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Holistic student learning has been a hallmark of U.S. higher education since the early 20th Century when the American Council on Education (ACE) published the "Student Personnel Point of View" (SPPV) in 1937, reaffirming time and again that learning happens both inside and outside of the classroom. To consider students' holistic development, various scholars and organizations have developed learning taxonomies and learning outcome frameworks. The Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) provides tools and resources to guide the development of holistic learning and development outcomes that employers and higher education professionals wish to see in college graduates. CAS consists of a consortium of experts from various areas of higher education engaged in developing standards for professional practice as well as resources for self-assessment for functional areas of student support in higher education. Based in holistic learning and incorporating 47 functional areas involved in student learning and development, the CAS Standards serve as a validated, reliable resource in this data-driven, accountability-focused higher education environment. CAS Standards align with multiple other learning frameworks, are endorsed by higher education organizations and associations, and have multiple uses in research, evaluation, and assessment of student engagement, learning, and development. This paper explores how the CAS learning domains and dimensions can be used to identify and achieve various division-level or functional unit goals, to advance self-assessment, and to inform institutional effectiveness.

This publication examines current challenges with the articulation of learning and argues that a new means of articulating learning is necessary. Specifically, drawbacks and inefficiencies developed to accommodate the credit hour measure of student learning are examined. As an alternative, a new competency-based measure of learning is proposed. Benefits of such a system would include: (1) Efficiencies and clarity when transferring between postsecondary institutions; (2) Improved effectiveness of costly prior-learning assessment processes; (3) Simplification of capturing and sharing learning that occurred while serving in the military; (4) Enhancing the effectiveness of competency-based hiring processes, particularly in the contemporary workforce that is global and increasingly values contingent employment; (5) Improved articulation of work-based learning, including apprenticeships and internships; (6) Ability to adapt to existing technology and information systems; (7) Applicability toward digital and analog competency development and management systems; and (8) Adaptability to new, innovative, and global learning models. Further, a new taxonomy of learning, based on an index of competencies, would naturally aid competency-based hiring practices. These opinions are informed by existing literature as well as feedback from thought leaders representing various sectors

In this 21st century, we would like to prepare our learners to be ready and skilled in their chosen career. School leadership must examine how students will be able to meet the demands of today's academia. However, it is imperative to identify some key factors needed in providing learning opportunities for today's students. A teacher from a public elementary school named some critical issues faced by educators. These issues concern increasing test scores, increasing parent involvement in school activities, and increasing intervention on academic struggling students (C. B. Aldy, personal communication, September 21, 2018). School leaders and educators must be aware and proactive in managing these problems at its early stage. Our young learners will eventually be in a competitive world where they need to demonstrate their knowledge, skills, and abilities.

The concept of evidence-based learning and teaching is complex and multifaceted. The European University Association (EUA) Learning & Teaching Thematic Peer Group on "Evidence-based approaches to learning and teaching" understands it as connecting learning and teaching to evidence-based methods, strategies and processes through the cultivation of an institutional culture that is committed to continuous improvement of student learning. This paper presents the work and conclusions of the group, which explored how evidence-based approaches to learning and teaching could be adopted at a larger scale and developed further at higher education institutions across Europe.

The educational discourse in recent years in Australia, and in particular NSW has been on advancing the status of the teaching profession through the development of a framework of standards, and by supporting the nature of teachers' work in addition to improving student-learning outcomes. The close link between student learning outcomes and quality mathematics teaching has resulted in the call for an increase in teacher accountability and quality. This paper is an exploration of the relevant literature that focused on the professionalisation of the teaching profession in Australia and its potential impact on teaching in Australia. [For the complete proceedings, "Shaping the Future of Mathematics Education. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Mathematics Education Research Group of Australasia (33rd, Freemantle, Western Australia, Australia, July 3-7, 2010)," see ED520764.]

