews with a wide range of people, from world-renowned scholars to doctoral students.
The academic year 2014–2015 was a special year for HGSE as the initiative “Learning to change the world” was being launched under the leadership of Dean James Ryan. These interviews with faculty and students reflect vibrant variations on that motto, as played out in each person’s research and practice. They reflect exciting and groundbreaking innovation and thought. The volume therefore is a snapshot of goals, concepts, and practices of that time. The result is an extraordinary testimony, in Chinese and English, to the scope and depth of educational visions that widely contribute to innovative thinking.
Despite the major upheavals of the last few years, most of those underlying goals and pedagogic principles remain highly salient. The world has changed dramatically for everyone since 2015; not only in the major personal and institutional disruptions of COVID-19, but also several social preoccupations have shifted – not least on climate change. The people whom Haiqin’s team interviewed have themselves often moved on – to new projects, or extensive
The contributors may have moved on from 2015, but their insights and wisdom remain relevant. The Editors have invited them, if they wish, to comment on what may have changed, and what remains the same. Where they have so chosen, their 2023 comments are attached to their interviews. The volume remains a great achievement, capturing the spirit and practices of an inspirational community.
We record with great sadness the passing of Professor Thomas Hehir in June 2022. A tribute accompanies his interview.
Four Emerging Themes
The interviews addressed broadly four themes that are currently at the forefront of debates about the purposes, goals, and practices of education in the U.S. and many other countries. These themes reflect a constellation of values and beliefs about what can, and what should, work within education to produce the individuals, communities, and society that will maximize human well-being. They reflect history and experience, commentaries on contemporary practices – both positive and critical – and scenarios for future development. They address desirable personal qualities and habits, and ways of thinking. They address how curriculum design and use of technology and media can best contribute to achieving both educational goals and the wider promotion of innovation and creativity. They include appreciation of how the intellectual and social climate of the learning institution contributes to attaining the goals. They also, often explicitly, rest on models of how human development takes places and their implications for what best works in the educational context.
The first theme concerns the goals of education. What should be the values and qualities that education should foster, and why? How do some values enhance well-being and human flourishing, while others do not? What criticisms can be made of current education, and how do these inform designs for change? How might education reforms address social or economic issues, especially around inequalities and diversity? How might education improve social and economic capital, for the individual, the community, and the state? This theme also encompasses implementation and innovation: how can curricula,
The second theme concerns more broadly the development of values and skills, such as social, emotional, and moral processes. Development includes school experience and practice. How do young people acquire such competences and personal qualities, and what kinds of school and college experiences facilitate their development? What is the role of parents? A factor considered in this theme also is stress and pressure, how education practice and structures affect this, for example examinations, or opportunities for choices.
The third theme concerns the role of media and the digital world. Several of the interviewees are major figures in media innovation. The use of media in part is manifest in using technology to communicate learning and teaching, and the implications for what a “classroom” now means – or could mean. How also do digital media facilitate learning for people with disabilities, or impaired access? But also in this theme is the innovative use of media material – film, television, writing – in young people’s understanding of social relationships, diversity, and cultural identity.
The fourth theme addresses student experience, especially in college. One of the key principles of U.S. “liberal education” is the four-year residential college, in which students live in a community that requires social collaboration and participation, and provides opportunities for learning organizational and leadership skills. It also includes mandatory breadth of subjects taken in courses, and ideally, participation in activities involving discussion of social issues, and contributing to the wider local community through volunteering. This contrasts with many other countries, where colleges may expect students to participate informally in extracurricular life as part of their experience, but the college’s formal obligations are seen primarily as the provision of academic activities. Some interviews explore how the broader experiences of college life reflect and support the overall goals and purposes of higher education. In addition, some interviews describe school culture and practice and how they serve to implement several of the educational values and goals.
Before exploring how these themes are expressed in this book, it is important to note that it is not the purpose of the project to “export” a model of education that is rooted in U.S. experience or culture. Nor is it the intention to present Harvard as an “ideal” educational institution. Haiqin and Justin (Zheng Tao) saw an extraordinary opportunity to listen in depth to major figures in education who happen to be located in and around Harvard, who between them reflect in their work, thinking, and practice a critical perspective on
What all the interviews do have in common is the recognition of contemporary change, and the need for education to be proactive in making good decisions to ensure a positive future. Readers from all cultures can draw their own implications for local concerns and goals. Of especial note are the interviews with Richard Miller, the visionary founding President of Olin College of Engineering. He has drawn upon many of the ideas expressed in these interviews in deliberately creating an institution and educational philosophy that aims to realize the goals that emerge in the themes. In so doing he has built a college which not only vividly represents contemporary cutting-edge thinking but also revolutionizes how engineering education is conceptualized in the U.S.
Values and Goals
Under the theme of values and goals for education, the qualities of responsibility and finding purpose and living one’s life within a frame of values are particularly explored by Harry Lewis, Arthur Kleinman, and Helen Haste. Lewis especially focuses on the importance of having personal goals for one’s education that are not geared to material rewards or status only, and they emphasize how students must recognize that they are being prepared for taking responsibility and being agents of purpose. Students must also be able to reflect on the moral implications of what they are doing, and further, what is happening in society and how they may personally impact this. Kleinman has written extensively on how we should conceptualize the “adequate life”. He also argues that we should take note of how different cultures define their values, and how far we can translate such values across cultures. An example is the concept of “endurance” which has deep meaning in China, not entirely matched in Western culture. Haste explores the idea of what competences we need to manage contemporary life and to be able to take responsibility.
