The CUSP LEARNING GOALS

1. The CUSP LEARNING GOALS • Critical and Creative Inquiry • Communication • Quantitative and Qualitative Literacy • Inclusive Practices • Ethics and Social Responsibility

2. Transformational Education Core Values at UW Bothell • We have an overriding commitment to providing our students with the best possible university education through challenging programs of study and innovative methods of instruction. We value engaging our students in transformational learning experiences that challenge their expectations, broaden their horizons, and stimulate their ambitions. • It is our goal to foster a passion for life-long learning, intellectual engagement, and respectful appreciation for others perspectives.

3. Engaged ScholarshipCore Values at UW Bothell • As scholars and learners, we embrace scholarship that is innovative and rigorous. We encourage intellectual contributions that transcend the boundaries of conventional disciplines and enhance the education of our students. • Our scholarship contributes to our region's dynamic economy and enhances the lives of its people. Awareness of and involvement in our community keeps us open, responsive, and responsible.

4. Inclusive Culture • Our diverse community promotes understanding and collaboration across disciplines, cultures, and beliefs. All students, staff, and faculty are both learners and teachers mutually engaged in a collective effort. • Our entrepre’neurial history has taught us that flexibility, responsiveness to change, and respect for multiple viewpoints are essential organizational capabilities. These principles will continue to guide our governance and commitment to the welfare of the whole.

5. Alfred North Whitehead, Philosopher, Educator, Mathematician, most noted for his Process Philosophy Live Ideas will lead to transformative learning “The whole book [The Aims of Education] is a protest against dead knowledge, that is to say against inert ideas.” See Whitehead in his Preface What Could Lead to Transformative Learning?Alfred North Whitehead(15 February 1861 – 30 December 1947)

6. Emeritus Professor of Adult and Continuing Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, Former Chairman, Department of Higher and Adult Education, and Director for Adult Education. Before coming to Teachers College, Professor Mezirow was Associate Dean for Statewide Programs, University of California Extension and Director, Division of Human Resource Development, Latin American Bureau, Agency for International Development. At Columbia University he established and directed a pioneering doctoral program in transformative learning, Adult Education Guided Independent Study (AEGIS). Jack MezirowLatest books include Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning (1991) and Fostering Critical Reflectionin Adulthood (with Associates, 1990).

7. Three Phases in Transformative Learning • "Transformative Learning" is a term that stems from Transformative Learning Theory (Mezirow, 1990, 1991, 2000), which describes a learning process of "becoming critically aware of one's own tacit assumptions and expectations and those of others and assessing their relevance for making an interpretation" (Mezirow, 2000, p. 4). • Merriam and Caffarella (1999, p. 321) codify Transformative Learning into three phases, including critical reflection, reflective discourse, action. Mezirow suggests that engaging in this process can result in frames of reference that are more permeable to additional amendments, reflective, inclusive, discriminating, and overall more emotionally capable of change. Rather than acting upon the “purposes, values, feelings, and meanings… we have uncritically assimilated from others” (Mezirow, 2000, p. 8), Transformative Learning often involves deep, powerful emotions or beliefs and is evidenced in action.

8. Perspective Transformationat Three Levels • At the core of Transformative Learning Theory, is the process of "Perspective Transformation." Clark (1991), identifies three dimensions to a perspective transformation: psychological (changes in understanding of the self), convictional (revision of belief systems), and behavioral (changes in lifestyle) (in Mezirow, 2000).

9. A Disorienting Dilemma • Perspective transformation leading to transformative learning, however, occurs much less frequently. Mezirow believes that it usually results from a disorienting dilemma, which is triggered by a life crisis or major life transition, although it may also result from an accumulation of transformations in meaning schemes over a period of time. Less dramatic predicaments, such as those created by a teacher, also promote transformation. • Meaning schemes are ways people make sense of experiences, deconstruct them, and act upon them in a rational way. Mezirow suggests this happens through a series of phases that begin with the disorienting dilemma and passes through several other phases ending with integration of the new perspective into the person's life. • An important part of transformative learning is for individuals to change their frames of reference by critically reflecting on their assumptions and beliefs and consciously making and implementing plans that bring about new ways of defining their worlds. This process is fundamentally rational and analytical.

