“Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 1980-2000”

This report examines the potential revolution in U.S. higher education public policies that require improved student learning. This revolution includes numerous teaching innovations activities that were initiated and sustained by external pressures and politically astute reformers. The report notes the criticism of U.S. elementary and secondary education and discusses how that criticism has spilled over into higher education. It examines reports which present the view that higher education is in deep need of reform. Faced with externally driven assessment and accountability movements, reformers have contended that the way to protect institutional autonomy from encroachment by external agencies is to focus on the importance of teaching and learning. Brief excerpts are presented from six voices of reform (Alexander Astin; Derek Bok and Richard Light; Ernest L. Boyer; K. Patricia Cross; and Lee Shulman) that highlight their vision of how to improve teaching and learning. Understanding that the assessment movement began as a drive for accountability at the national and state levels, rather than as local campus initiatives to improve teaching and learning, the paper offers insights on why major reform efforts were framed as demands that colleges and universities show better performance. The report concludes by examining the dilemmas that educational reformers face.