A healthy, engaged community depends on people achieving to the best of their potential, contributing actively to the economy and public well-being, and helping the next generation to thrive. A complex set of intertwined social and biological factors influences people's motivation to participate actively and productively in schools, jobs, and communities--and to persevere in the face of setbacks. To unlock this puzzle and ensure that all people have the opportunity to develop motivation to learn, improve skills, and make healthy choices, it would be helpful to understand the underlying mechanisms in the brain that develop in childhood and build the foundation for later complex behavior. This Working Paper from the National Scientific Council on the Developing Child explains the science behind motivation--the "wanting" system and the "liking" system--as well as how those systems develop, and how that development can be disrupted. It also dives into the implications of the science for parents, caregivers, and teachers, as well as policy and public systems.

Researchers at AAAS and BSCS have developed a six-week unit that aims to help middle school students learn important chemistry ideas that can be used to explain growth and repair in animals and plants. By integrating core physical and life science ideas and engaging students in the science practices of modeling and constructing explanations, the unit is designed to address major recommendations in national standards documents, including the National Research Council's "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" (2012). In this paper, the authors focus on the iterative design process used to select and refine a set of learning goals for the unit that target the three dimensions of science learning identified in the "Framework"--science core ideas, science practices, and crosscutting concepts. The paper also describes the data on alignment, classroom implementation, and student and teacher learning that informed the revision of the learning goals through three iterations of the unit. Numerous examples are provided to illustrate the kinds of design issues that arose and how they were resolved to address the challenges inherent in taking a standards-based approach to curriculum design. (Contains 5 tables and 3 figures.)

The Starting Strong Teaching and Learning International Survey 2018 is an international survey of staff and centre leaders working in early childhood education and care (ECEC), administered in ECEC centres belonging to ISCED Level 0.2, and, as an option, centres providing services for children under the age of 3. The Conceptual Framework provides an integrated theoretical and analytical underpinning to the survey that articulates its research foci and links to existing knowledge and evidence and policy questions. The key themes include those mainly concerned with: ECEC staff-child interaction (process quality of staff-child interaction and monitoring and assessment of children's development, well-being and learning); ECEC centre characteristics (structural quality characteristics, pedagogical and administrative leadership, climate, and stakeholder relations); ECEC leader and staff characteristics (background and initial preparation, professional development, well-being, professional beliefs about children's development, well-being and learning, and self-efficacy); and the cross-cutting theme of equity and diversity in the child group.

There is a shift occurring in the field of art education to empower students and teachers to design personalized, classroom-based assessments to support rich, complex, and unpredictable processes of learning in K-12 art (Beattie, 1997, 2006; Hafeli, 2001; Gates, 2017). In this paper, the author presents three recommendations for gathering information about student learning using qualitative assessment principles and approaches. By orienting to qualitative assessment approaches, teachers can exert confidence in developing tools to gather information about student learning in ways that expand beyond numerical data. The author advocates for qualitative assessments for use by teachers and students in K-12 classroom art studios who are working together to build a culture of creative idea development, in which students are engaged in individualized and cooperative research as part of the process of making and responding to works of art. Assessment White Papers for Art Education is a collection of essays that teach about current and established assessment practices and theories, and how they are relevant to all of the National Art Education Association's membership. This series offers a starting point for NAEA members--across all levels--as well as parents, administrators, and the general public to understand assessments' applications to art education.

The author critiques the progressive approach of two contemporary educational philosophers (English and Stengel) on the topic of fear and learning. Using a postmodern integral approach, this article examines the tendency of reductionism, individualism, and psychologism as part of a hegemonic liberalism and modernism in discourses on fear and learning commonly adopted by educators. A critical fear management/education and "Fear" Studies agenda are posited as both a location for critique of the hidden curriculum in fear studies in general, and as a new site for a more productive and emancipatory discourses on fear and "fear" for a post-9/11 world. (Contains 67 footnotes.)

