Faculty Perceptions of the Relation Between Liberal Arts and Professional, Vocational, and Skills-Based Programs of Study

Microsoft Word - Aquila.Dominic_DissReview 7.21.20.docxFaculty Perceptions of the Relation Between Liberal Arts and Professional, Vocational, and Skills-Based Programs of Study
by
A Dissertation
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of Texas Tech University in
Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for
the Degree of
DOCTOR OF EDUCATION
Dr. Dave Louis
Dr. Jon McNaughtan
August, 2020
Texas Tech University, Dominic A. Aquila, August 2020
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The great scale of this project has made me keenly aware of the beloved
community of minds and hearts who midwifed it into existence. Chief among them is my
wife, Diane Aquila, who has supported me through two dissertations. To her I dedicate
this work with my eternal love and my deepest gratitude.
I also benefitted from conversations about the educational experiences of my 6
daughters and 5 sons who shared them in common with me, around many dinner tables
abounding in good food and drink. My sincere thanks to each of them: Justin, Natalie,
Catherine, Dominick, Elizabeth, Victoria, Emiliana, Joseph, Anthony, Salvatore, and
Carmella.
Dr. Stephanie Jones, my committee chair, has my wholehearted gratitude and
appreciation for her guidance, expertise and patient encouragement at every stage of this
doctoral program, and especially during the writing of this dissertation. She exemplifies
the high skill, insightfulness, and empathic qualities of a great mentor. My gratitude also
extends to Dr. Dave Louis and Dr. Jon McNaughtan for their service on my dissertation
committee and the generous gift of their time. I am grateful to my colleagues in Cohort 3
whose collegiality was a model for all of us in the academy.
I wish also to acknowledge with gratitude and admiration the 15 faculty members
from the study institutions who participated in this research. Their enthusiasm for learning
and the value of higher education as a public good ring out on these pages.
Finally, I am thankful to Dr. Robert Ivany and Dr. Richard Ludwick, the two
Presidents of the University of St. Thomas who I had the privilege to serve as Provost, and
who supported me during this great adventure in continuous learning.
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ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................. xi
I. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1 The Public Interest in Work-Related Skills Over Liberal Education ............................... 2
Liberal Education and the Skills Gap Thesis .................................................................... 5
Liberal Education: From Disciplines to Pedagogy ........................................................... 8
Institutional Contexts for A Liberal Arts Education ...................................................... 10
Traditional liberal arts colleges ................................................................................ 10
General education and core curricula ....................................................................... 11
Purposes of a Liberal Education ..................................................................................... 12
Rival Traditions of Liberal Education: Rhetorical and Philosophical ............................ 17
Statement of the Problem ...................................................................................................... 18
Critique of the Practical Liberal Arts .............................................................................. 19
Study’s Problem in Practice ............................................................................................ 22
Interdisciplinary Collaboration ....................................................................................... 23
Research Questions ............................................................................................................... 29
Summary of Methodology .................................................................................................... 34
Definition of Terms ............................................................................................................... 37
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II. LITERATURE REVIEW ...................................................................................................... 43
Aims of a Liberal Education ................................................................................................. 50
Liberation ........................................................................................................................ 51
Liberal Education for Self-Knowing, Self-Mastery, and Purposeful Living ................. 56
Civic Education and Social Good ................................................................................... 63
Applied Liberal Learning: Pragmatism and Instrumentalism ........................................ 66
Institutional Contexts for Delivering a Liberal Education ................................................... 70
Small Residential Liberal Arts Colleges ......................................................................... 70
General Education and Core Curricula ........................................................................... 75
Honors Colleges .............................................................................................................. 80
Complicated Coexistence of Liberal and Applied Education .............................................. 86
Interdisciplinarity and the Liberal Arts and Applied Disciplines ......................................... 93
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Kuhn-MacIntyre Theory ............................................................................................... 107
Systems Theory ............................................................................................................. 111
Restatement of Research Questions .................................................................................... 116
Research Design .................................................................................................................. 116
Participants and Sampling ................................................................................................... 125
Semi-Structured Interviews, Using Open-Ended, and Depth-Probing Questions ....... 129
Data Analysis ...................................................................................................................... 131
Credibility ..................................................................................................................... 135
Transferability ............................................................................................................... 138
Dependability ................................................................................................................ 140
Confirmability ............................................................................................................... 141
Authenticity ................................................................................................................... 142
Context of the Study ..................................................................................................... 143
Context of the Researcher ............................................................................................. 144
Summary ............................................................................................................................. 146
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Data Collection Processes ............................................................................................. 150
Data Analysis Processes ............................................................................................... 152
Profiles of Participants ........................................................................................................ 158
Profiles of Participants .................................................................................................. 158
Aaron ....................................................................................................................... 158
Anthony ................................................................................................................... 158
Arthur ...................................................................................................................... 158