10. Inclusive PracticesThe CUSP Learning Goals • IP Focus on how best to deepen the richness of human experience- with its differences of race, gender, ability, religion, age, language, sexual orientation, and class- by developing capacities to • identify our own and others' ways of knowing- verbal, visual, kinetic, auditory- and make use of those different capacities. • understand relationships between individuals, institutions, and authority. • compare and contrast different cultural voices, traditions, and ways of interacting with the world. • exchange ideas with different communities, both on campus and beyond.

11. What is inclusive Rich in life experience Enlarged intellectual horizon Is there any limit in an/the inclusive practices? What is exclusive Barren psychological/emotional/ideological landscape Narrow perspective Like a frog sitting at the bottom of a well, to quote a Chinese idiom A matter of survival—what happened to dinosaurs? Inclusion vs. ExclusionConsequences of Each

12. Romantic confidence The modernist notion of the self as unitary, stable, and transparent Are there any blind spots in the Romantic perspective regarding the self? Immanuel Kant argues that a human being should be treated not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself. Totality, if there were any, of the self is shattered; humanities are at crisis since World War I… dissociation of sensibility, the separation of thought from feeling, which T. S. Eliot diagnosed (as the weakness of English poetry from the Revolution of the 1640s until his own time). See his essay ‘The Metaphysical Poets’ (1921) Two consequences: Optimistic response—to celebrate freedom; to embrace the new world; to expand the self; Pessimistic response—to suffer from the so-called victim psychology; Autonomous Self vs. Fragmented SelfThe Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography by James Clifford

13. from Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (London: Longmans Green, 1889) • In all creation every thing one chooses, and over which one has any power, may be used merely as means; man alone, and with him every rational creature, is an end in himself. By virtue of the autonomy of his freedom he is the subject of the moral law, which is holy. Just for this reason every will, even every person’s own individual will, in relation to itself, is restricted to the condition of agreement with the autonomy of the rational being, that is to say, that it is not to be subject to any purpose which cannot accord with a law which might arise from the will of the passive subject himself; the latter is, therefore, never to be employed merely as means, but as itself also, concurrently, an end.  Chapter 3, p. 215

14. The Critique of Practical Reason (German: Kritik der praktischen Vernunft) is the second of Immanuel Kant's three critiques, first published in 1788. It follows on from his Critique of Pure Reason and deals with his moral philosophy. Immanuel Kant(22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804)

15. The Predicament of Culture James Clifford • The Predicament of Culture is a critical ethnography of the West in its changing relations with other societies. Analyzing cultural practices such as anthropology, travel writing, collecting, and museum displays of tribal art, Clifford shows authoritative accounts of other ways of life to be contingent fictions, now actively contested in postcolonial contexts. His critique raises questions of global significance: Who has the authority to speak for any group's identity and authenticity? What are the essential elements and boundaries of a culture? How do self and "the other" clash in the encounters of ethnography, travel, and modern interethnic relations? In discussions of ethnography, surrealism, museums, and emergent tribal arts, Clifford probes the late-twentieth century predicament of living simultaneously within, between, and after culture.

16. Identify Subject to ChangeRoot vs. Route • Throughout his book, Clifford argues that culture is now less a site of origin or roots than of translation and transplanting. This he terms the relationship between root and route. Identity is not something absolutely fixed; on route, we pick up new features, thus enriching the root.

17. Critical and Creative InquiryThe CUSP Learning Goals • joins reason and imagination to make, investigate, critique, and pursue meaning in the arts, humanities, and the social and natural sciences. It includes the ability to • employ different ways of creating, interpreting, and transmitting new ideas, works, and knowledge in a responsible manner. • make effective use of information across print, visual, electronic, and other media to seek, shape, and evaluate evidence. • respond, both critically and creatively, to a variety of texts, questions, and problems in order to draw informed conclusions • become more aware of personal and collective assumptions.

18. Ethics and Social ResponsibilityThe CUSP Learning Goals • Ethics and Social Responsibility explores our connections with each other across cultures, languages, natural resources, and values by learning to • articulate the relationships between local, national, and global events. • understand how values are shaped and influence decisions. • analyze the relationship between knowledge and ethics in specific contexts. • create connections between individual and social identities.

