Q Z & at u i>> 09 | < mi mi 1 2 Change • November/December i 995 From Teachingto Learning- A New Paradigm for UndergraduateEducation By Robert B. Barr and John Tagg Thesignificant problems weface Under it, colleges have createdcomplex education from increasingly diverse cannot be solved at the same level of structuresto provide for the activity of students. Under the logic of the Instruc- thinkingwe were at when we created teaching conceived primarilyas deliv- tion Paradigm,colleges suffer from a them. ering 50-minute lectures- the mission serious design flaw: it is not possible to -Albert Einstein of a college is to deliver instruction. increase outputs without a correspond- Now, however, we are beginning to ing increase in costs, because any at- paradigmshift is tak- recognize thatour dominantparadigm tempt to increase outputs without ing hold in American mistakes a means for an end. It takes the increasing resources is a threatto quali- highereducation. In means or method- called "instruction" ty. If a college attemptsto increase its its briefest form, the or "teaching"- and makes it the col- productivityby increasingeither class paradigmthat has lege' s end or purpose.To say thatthe sizes or faculty workloads,for exam- governedour colleges purposeof colleges is to provide in- ple, academics will be quick to assume is this: A college is an institutionthat structionis like saying that GeneralMo- inexorable negative consequences for exists to provide instruction.Subtly but tors' business is to operateassembly educationalquality. profoundlywe are shifting to a new lines or that the purposeof medical care Just as importantly,the Instruction paradigm:A college is an institution is to fill hospital beds. We now see that Paradigmrests on conceptionsof teach- thatexists to produce learning. This our mission is not instructionbut rather ing thatare increasinglyrecognized as shift changes everything.It is both thatof producinglearning with every ineffective. As Alan Guskinpointed out needed and wanted. studentby whatevermeans work best. in a September/October1994 Change We call the traditional,dominant The shift to a "LearningParadigm" articlepremised on the shift from teach- paradigmthe "InstructionParadigm." liberates institutionsfrom a set of diffi- ing to learning,"the primary learning cult constraints.Today it is virtually environmentfor undergraduatestudents, RobertB. Barr is director of institutional impossible for them to respondeffec- the fairly passive lecture-discussionfor- researchand planning and John Tagg is tively to the challenge of stable or de- mat where faculty talk and most stu- associate professor of English at Palomar clining budgets while meeting the dents listen, is contraryto almost every College, San Marcos, California. increasing demandfor postsecondary principleof optimalsettings for student Change • November/December i 995 1 3 For many of us, learning." The Learning Paradigm ends To see what the Instruction Para- the lecture's privileged position, honor- digm is we need only look at the struc- the Learning Paradigm has ing in its place whatever approaches tures and behaviors of our colleges and serve best to prompt learning of particu- infer the governing principles and be- always lived in our hearts.... lar knowledge by particular students. liefs they reflect. But it is much more The Learning Paradigm also opens difficult to see the Learning Paradigm, But the heart's feeling up the truly inspiring goal that each which has yet to find complete expres- graduating class learns more than the sion in the structures and processes of has not lived clearly previous graduating class. In other any college. So we must imagine it. words, the Learning Paradigm envi- This is what we propose to do here. As and powerfully sions the institution itself as a learner- we outline its principles and elements, over time, it continuously learns how to we'll suggest some of their implications - in our heads. produce more learning with each gradu- for colleges but only some, because ating class, each entering student. the expression of principles in concrete structures depends on circumstances. It many of us, the Learning will take decades to work out many of Paradigm has always lived in our the Learning Paradigm's implications. hearts. As teachers, we want But we hope here that by making it above all else for our students to learn more explicit we will help colleagues to and succeed. But the heart's feeling has more fully recognize it and restructure not lived clearly and powerfully in our our institutions in its image. heads. Now, as the elements of the Learning Paradigm permeate the air, such a restructuring is needed our heads are beginning to understand is beyond question: the gap be- what our hearts have known. However, tween what we say we want of none of us has yet put all the elements higher education and what its structures of the Learning Paradigm together in a provide has never been wider. To use a conscious, integrated whole. distinction made by Chris Argyris and Lacking such a vision, we've wit- Donald Schon, the difference between nessed