Beth ......................................................................................................................... 159
Cathy ....................................................................................................................... 159
Connie ..................................................................................................................... 159
Janet ........................................................................................................................ 159
Jeff ........................................................................................................................... 159
Joan ......................................................................................................................... 160
Marcia ..................................................................................................................... 160
Margaret .................................................................................................................. 160
Mark ........................................................................................................................ 160
Peter ........................................................................................................................ 160
Ted .......................................................................................................................... 161
Todd ........................................................................................................................ 161
Findings ............................................................................................................................... 161
Pedagogical Claims, Boundaries, and Common Spaces Between and ........................ 161 Among Academic Disciplines
Participants’ pre-collegiate experiences as foundation to the ............................... 162 understanding of academic disciplines
Participants’ undergraduate and graduate school education .................................. 171 relevant to their understanding of the norms and practices of their academic disciplines
How participants’ university teaching, research, publications deepened ............... 179 their understanding of their discipline and its relation to other university disciplines
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Summary of the pedagogical claims, boundaries, and common spaces ................. 186 between and among academic disciplines
Theoretical and Practical Knowledge, and Self-Development Skills .......................... 188 for Student Success
The usefulness of an undergraduate liberal arts education ..................................... 188
The interconnectedness of theory and practice ....................................................... 193
Integrating theory, practice, and self-development through special ...................... 200 programs and experiential learning
The role of technology in integrating theory, practice, and ................................... 206 students’ self-development
Summary of theoretical and practical knowledge, and .......................................... 209 self-development skills
Faculty Perception of and Experience with Interdisciplinarity .................................... 210
Professional risks associated with engaging in interdisciplinary projects ............. 211
Epistemological and disciplinary perspectives as potential barriers ...................... 221 to disciplinary collaboration barriers
Difficulties with negotiating institutional structures and culture ........................... 224
The integrative potential within individual disciplines .......................................... 229
Successful interdisciplinary projects ...................................................................... 232
Summary of faculty perceptions of and experience with interdisciplinarity ......... 243
Faculty Perceptions of and Experiences with Initiating and Sustaining ...................... 244 Interdisciplinary Dialog and Collaboration
Faculty led interdisciplinary initiatives .................................................................. 245
Faculty and administration interdisciplinary collaborations .................................. 252
Philanthropic support for interdisciplinary collaborations ..................................... 259
Summary of faculty perceptions of and experiences with initiating ...................... 264 and sustaining interdisciplinary dialog and collaboration
Summary ....................................................................................................................... 265
V. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ............................................................. 268
Overview of the Study ........................................................................................................ 268
Discussion of the Findings .................................................................................................. 271
Defining Pedagogical Claims, Boundaries, and Common Spaces ............................... 271 Between and Among Academic Disciplines
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Participants’ undergraduate education and their academic enculturation .............. 276
How participants’ teaching, service, and research shaped their disciplinary ......... 280 and interdisciplinary knowledge
Theoretical and Practical Knowledge, and Self-Development Skills .......................... 283
The utility of an undergraduate liberal arts education ............................................ 283
The interconnectedness of theory and practice ....................................................... 286
Integrating theory, practice, and self-development through special ...................... 289 programs and experiential learning
The role of technology ............................................................................................ 290
Faculty Perceptions of and Experience with Interdisciplinarity ................................... 291
Professional risk ...................................................................................................... 292
Negotiating institutional structures and culture ...................................................... 297
The integrative potential within individual disciplines .......................................... 300
Successful interdisciplinary projects ...................................................................... 302
Faculty Perceptions of and Experiences with Initiating and Sustaining ...................... 303 Interdisciplinary Dialog and Collaboration
Faculty led interdisciplinary initiatives .................................................................. 304
Faculty and administration interdisciplinary collaborations .................................. 305
Philanthropic support for interdisciplinary collaborations ..................................... 307
Implications for Higher Education Practice ........................................................................ 310
Recommendations for Higher Education Practice .............................................................. 317
Recommendations for Future Research .............................................................................. 332
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 334
REFERENCES .......................................................................................................................... 339
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STUDY FOR PROSPECTIVE FACULTY PARTICIPANTS
C. PRE-INTERVIEW PROTOCOL ....................................................................................... 398
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ABSTRACT
Liberal education, which has been foundational to American higher education
since the seventeenth century, is under increasing pressure to give an account of its value
to students, parents, and society. Driving this pressure are widely-held expectations that
an undergraduate education ought to provide students with the skills and abilities to
prosper immediately in the job market. Such expectations have revived a long-standing
debate on whether a liberal education is a good in itself, yielding indirect, utilitarian
benefits, or intrinsically practical and engaged closely with contemporary social and
economic realities. This debate has prompted another related, enduring debate within
higher education circles on the proper relationship between liberal education and the
professional and applied disciplines.