19. Quantitative and Qualitative Literacies The CUSP Learning Goals • Quantitative and Qualitative Literacies are complementary ways to understand problems, issues, and questions. These practices foster the ability to • design quantitative and qualitative methods to approach problems and inform evidence-based responses. • mobilize evidence across quantitative and qualitative skills, such as interpreting magnitudes, measurements, statistics, narratives, ethnographies, and maps. • understand how different types of data are generated, their range of precision, validity, and limits. • use symbolic representations- graphs, formulate, words, diagrams, maps, and equations- to identify, analyze, and communicate relationships among sets of information.        

20. qualitative reasoning • qualitative reasoning An artificial intelligence approach in which precise numerical quantities are avoided in favor of symbolic qualitative values. Variables take values from a quantity space, e.g. {high, low, zero}, and are processed by various qualitative calculi. Based on intuitive ideas about human reasoning (see imprecision), this formalism is proving valuable in modeling and reasoning about problems in diagnosis, process control, system verification, and explanation.

21. Quantitative Reasoning • Often, quantitative reasoning (QR) is assumed to be synonymous with mathematics, and, indeed, the two are inextricably linked. Yet there are differences, one of which is that while mathematics is primarily a discipline, QR is a skill, one with practical applications. A mathematician might take joy in abstraction, but the well-educated citizen can apply QR skills to daily contexts: for instance, understanding the power of compound interest or the uses and abuses of percentages; using fundamental statistical analysis to gauge the accuracy of a statistical study; or applying the principles of logic and rhetoric to real world arguments.

22. Quantitative Reasoning vs. Mathematics • Moreover, while mathematics is often exclusive, frequently with a language of its own, QR is inclusive, its language plain and everyday. In our information-rich - some might say information-overloaded - society, QR skills are especially important. We may no longer need to perform quantitative calculations by hand, but we do need to interpret them and judge their accuracy. Few people are trained to work with complex mathematical concepts, but all educated citizens should be able to understand mathematics well enough to develop informed opinions about quantitative concepts.

23. Some Examples in QR • To illustrate the point, here are some test questions taken from a freshman Quantitative Reasoning Study Packet at Wellesley College. Answering them requires quantitative skills that most educators would agree all educated citizens should possess.

24. Example 1 in QR • Officials estimate that 320,000 Boston-area party-goers attended the 1995 Independence Day celebration on the banks of the Charles River. They also estimate that the party-goers left behind 40 tons of garbage. Given that a ton equals 2,000 pounds, how many pounds of garbage did the average party-goer leave behind?

25. Key to Question 1 in QR • P=320,000 people • G=(40 x 2000)=80,000 pounds garbage • Pounds of garbage per person =G / P • 80,000 / 320,000=0.25 • 1/4 pound of garbage for every person.

26. Decode this • One year ago, a person invested $6,000 in a certain stock. Today, the value of the investment has risen to $7,200. If, instead, the person had invested $15,000 one year ago instead of $6,000, what would the investment's value be today? (Assume that the investment would increase by the same proportion.)

27. Steps to Take • Investment=$6000 • Value after one year=$7200 • Increase=$1200 • Rate of growth: .2 or 20% • Investment=$15,000 • Growth=.2 x 15,000= $3000 • Value after one year =$18,000

28. Double or Triple? • According to the Cable News Network (CNN), the number of injured in-line skaters (or "roller-bladers") was 184% larger in 1994 than it was in 1993. Did the number of injured skaters almost double, almost triple, or more than triple?

29. A Tricky Question? • This one is tricky. The problem states: “the number of injured . . . was 184% larger in 1994 than it was in 1993. • N= number of injuries in 1993 • M= number of injuries in 1994 • Reasoning: If the number injured were 100% larger, M=N+100%N • 184%*N= percentage increase in 1994 • Calculation: M=N + 1.84N = 2.84N • (a) Almost double? (double would be 2n) • (b) Almost triple? (triple would be 3n) * • (c) More than triple? (>3n) • (The principle is the same as in the investment example: the base number is added to the increase by a certain percentage).

