Abstract
In their 2011 study Academically Adrift, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa present consid-erable evidence that undergraduates in US colleges and universities make surprisinglylittle progress in their first two years of college. While acknowledging the force of thisargument, the authors ask whether Arum and Roksa’s evidence – about students’development of general skills including critical thinking, analytical reasoning, writingand problem solving – fully accounts for students’ learning in college. On the basis oftheir experiences as a faculty member who teaches literature and oversees humanitiesassessment at her university (Rosenthal) and as a former staff member of a foundationthat supports learning outcomes assessment at colleges and universities (Heiland), theauthors argue that a fuller understanding of what students learn in college wouldaccount for the contributions of the disciplines. Disciplinary learning contributesboth to the development of general skills like those listed above, and to the develop-ment of knowledge and skills particular to given fields. We in the humanities mustarticulate and assess the contributions made by our own fields, lest they be representedreductively, or, worse, not at all.
Bibliographic data
Heiland, Donna, and Laura J. Rosenthal. “More than limited learning: The case for focusing on the disciplines.” Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 12.1 (2013): 7-19.