The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions and experiences of
faculty concerning the relation between the liberal arts and professional, vocational, and
skills-based undergraduate academic programs. The study participants were 15
purposefully selected faculty who taught at a Tier I, public urban university, a public,
urban university in service mainly to adult learners, and a private faith-based university,
all located in the Gulf Coast Region of Texas. This qualitative study used a collective
case study research design to identify and understand faculty perceptions of and
experiences with the relation and interaction of liberal education and the applied
academic disciplines. The settings for this study were private conference rooms and
faculty offices located on the campuses of the aforementioned universities. Data were
collected through multiple methods, including the lens of the researcher, semi-structured,
open-ended interviews, print and digital documents, field notes, and reflexive journaling.
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The constant-comparative method and a three-stage coding process were used to analyze
the collected data, develop categories and themes, and interpret and construct meaning.
This study’s results indicate that faculty favor an undergraduate education that
encourages student to value the play of ideas and the acquisition of practical skills.
Faculty also favor forming students in particular academic disciplines, but they believe
that such formation should simultaneously keep students alert to productive connections
with other disciplines. Faculty affirm that organizational structures and cultures should
encourage this sort of disciplinary-based interdisciplinarity. The study concludes with a
series of implications and recommendations that suggest how colleges and universities
can create cultures of learning that value thinking and doing equally, and structures that
enable a vibrant interdisciplinarity, rooted in strong disciplinary commitments.
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INTRODUCTION
Increasingly, since the Great Recession of 2008--the most protracted period of
economic decline in nearly 80 years, liberal education has had to give an account of its
value to students, parents, lawmakers, and the wider American public (Cohen, 2016;
Flaherty, 2017; Fromm, 2016; Gallup, Inc. [Gallup], 2016); Jaschik, 2017b; Korn, 2017;
Marcus, 2018; Massing, 2019). Moreover, insofar as liberal education is constitutive of
the identity of American higher education, public skepticism and challenges to the value
of liberal education often swell to include questions about the worth of a college or
university education (Bennett & Wilezol, 2013; Blumenstyk, 2015; Caplan, 2018;
Chamrro-Premuzic & Frankiewicz, 2019; Harden, 2012; Nussbaum, 2010; Pasquerella,
2019b; Schneider, 2015a; Spellings, 2018; Walsh, 2018).
Driving this pressure on liberal education, in particular, and higher education, in
general, are widely-held expectations that an undergraduate education ought to provide
students with the skills and abilities to prosper immediately in the job market (Hora,
2017; Hora, Benbow, & Oleson, 2016; Kuh, 2019; McCarthy, 2014). Such expectations
have revived a long-standing debate on the purpose of higher education, and more
precisely, the relation between a liberal arts education and professional, vocational, and
skills-based disciplines. Historically, this relation has been problematic and uneasy
(Dorn, 2017; Gallagher, 2016; Hora et al., 2016; Jones, 2016; Labaree, 2006, 2019; Pak,
2008; Roth, 2015; Veblen, 2015).