This issues paper, one of a series of eight, is intended to distill formative evaluation questions on topics that are central to the development of the higher and further education information environment in the United Kingdom. The topic of this first issues paper is a conceptual framework that can help members of a project (information resource) development team discuss and clarify key issues about how the resource on which they are working is intended to help students learn. This paper offers two aids to thinking about student learning: a set of four images of learning and a set of six characteristics of learning. Of the four images (passive reception, learning as discovery, learning as knowledge deficit and accrual, and learning as guided construction), the last one fits best with current scientific ideas about learning. "Guided construction" gives the learner an active part in learning in a way that resembles the discovery approach while acknowledging the important role of external guidance. Six characteristics of good learning are that learning is: (1) active; (2) cumulative; (3) individual; (4) self-regulated; (5) goal-oriented; and (6) situated (in a social and physical context). Project developers should consider these aspects of learning when planning a resource. (Contains 10 references.) (SLD)

This issues paper, the third in a series of eight, is intended to distill formative evaluation questions on topics that are central to the development of the higher and further education information environment in the United Kingdom. The sets of ideas about "good" learning in issues papers 1 and 2 are no longer the private preserve of psychologists and educational theorists, but are beginning to enter into the thinking and conversation of teachers in higher education. The practice and discourse of learning and teaching in higher education is beginning to shift toward a more student-centered model in which the learner's cognitive activity (what the learner does) is acknowledged to be more important than teachers' historic preoccupations about syllabus coverage. The shift from teaching as the transmission of knowledge to teaching as the facilitation of learning has implications for the role of the teacher and for the creator of instructional resources. The focus can no longer be on creating learning resources without regard to their intended contexts. (Contains 11 references.) (SLD)

This issues paper, the second in a series of eight, is intended to distill formative evaluation questions on topics that are central to the development of the higher and further education information environment in the United Kingdom. Issues Paper 1 introduced a framework for thinking about "good" learning. This paper complements Issues Paper 1 by extending the framework and making it somewhat more detailed. It also presents ideas about good learning as a set of propositions: (1) learning should be extensive; (2) learning involves construction of understandings acceptable in the communities of practice; (3) learning is a natural outcome of the normal workings of communities of practice; (4) learning is situated and hard to transfer; (5) engagement and practice make good learning; (6) learning involves challenge and scaffolding; (7) learning must embody an idea of progression; (8) learning is conversational and interactive; (9) learning involves effective use of reflection; (10) learning is not significantly limited by fixed abilities; (11) motivation is designed into curriculum, not added by charismatic teaching; and (12) teaching contributes to learning in various ways. The implications for the Distributed National Electronic Resource project and other learning project development are discussed. (SLD)

This is the fifth paper published by The Centre for Literacy in its Working Papers on Literacy series, which presents new perspectives on literacy-related topics relevant to researchers, practitioners, and policy-makers. This paper was adapted from a longer manuscript submitted by Kieran Egan in 1999 for the UNESCO Award for Research in Adult Literacy. In this paper, Professor Egan applies a cross-disciplinary frame of reference to the question of literacy acquisition. His thesis is that the understanding of the world and the acquisition of literacy are shaped by a set of cognitive capacities or "tools" that are present in oral cultures and expand in the early stages of literacy. He suggests that many of these tools, including story, metaphor, jokes and humour, association, and more, could and should shape literacy teaching to both children and adults. He challenges the current focus on functional literacy and takes us back to pre-history and early Greek times to demonstrate the potential of drawing on the cognitive tools shared by participants in oral and literate cultures. (A bibliography is included.)

