Organizers and participants say this fall’s series of Lynch School of Education colloquia on educating the “whole person” – encompassing three major conferences in a five-week span – showcased the school’s leadership in an emerging field, while providing a much-needed forum for scholarly conversations.
“These events demonstrated the breadth of work we are doing on formative or whole-person education, and brought to campus an elite roster of researchers and practitioners who were drawn to the quality of that work,” said Stanton Wortham, the Charles F. Donovan, S.J., Dean of the Lynch School
With support from major foundations and national and international education associations, the three-part conference kicked off Oct. 18-20 with a convening of national and international leaders from the field of integrated supports for K-12 students living in poverty, led by Mary E. Walsh, Kearns Professor of Urban Education and Innovative Leadership and executive director of City Connects, the multi-city, evidence-based, urban student intervention program.
“The conference broke new ground,” said Walsh, whose event was funded by a grant from the American Educational Research Association. “Experts in human development, statistical methodology, educational evaluation, economics and other fields engaged questions whose answers will allow us to better support the whole child, especially in high-poverty schools.”
Among the 20 invited researchers was Henry Levin, the William H. Kilpatrick Professor of Economics and Education at Columbia University Teachers College, who pointed to implementation as a key challenge to the integrated school services model embodied by City Connects.
“Many schools lack the capacity for undertaking systematic approaches to evaluating the needs of every student and identifying and enlisting effective services in response. One of the fears is that schools will adopt the rhetoric of the approach without addressing it systematically or providing tailored and effective support services.”
Walsh, who seeks to “export” City Connects to more schools and cities, said, “We know these programs work, but we need to better understand why they work through deepened and expanded research.”
One day later, Lynch School Professors Andy Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley, in partnership with ASCD (formerly the Association for Supervision and Curriculum and Development), chaired “The Whole Child, Whole Person Summit.” Launched with an invitation-only pre-conference for 40 global researchers and policymakers, the preliminary session focused on shaping an agenda for future research in the field of emotional, social, and educational wellbeing, as well as whole-person development.
The main two-day event attracted nearly 200 local, national and international teachers, principals, superintendents and other education professionals who participated in panels and discussions on expanding the definition of academic achievement beyond content mastery and test scores.
“We wanted educators to think broadly about educational change and to tap their aspirations, not only for better schools, but for a better society,” explained Shirley.
Added Hargreaves, the Thomas Moore Brennan Professor of Teacher Education: “As the dissatisfaction with the narrowing of education’s exclusive focus on literacy and math competency of the past decade has grown, there’s been an upsurge in interest in social/emotional learning. BC took a leadership position, in partnership with ASCD, to express a bold and courageous vision for education that’s rooted in – and extended from – the University’s historical work in formative education.”
At the final conference (Nov. 15-17), Boisi Professor of Education and Public Policy Henry Braun led an effort to quantify what he’s characterized as the ultimate outcome of a liberal arts education: a life of meaning and purpose.
“Despite the varied, interdisciplinary backgrounds and research expertise of the attendees, all of the participants readily engaged and embraced the challenge to define the undefined,” reported Braun, whose session was funded by the Spencer Foundation. “The group truly trusted each other in their collaborative effort to wrestle this task to the ground.”
“It’s a valuable goal to take abstract ideas such as meaning and purpose, and bring them down in a way that educators could actually work with them,” said conference participant William Damon, a professor of education at the Stanford Graduate School of Education, director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, and a leading researcher on the development of purpose in life who authored the book The Path to Purpose.
“The first great step in that direction is to operationalize the ideas, which means eventually being able to actually pin down through assessment where a student has to go in order to fully develop a sense of purpose – and then how do you fill that gap?”
Braun affirmed that the conferees achieved an important, foundational step: identifying a targeted research agenda to help facilitate design of a tool that will quantify students’ progress toward leading fulfilling lives and contributing to their communities. He plans to pursue funding for the group to continue its quest.
Wortham expressed confidence in the school’s ability to take on the major action items from the colloquia: expanding the City Connects model to more schools; collaborating with ASCD to advance “whole person” education; developing assessments for formative education.
“We have a full plate, but we’re committed to achieving the respective objectives from each conference in an effort to attain the larger, longer-term goal of developing students – whether they’re K-12 or college-age – as whole people; to facilitate their success in school and life as a step toward leading purposeful lives.”
-Phil Gloudemans/University Communications