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This uneasiness is based on received notions of the contrasting purposes of liberal
and applied learning. A time-honored conception of the aim of a liberal arts education
holds that liberal learning is an education for attaining knowledge for knowledge’s sake,
for being over doing, and for sharpening the intellect with little or no concern for its
direct applicability to particular actual-world concerns (Goyette & Mullen, 2006; Jacobs,
2013; Kirk, 2017; Potts, 2010; Roth, 2015; Schneider, 2008; van Doren, 1943). Whereas,
the goal of learning in professional, vocational, and skills-based programs is providing
students with demonstrable know-how and mastery of whatever needs doing in society.
The practical nature of the applied disciplines in this formulation require only a casual
engagement with liberal learning (Brint, 2011; Hora et al., 2016; Labaree, 2019; Schrand,
2016). At the start of the second decade of the 21st-century, the balance between liberal
education and professional, vocational, and skills-based academic programs in the public
mind and in actual undergraduate enrollments has tilted significantly in favor of the latter
(Bolling, 2019; D'Orio, 2019; Hill & Pisacreta, 2019; Hora, 2017; Marcus, 2018;
Massing, 2019; Mead, 2017; Strauss, 2019; Weinberg, 2013; Williams, 2017).
The Public Interest in Work-Related Skills Over Liberal Education
Among the more widely publicized and symbolic instances of public disaffection
from a traditional liberal education is the attempt to revise significantly the Wisconsin
Idea, and, subsequently, the elimination of liberal arts programs and the expansion of 16
professional and skills-based programs at the Stephens Point campus of the University of
Wisconsin during the 2017-2018 academic year (Hora, 2017; Hora et al., 2016;
Sommerhauser, 2018; "UW-Stevens Point," 2018). For more than a century, the
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Wisconsin Idea expressed the University of Wisconsin’s commitment to serving the
public good in all of its dimensions (“The Wisconsin idea,” n.d.). As Dorn (2017) noted,
the Wisconsin Idea embodied American higher education’s commitment to civic
responsibility and the liberal education undergirding it. In 2015, Scott Walker, the
governor of Wisconsin, attempted to redirect the long-standing mission of the University
of Wisconsin away from public service and students’ intellectual formation and toward
workforce development. This move signified to Wong (2015), Hora (2017), and Jaschik
(2017b) a rejection of the historical purposes of a liberal education. Roberts (2017)
viewed Governor Walker’s redirection as an example of the neoliberalization of
American higher education. That is, a governmental use of power to organize
universities and colleges according to the values and necessities of a market economy.
In a public policy move similar to that of the Wisconsin case, the National
Governor's Association (NGA) took the position that the importance assigned to the
liberal arts in an undergraduate education is not only misplaced, but an obstacle to the
immediate, technical needs of the U.S. workforce (National Governors Association
[NGA], 2018; Sparks & Waits, 2011). As the institutions in society entrusted with
producing graduates with knowledge competencies, the NGA sought to incentivize
colleges and universities to reallocate resources from liberal education to skills-based
disciplines in order to fill a putative skills gap (Baumhardt & Julin, 2018; DeLong, 2014;
Hora et al., 2016; Iasevoli, 2016; Koc, 2018; Riggs, 2016; Weise & Christensen, 2014).
In line with the NGA’s aims, Florida’s Governor, Rick Scott, asserted that shifting
funding from the disciplines that comprise a liberal education to programs that lead
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directly to immediate employment is in Florida’s vital interest (Kelderman, 2011; Logue,
2016). Kentucky’s Governor, Matt Bevin, also in accord with the NGA agenda, urged
public universities to eliminate degree programs that do not lead their graduates to take
currently available well-paying, in-demand jobs (Seltzer, 2017).
Besides political leaders, Bill Gates, a preeminent business leader, education
philanthropist and public-policy influencer, also persistently advocated for financially
supporting only those curricula that best prepare graduates for quick entry into the
nation’s local economies (Cohen, 2016; Grantmakers for Education, 2019; Kolowich,
2011; Scott, 2013). The economist Bryan Caplan (2018) put the principle underlying
Gates’s position succinctly: the job market does not remunerate graduates for mastering
what it deems to be useless academic subjects.
