Today’s colleges and universities are called to educate global citizens who are capable of dealing with increasingly complex problems using information, the volume of which is growing exponentially. To meet this challenge in a cost-effective way, they must systematically exploit and harmonize all their physical and intellectual resources. Process Education is distinctive in that its systems-based approach is designed specifically to meet this need. The main areas of focus can be divided into four broad categories or quadrants. (Note: bolded words within the text below correspond to items in Figure 1.)
Quadrant One—Accountability
In the 21st century, colleges and universities are called to educate people whose knowledge, abilities, and values will enable our post-modern culture to deal with unprecedented, complex, and rapidly changing issues such as environmental risk, sustainable progress, and globalization. Moreover they are expected to meet these and many other stakeholder needs while embracing diversity, demonstrating social accountability, and being fiscally responsible. Process Education helps to ensure that the needs of stakeholders (both those internal to the institution such as faculty and students, and those external to the institution, such as parents, employers, and society at large) are met by helping institutions identify and meet quality standards using measures of effectiveness against which their development and accomplishments can be evaluated. A focus on success, which includes rewarding it, is one of the ways that Process Education helps to make the accountability process sustainable.
Quadrant Two—A Systems Based Approach
Process Education practitioners begin with a clear understanding of the culture and organization of each institution. They systematically and comprehensively exploit the complex and synergistic interplay between the work and thinking of strategically-designed communities of professional practice. Thus enabled by community structures, they assess their work, and mentor one another. Assessment is central and ubiquitous in this system. The Process Education approach to assessment is particularly powerful because feedback for growth considers both the normative (acknowledging values, meaning) and empirical (analyzing performance, knowledge) dimensions of performance. Performance is further enhanced by building on the synergy of the many perspectives and abilities afforded by academic communities of professional practice. This social structure allows participants to build on individual strengths and improve other areas. Finally, learning in each community is accelerated through strategic mentoring, whereby the abilities and maturity of experts are shared with relative novices in order to promote their development.
Quadrant Three—From Learning to Self-Growth
learning to learn) by helping learners to consciously develop key learning skills. Finally, it enables learners to develop and grow independently (self-growth) by helping them reflectively reveal and personally overcome the limitations of tacit assumptions, perspectives, learning skills, and beliefs.People who can embrace the complexity and pace of the modern world and deal proactively and thoughtfully with its challenges must have developed the intrinsic motivation to surmount personal limitations and biases, and will have acquired the necessary skills, especially in the affective domain, to grow independently. The hierarchy of teaching processes shown in this quadrant is the heart of Process Education, and it is this hierarchy, ultimately, that all academic performance areas support. The most fundamental aim of Process Education is to provide expert support for learning. It facilitates effective learning by providing teachers with a toolbox of teaching, facilitation, curriculum design, and assessment tools that are aligned with educational theory and documented best practices. Secondly, it improves learning (
Quadrant Four—Development at All Levels of Performance
Process Education ensures high quality and continuously improving performance of students, faculty, and administrators through developmental interventions in three key areas: instructional design, faculty development, and institutional development. Using documented best practices, applicable theory, and a collaborative learning approach, communities of professional practice enhance and align inputs, processes, and outcomes of each academic performance area. For example, instructional design enhances learning by improving teaching and aligning it with learning outcomes and incrementally increasing the challenge of goals for student learning. Similarly, faculty development enhances performance through judicious improvement and alignment of instructional design, educational theory, and teaching methods. Finally, the institution is developed through the systematic enhancement and alignment of systems, infrastructure, and culture.
Concluding Thoughts
Ultimately, the outcomes of all performance areas must meet the needs of stakeholders. Process Education assures this accountability by systematically helping institutions of higher education to set rational and challenging standards of quality and to develop measures of effectiveness against which performance can be evaluated, with the aim of rewarding success.
Figure 1 Role of Process Education in Fulfilling the Changing Mission of Higher Education
in the 21st Century