This briefing paper offers a selection of existing statements about the aims of an undergraduate education. It is neither a complete survey nor necessarily representative of all institutions. These examples provide some of the best and most clearly articulated statements of goals for student learning. The emphasis of this collection is on learning goals rather than curricular design, focusing on the "what" of learning rather than the "how." Sixteen statements, 12 from individual campuses and 4 from other sources, are included in the briefing paper. They tend to focus on communication, critical thinking and problem solving, ethical issues, quantitative reasoning, and other values-related concepts. (SLD)

Although institutional characteristics are assumed to influence student learning and intellectual development, this link has not been empirically confirmed. This study examined whether institutional mission, represented by Carnegie classification, is related to student learning and development. Participants were a stratified random sample of 1,500 undergraduates from across the United States. Strata were the six dominant Carnegie classifications for four-year colleges and universities. After controlling for student background characteristics, no meaningful differences were found in students perceptions of the college environment, levels of academic and social involvement, integration of information, or educational outcomes by Carnegie classification. (Contains 2 figures, 2 tables, and 50 references.) (Author/SLD)

This paper outlines a method for professional assessment of music therapy students' learning and recall. The purpose of the assessment is to examine the Model of Domain Learning (P. Alexander, 1997) within an Australian context and to provide a professional assessment for application within music therapy education. Despite the music therapy specific content, the assessment is applicable to students of other disciplines. It is also applicable to students for the purpose of investigating learning in terms of subject domain, recall, and interests. The assessment examines learners' individual recall abilities against their strategy use and interests. Within the Model of Domain Learning, three longer-term experience-based states are proposed: acclimation, competence, and expertise. Each of these stages is further divided into short-term stages. The assessment contains a domain knowledge test based on the music therapy postgraduate class, an individual interest measure, and a recall test. The assessment used in the study is attached. (Contains 12 references.) (SLD)

These narrative accounts follow a group of young adults searching for meaning during the ten years after their college graduation, and offer insights into how higher education might create conditions for this search to occur during college. This longitudinal study is based on interviews with 39 participants at various points during their undergraduate, graduate, and/or early working years for a 13-year period beginning in 1986 when they entered college. All participants were traditional-age students attending state institutions with a liberal arts focus. The primary focus of the college phase of the study was on epistemology, or students' assumptions about the limits, certainty, and criteria for knowing. Phase 2 of the research explored development after college. Sections of the paper examine the implications for educational practice of holistic education and the developmental dimensions of the search for meaning. Interview data inform discussions of complexities encountered in the search for meaning; realization of the need to search for meaning; construction of internal authority and meaning; and solidifying internal meaning-making. Interview responses were analyzed using grounded theory methodology. A final section discusses the creation of educational contexts for internal meaning-making. (Contains 21 references.) (CH)

In conjunction with the preparation of the second draft of the National Panel report of the Greater Expectations National Panel, a panel of the Association of American Colleges and Universities, this paper presents lists of promising practices for higher education change. The first section contains lists of pedagogical and institutional practices to advance student achievement. Pedagogical practices include those that center on complex cognitive development, field-based learning, integrative learning, and assessment. Teaching practices that motivate and challenge students and institutional arrangements to advance achievement are outlined. Section 2 contains a list of pedagogical and institutional practices to advance student achievement in chart form, linked to outcomes from the National Panels draft report. These focus on the learner who is enabled, informed, and responsible. Section 3 contains some suggestions of pedagogical and institutional practices from sources close to Greater Expectations, including the Greater Expectations Project on Accreditation and Assessment and a selection from "General Education: The Changing Agenda" by Jerry Gaff, published in 199 by the Association of American Colleges and Universities. (SLD)

This comparative case study investigated instructional methods that effectively enhance the development of students' critical thinking. Four institutions were selected for study; two at which students reported experiencing high degrees of growth in the ability to think critically, and two at which students reported experiencing low degrees of growth. Analysis of the data, which came primarily from 55 interviews and 28 classroom observations, suggests that the development of critical thinking is linked to an emphasis on writing and rewriting. At the two schools scoring high on an institutional growth in critical thinking (IGCT) measure, there was a strong focus on writing, a focus absent from the two schools that scored low on IGCT. At one school (high IGCT, low selectivity) a curricular policy stipulates that writing be an integral part of all course programs (which are taught by a multi-disciplinary team of faculty members). Another classroom factor that appears related to the development of critical thinking is an emphasis on class discussion, which again exists at the two high IGCT institutions. Appendices include a table showing selection criterion for case study sites, a summary of classroom observation data, and descriptions of categories for the observation data. (Contains 38 references.) (RH)