The aforementioned educational proposals and policies appeared to reflect the
views of the American public. A 2019 New America survey, entitled Varying Degrees,
found that the Americans surveyed valued higher education primarily for its role in job
and career preparation, and less so for its liberal arts programs (Fishman, Nguyen,
Acosta, & Clark, 2019). The purpose of this survey was to measure Americans’
perceived knowledge of postsecondary education in the U.S. New America researchers
surveyed 2,029 Americans 18 years and older to learn about their perceptions of higher
education, its relation to economic mobility, and how state and federal governments
should prioritize their funding for higher education. New America commissioned the
non-partisan National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago to
develop the survey instrument collect the survey’s data, and analyze them. NORC’s
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survey source was AmeriSpeak, a probability-based panel that is representative of the
U.S. household population. NORC oversampled African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos,
Asian Americans, and those currently enrolled in an associate or bachelor's degree
program. Respondents from this screened sample completed the survey by phone or
through a website.
A strong majority of those surveyed perceived a college degree as providing
expanded job opportunities (Fishman, et al., 2019). Consistent with this perception the
survey respondents thought that universities and colleges should commit more of their
resources to job and career preparation. They favored shifting higher education’s focus
from programs associated with the traditional concerns of the liberal arts, such as
educating for citizenship and student self-development, to programs that support learning
and development towards lifelong careers, preparation for entering the workforce or
graduate school, and teaching work-related skills and knowledge (Fishman et al., 2019).
Liberal Education and the Skills Gap Thesis
Prompting public policy and private interest in educating principally for
workforce needs is the so-called skills-gap thesis (“Bridging the skills gap,” 2017; Hora,
2017). The skills gap is the real or perceived lacunae between the skills and abilities
employers need at any given moment in time, and their absence in a significant number
of college and high school graduates (Hora et al., 2016; Kaplan, 2017; McCarthy, 2014).
Advocates of the skills-gap thesis argued that American colleges and universities are
principally responsible for a skills gap in the American economy by failing to provide
students with the competencies required for success in an increasingly high-skilled,
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technical labor market (Annunziata, 2019; Bessen, 2014; “Bridging the skills gap,” 2017;
Hora, 2017; Kaplan, 2017).
Much of the unfulfilled demand for certain skills in short supply in the labor
market, however, is not new to the post-2008 economy. For example, shortages of labor
in the skilled trades, certain engineering professions, nursing, and information technology
pre-date 2008 (Cappelli, 2014; Pew Research Center, 2016). Critics of the skills-gap
thesis, such as Modestino, Shoag, and Ballance (2019), also pointed out that the urgency
and novelty assigned to it overstate the problem. They saw it as a short-term structural
mismatch in the workforce, a cyclical occurrence that is likely to return to an equilibrium
state. Commenting on the critique of the skills-gap thesis made by Modestino et al.
(2019), the editors of the Wall Street Journal concluded that the skills-gap thesis seemed
to be a justification on the part of employers for shifting the cost of training employees to
the government or higher education (“Two Tacos and a B.A., Please,” 2019).
Holding aside the question of whether or not the skills-gap thesis accurately
explains the current mismatch between the curricula of higher education and the needs of
the job market, Oppenheimer (2019) and Johannessen (2019) predicted a new wave of
workplace technologies for which there is little or no collegiate preparation. These new
technological developments, taken together, according to Neufeind, O’Reilly, and Ranft
(2018) and Schwab (2017, 2018), constitute a Fourth Industrial Revolution, which will
significantly reset the relationships between and among the physical, digital, and
biological spheres of human life. This next phase of the economy will require graduates
prepared to work and make advancements in genetics, artificial intelligence, quantum
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forms of energy technology, and biotechnology (Carlson, 2017a, 2017b; Gleason, 2018;
Hamilton, 2012; Johannessen, 2019; Neufeind, et al., 2018; Oppenheimer, 2019; Schwab,
2017, 2018; World Economic Forum [WEF], 2016; Zumbrun, 2015). Moreover, Dell
Technologies forecasted that 85% of the jobs in the global work force of 2030 have not
yet been created (Dell, 2019).
Proponents of the skills-gap…

Faculty Perceptions of the Relation Between Liberal Arts and Professional, Vocational, and Skills-Based Programs of Study

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