Critical thinking, the capacity for informed debate and for effective communication are extensively valued goals of education, and also are highly desirable in society as a whole; they should be fostered by pedagogic practices and providing relevant experience for students. Paul Harris, Harry Lewis, and Catherine Elgin especially note this, and also note the threats to it. Elgin points out that progress and innovation in ideas, including science, derive from not
The importance of exposure to different disciplines, and working across disciplinary boundaries, especially arts, science, and humanities, is central to two educational goal themes. The first is that producing societal and cultural innovation and creative development depends on the capacity for integrating across different fields, drawing from a broad canvas and range of perspectives. The second focuses more on the individual’s learning experience; exposure to a wide curriculum, experiencing different ways of knowing in different disciplines, and in general crossing boundaries, are all part of a rich learning experience that opens up a wider worldview and potential for a range of expression. Both these perspectives are referred to by those interviewees, such as Harris and Haste, who are critical of narrow specialization, whether in school or college, in whatever country it occurs.
Catherine Elgin argues that treating the arts as a “frill” in relation to STEM-heavy education misses the historical perspectives on how art and the humanities have intertwined, and how innovative metaphors and images are crucial for new thought in all fields. Charles Langmuir also explores this in relation to his inspiring approach in general education courses across Harvard, in which understanding the history of the universe bridges many disciplines as well as giving students a global perspective.
How Does Development Take Place?
The second theme concerns developmental perspectives; how does our understanding of core developmental processes inform both what is possible for education, and what is desirable to foster in order to arrive at desirable goals? Robert Selman, Richard Weissbourd, and Hunter Gehlbach particularly address these questions, primarily within a broad framework of the development of moral, ethical, and social-emotional skills and orientations. Underlying their perspectives is the implication that without a good base in emotional and interpersonal development, other more cognitive or decision-making abilities will not flourish. Many of the interviewees endorse this position in that they stress the importance both of compassion and having sensitivity to emotion, and also the vital role of communication and interpersonal skills – for example Lewis, Kleinman, and Haste.
Media, Technology, and Communication
The third theme concerns the role of media in education. The impact of digital technology on education over the last thirty years has been huge, most especially since the pandemic began, as schools worldwide have had to make dramatic adjustments in the delivery of learning. The effects have changed some core ideas about what is the best effective means to transmit established material and curricula, but they also have opened up entirely new ways to teach and assess. How far can we go in developing large-scale distance learning? How can we use technology for different kinds of group work or different ways of crossing disciplinary boundaries? How does technology help us to enhance education for people with disabilities? Christopher Dede is a pioneer in learning technologies and argues that digital skills should be integral to all education, not merely an add-on tool. He also argues for the importance of distinguishing doing conventional things better, and doing better new things. Thomas Hehir, who sadly died in June 2022, was a major figure in the field of disability education. He argues strongly for the importance of using digital texts and media innovatively not only for students with disabilities but all students.
Increasingly there are links between the media industry and educational practice. Joseph Blatt has had a long association with the highly influential Sesame Street program and many other examples of innovative
Writing is a primary skill that all professions require, and all disciplines. Nancy Sommers leads the leading-edge Harvard College Writing Program, a required course for all undergraduates which equips students to read critically and deeply and to write effectively and clearly.
What Makes Student Life a Rich Learning Experience?
The fourth theme within the interviews is the experience of being a student, and how this contributes to social, ethical, and intellectual development. While this theme implicitly runs through all aspects of the learning process, some interviews specifically addressed it, especially in the context of an institution’s social climate and structure. Jed Lippard has been extensively involved in charter schools in the U.S., which are largely independent of state control but are supported by state funding. They have enabled many experiments in education, but they are controversial. In particular, the system enables a school to meet needs and goals that are defined by local conditions, and to generate innovative methods for achieving them. Lippard provides a rich account of a variety of schools and of the debates around the movement.
Samuel Odamah and Stephen Lassonde describe how Harvard creates a supportive environment and structure for students that enables them to develop leadership and interpersonal skills, as well as providing the community context for their personal and academic growth. Tracy Elizabeth also describes her first-hand experiences of being a graduate student, and the challenges encountered.
The interviews with Richard Miller, Founding President of Olin College of Engineering, represent a very rich and inspiring consolidation and expression of many aspects of the themes outlined above. Olin College was established in 1999 and has already been recognized as a truly major and innovative institution, changing the face of engineering education in the U.S. Miller has received several very prestigious awards for his work. Olin College of Engineering is separated from Harvard, but Richard Miller was strongly influenced by several of the Harvard pioneers represented in this volume.
He believes that engineering education should expose students to the practical experience of group projects and problem solving, and to being very open to uncertainty and managing ambiguity, drawing on a range of disciplines and ways of thinking. An engineer should be someone “who envisions what has never been, and does whatever it takes to make it happen”. Miller identifies five “mindsets” which frame how the Olin College program is structured and the qualities they seek in applicants. These in many ways echo the themes and concepts that are expressed in the interviews with the Harvard faculty, and indeed they are applicable across the whole range of education, and globally.
The five mindsets are:
- –being collaborative and curious about people and difference,
- –interdisciplinary and wanting to explore and know about everything,
- –entrepreneurial, with vision, and optimistic about making the world better,
- –empathetic and caring about others especially those less fortunate,
- –globally aware.
Miller is an inspirational teacher and brilliant innovator. In the Olin College of Engineering, he has created a vibrant working institution that translates his vision into a viable manifestation of the kinds of ideas expressed in the interviews in this volume.
In Conclusion
Most of the contributors to this volume also have a record of translating their leading-edge ideas into real-life practice, and their accounts show us how this can be done and how transformatively effective it can be. That is why the slogan “Learning to change the world” is so appropriate for Harvard Graduate School of Education.
This project is extremely exciting and very timely. Haiqin Yu and Justin M. Thomas (Zheng Tao), and their team of committed interviewers, are to be heartily congratulated on a stupendous achievement that should have a major impact on the future of education, globally.