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THE ACADEMIC DEVOLUTION? Movements to Reform Teaching and Learning in US Colleges and Universities, 1985-2010

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  • Steven Brint

Abstract

This paper traces the history of two reform movements organized more than two decades ago to improve teaching and learning in U.S. colleges and universities: the teaching reform movement, led by the liberal philanthropies, and the accountability movement, led by the states and, later, the regional accreditors. The paper concludes that the teaching reform movement helped to dislodge research as the accepted center of academic life and helped to spread progressive education methods throughout academe. Both of these changes are consistent with continuing low levels of student effort and limited student learning in college. The accountability movement, by contrast, has had little impact thus far due to frequent changes in accountability and institutional assessment mechanisms, and the tendency of universities to comply only minimally with the demands of accreditors for increased accountability and institutional assessment.

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  • Steven Brint, 2009. "THE ACADEMIC DEVOLUTION? Movements to Reform Teaching and Learning in US Colleges and Universities, 1985-2010," University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education qt18j2m7kh, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.
    • Handle: RePEc:cdl:cshedu:qt18j2m7kh
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    1. Stephen Klein & Roger Benjamin & Richard Shavelson & Roger Bolus, 2007. "The Collegiate Learning Assessment," Evaluation Review, , vol. 31(5), pages 415-439, October.
    2. Chatman, Steve, 2007. "Institutional Versus Academic Discipline Measures of Student Experience: A Matter of Relative Validity," University of California at Berkeley, Center for Studies in Higher Education qt81f4h1nn, Center for Studies in Higher Education, UC Berkeley.
    3. Michael K. McLendon & Donald E. Heller & Steven P. Young, 2005. "State Postsecondary Policy Innovation: Politics, Competition, and the Interstate Migration of Policy Ideas," The Journal of Higher Education, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 76(4), pages 363-400, July.
    4. Philip Babcock & Mindy Marks, 2011. "The Falling Time Cost of College: Evidence from Half a Century of Time Use Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(2), pages 468-478, May.
    5. Paul S. Adler & Seok-Woo Kwon & Charles Heckscher, 2008. "Perspective---Professional Work: The Emergence of Collaborative Community," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 19(2), pages 359-376, April.
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