reformers advocate many of the our espoused theory and our theory-in- new paradigm's elements over the years, use is becoming distressingly notice- only to see few of them widely adopted. able. An "espoused theory," readers will The reason is that they have been applied recall, is the set of principles people of- piecemeal within the structures of a fer to explain their behavior; the princi- dominant paradigm that rejects or dis- ples we can infer from how people or torts them. Indeed, for two decades the their organizations actually behave is response to calls for reform from nation- their "theory-in-use." Right now, the In- al commissions and task forces generally struction Paradigm is our theory-in-use, has been an attempt to address the issues yet the espoused theories of most educa- within the framework of the Instruction tors more closely resemble components Paradigm. The movements thus generat- of the Learning Paradigm. The more we ed have most often failed, undone by the discover about how the mind works and contradictions within the traditional how students learn, the greater the dis- paradigm. For example, if students are parity between what we say and what we not learning to solve problems or think do. Thus so many of us feel increasingly critically, the old logic says we must constrained by a system increasingly at teach a class in thinking and make it a variance with what we believe. To build general education requirement. The logic the colleges we need for the 21st centu- is all too circular: What students are ry- to put our minds where our hearts - learning in the classroom doesn't address are, and rejoin acts with beliefs we their needs or ours; therefore, we must must consciously reject the Instruction bring them back into another classroom Paradigm and restructure what we do on and instruct them some more. The result the basis of the Learning Paradigm. is never what we hope for because, as Richard Paul, director of the Center for The Paradigms Critical Thinking observes glumly, "crit- When comparing alternative para- ical thinking is taught in the same way digms, we must take care: the two will that other courses have traditionally been seldom be as neatly parallel as our sum- taught, with an excess of lecture and in- mary chart suggests (see pages 16 and sufficient time for practice." 17 ). A paradigm is like the rules of a 1 4 Change • November/December i 995 game: one of the functionsof the rules is studentlearning. Students, the co-pro- seeks to maintaina high qualityof in- to define the playing field and domainof ducers of learning,can and must, of structionwithin them, mostly by assur- possibilitieson thatfield. But a new course, take responsibilityfor their own ing that faculty stay currentin their paradigmmay specify a game played on learning.Hence, responsibilityis a win- fields. If new knowledge or clients ap- a largeror smallerfield with a largeror win game wherein two agents take re- pear, so will new course work. The very smallerdomain of legitimatepossibili- sponsibility for the same outcome even purposeof the InstructionParadigm is ties. Indeed,the LearningParadigm ex- though neitheris in complete control of to offer courses. pandsthe playing field and domainof all the variables.When two agents take In the LearningParadigm, on the possibilitiesand it radicallychanges such responsibility,the resultingsyner- other hand, a college's purposeis not to variousaspects of the game. In the In- gy producespowerful results. transferknowledge but to createenvi- structionParadigm, a specific methodol- The idea that colleges cannot be re- ronmentsand experiences thatbring ogy determinesthe boundaryof what sponsible for learningflows from a dis- studentsto discover and construct colleges can do; in the Learning empoweringnotion of responsibility.If knowledge for themselves, to make stu- Paradigm,student learning and success we conceive of responsibilityas a fixed dents membersof communitiesof set the boundary.By the same token, not quantityin a zero-sum game, then stu- learnersthat make discoveries and solve all elementsof the new paradigmare dents must take responsibilityfor their problems.The college aims, in fact, to contraryto correspondingelements of own learning,and no one else can. This create a series of ever more powerful the old; the new includes many elements model generatesa concept of responsi- learningenvironments. The Learning of the old within its largerdomain of bility capable of assigning blame but Paradigmdoes not limit institutionsto a possibilities.The LearningParadigm not of empoweringthe most productive single means for empoweringstudents does not prohibitlecturing, for example. action. The concept of responsibilityas to learn;within its framework,effective Lecturingbecomes one of many possi- a frameworkfor action is quite differ- learningtechnologies are continually ble methods,all evaluatedon the basis ent: when one takes responsibility,one identified, developed, tested, imple- of theirability to promoteappropriate sets goals and then acts to achieve them, mented, and assessed againstone anoth- learning.