This paper discusses what is known about learning to date by emphasizing "connections" as necessary for learning. Knowledge about these connections can be placed into four categories: (1) neurological connections; (2) cognitive connections; (3) social connections; and (4) experiential connections. In terms of neurological connections, sensory input is crucial for newborns, but as long as the brain continues to be stimulated, our brains continue to make connections. Regarding cognitive connections, it has become apparent that people's minds think and understand things in terms of schemata. Therefore, it is easier to learn more complex concepts that fit into existing schemata than it is to learn something completely new. Deeper learning gets placed into schemata with time. Cognitive strategies can be broken down into cognitive learning and metacognitive strategies. These strategies are broken down and detailed in the document. Social connections refer to the interaction between the internal processes of the mind and how the mind grasps the external realities of knowledge. Making social connections between the various players at institutions of higher education may be an innovative strategy used in the near future. The last category is that of experiential connections, or making connections between experience and learning. Contains 28 references. (AMA)

This study evaluated two competing explanations of the learning-satisfaction relationship in the college experience. The first model represents a true relationship between reported learning and satisfaction, while the second model treats this relationship as an artifact of a halo effect. The study took place at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) and involved data collected in 1988 using a campus-wide assessment program where all seniors were administered a survey designed to elicit information about perceptions of their college experiences, satisfaction with college, and learning and development during college. In 1990, the same subjects were mailed an alumni survey containing many of the items from the senior survey, with 989 responses. The data were evaluated according to goodness-of-fit of the models, invariance of the measurement models across senior and alumni data, and multitrait-multimethod tests of the relationships between latent variables representing the same constructs for the senior and alumni data. Analyses revealed that treating the learning-satisfaction relationship as an artifact of a halo effect provided the best representation of the data. Although not conclusive, results suggested that educational researchers and assessment practitioners should be careful in interpreting self-reports of learning and development, particularly as they relate to satisfaction with college. Included are 47 references. (JB)

This study sought to measure what factors contribute to the learning and personal development of traditional and new majority students at six metropolitan institutions: University of Alabama, Birmingham; University of Louisville (Kentucky); Wichita State University (Kansas); University of Lowell (Massachusetts); Cleveland State University (Ohio); and University of Toledo (Ohio). The study used the College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ) to solicit information on student effort (involvement), student perception of their campus environment, and how much students believe they have gained in certain areas. Demographic information was also obtained on year-in-school, age, and enrollment status. The total number of subjects was 3,084. Results of factor analysis suggested the following conclusions: (1) learning gains of traditional-age full-time students and new majority students are affected by institutional environmental factors and student involvement factors; (2) learning gains are influenced by age and enrollment status; (3) age and enrollment status interact with each other and with involvement and environmental factors to affect gains in learning and personal development. Three appendixes contain CSEQ scales. Includes 21 references and 1 table. (JB)

Based on the work of the European University Association (EUA) Learning & Teaching Initiative and the outcomes of the 1st European Learning & Teaching Forum, this paper underlines the importance of learning and teaching (L&T) as a core mission and responsibility of universities. Student learning needs and success must remain at the centre of universities' educational mission. Building on this message, the position paper argues for a creative, active and innovative learning environment that is research-based and open to adapt to the changing needs of students and society. To support such endeavours, the paper emphasises the need to better recognise teaching as central to the academic profession, to institutionalise L&T enhancement through a broad-based and clear institutional strategy, and to further explore European and international cooperation on the topic. Above all, the paper advocates for sufficiently autonomous and funded universities that allow further development and implementation of high-quality L&T.