John Dewey, Constructed Knowing, and Faculty Practice at Empire State College
A prospective student sits down across my desk. “Is it really true that at Empire State College I don’t have to go to class and I can study whatever I want?” he asks. “I mean, like, do I have to take math to graduate?” I smile at this common concern.
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3. JOHN DEWEY, CONSTRUCTED KNOWING, AND FACULTY PRACTICE AT EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE
A prospective student sits down across my desk. “Is it really true that at Empire State College I don’t have to go to class and I can study whatever I want?” he asks. “I mean, like, do I have to take math to graduate?” I smile at this common concern. “Yep, you’re correct on both counts,” I tell him. “You’ll meet your instructors in individual appointments, and you’ll create a degree program (with some help from your mentor, of course) that meets your needs and interests. If math isn’t something you need or want, then you won’t have to take it.” “Are you kidding?” he exclaims. “I can really skip the classroom bit and only take courses that interest me?” I nod. “What are you interested in?” I ask. In response, he tells me that he’s been in the police department for more than 15 years. He was involved in computerizing the department and has now become, more or less, the department’s technology person. But he’ll be able to retire soon, he explains, and while he never did that well in community college, what he does enjoy – and indeed does even now in his spare time – is to study history. “So I really could spend my time reading history books, and still get a college degree without wasting a lot of time on stuff I’m not interested in?” he asks, still not quite believing that higher education might be more rewarding than he anticipated. FINDING DEWEY
This little vignette, written some 20 years ago, was intended as an opening for a book that would explore how a very simple change in procedure – periodic face-toface meetings with students individually rather than regularly scheduled classes – could radically transform higher education. Although the idea was recently revisited (Coulter & Mandell, 2013), the book itself was never written. Indeed, as the College moves increasingly toward standardized online instruction, such conversations are increasingly rare. Yet, it remains a striking reminder of what Empire State College originally sought to achieve. And today, since most Empire State College adult students are as busy and as capable of self-direction as in the past, the idea of maximal flexibility, even if only in terms of time and place (as is mostly the case today), is still very attractive to them. K. Jelly & A. Mandell (Eds.), Principles, Practices, and Creative Tensions in Progressive Higher Education, 65–90. © 2017 Sense Publishers. All rights reserved.
X. Coulter
What is notable about the imagined conversation – and indeed the proposed book – was its focus upon procedure. In retrospect, one might say that the faculty who would have authored this book thought about education from the inside out – a “connected” way of knowing that according to Belenky, Clinchy, Goldberger, and Tarule (1986) “comes from personal experience rather than the pronouncements of authorities” (p. 112). It is probably not surprising that faculty who saw themselves as mentors – that is, academic agents who help students progress along their own educational j
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