30. The scientific revolution • During the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, scientific thought underwent a revolution. A new view of nature emerged, replacing the Greek view that had dominated science for almost 2,000 years. Science became an autonomous discipline, distinct from both philosophy and technology, and it came to be regarded as having utilitarian goals. By the end of this period, it may not be too much to say that science had replaced Christianityas the focal point of European civilization. Out of the ferment of the Renaissance and Reformation there arose a new view of science, bringing about the following transformations: the reeducation of common sense in favor of abstract reasoning; the substitution of a quantitative for a qualitative view of nature; the view of nature as a machine rather than as an organism; the development of an experimental method that sought definite answers to certain limited questions couched in the framework of specific theories; the acceptance of new criteria for explanation, stressing the “how” rather than the “why” that had characterized the Aristotelian search for final causes.

31. Divorce of Science from Philosophy • Before the nineteenth century the more eminent and distinguished scientists at least had always to some extent philosophized about their science, as their writings testify. And inasmuch as they regarded natural science as their main work, it is reasonable to assume that these testimonies understate the extent of their philosophizing. • In the nineteenth century a fashion grew up of separating natural scientists and philosophers into two professional bodies, each knowing little about the other's work and having little sympathy with it.

32. The Greek view of nature • Greek natural science was based on the principle that the world of nature is saturated or permeated by mind. Greek thinkers regarded the presence of mind in nature as the source of that regularity or orderliness in the natural worldwhose presence made a science of nature possible. The world of nature they regarded as a world of bodies in motion. The motions in themselves, according to Greek ideas, were due to vitality or 'soul'; but motion in itself is one thing, they believed, and orderliness another. They conceived mind, in all its manifestations, whether in human affairs or elsewhere, as a ruler,a dominating or regulating element, imposing order first upon itself and then upon everything belonging to it, primarily its own body and secondarily that body's environment.

33. Communication • Communication is the process of written, oral, performative, and multimedia interaction that enables us to share ideas and practices. This goal includes the ability to • communicate persuasively to different audiences with appropriate media. • practice writing in its many genres across the curriculum. (make a list of genres) • develop dialogical skills that include listening actively to alternative perspectives. • understand relationships between knowledge, power, and communication. (see Whitehead later)

34. Strong (Invest) Inventory • The Strong Interest Inventory (SII) is a psychological test used in career assessment. It is also frequently used for educational guidance as one of the most popular personality assessment tools. The test was developed in 1927 by psychologist E.K. Strong, Jr. to help people exiting the military find suitable jobs. It was revised later by Jo-Ida Hansen, and David Campbell. The modern version is based on the typology (Holland Codes) of psychologist John L. Holland. The newly revised inventory consists of 291 items, each of which asks you to indicate your preference from five responses.

35. Holland Codes • Holland Codes represent a set of personality types described in a theory of careers and vocational choice formulated by psychologist John L. Holland. Holland's theory argued that "the choice of a vocation is an expression of personality" and that the six factor typology he articulated could be used to describe both persons and work environments. His typology provides an interpretative structure for a number of different vocational interest surveys, including the two measures he developed: The Vocational Preference Inventory and the Self Directed Search. His model has been adopted by the U.S. Department of Labor for categorizing jobs relative to interests.

36. John L. Holland is an American psychologist who spent much of his career at Johns Hopkins University. He received his B.S. from the University of Omaha and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Holland is the creator of the best known and widely researched theory of career choice. It includes six personality types that are often abbreviated as RIASEC and are used to create the well known Holland Codes. The Holland Hexagon, image source: seriousjobseeker.com

37. Six Personality Types • Do'er (Realistic) • Realistic - practical, physical, hands-on, tool-oriented • Thinker (Investigative) • Investigative - analytical, intellectual, scientific, explorative • Creator (Artistic) • Artistic - creative, original, independent, chaotic • Helper (Social) • Social - cooperative, supporting, helping, healing/nurturing • Persuader (Enterprising) • Enterprising - competitive environments, leadership, persuading • Organizer (Conventional) • Conventional - detail-oriented, organizing, clerical

38. any person could be described as having interests associated with each of the six types in a descending order of preference • Holland's theory does not assume that a person is just one type or that there are "only six types of people in the world." Instead, he assumed that any person could be described as having interests associated with each of the six types in a descending order of preference. This assumption allows the Holland Codes to be used to describe 720 different personality patterns. As the theory is applied in interest inventories and job classifications, it is usually only the two or three most dominant codes that are used for vocational guidance. • In presenting his theory, Holland graphically represented the six types as arrayed on a hexagon. This graphic representation serves to describe the empirically determined correlations between the types. The shorter the distance between their corners on the hexagon, the more closely they are related.