Beyond Affirmative Action Reframing the Context of Higher Education
- List Price: $59.95
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Pr
- Publish date: 02/01/2001
Why does academic culture, he asks, emphasize individual achievement over teamwork? Why do so many exams test discrete bits of knowledge rather than understanding of the big picture? Why is tenure awarded for scholarly publications rather than for sharing knowledge in diverse ways with students and a wider community? Why do undergraduates drop out? And why do so many bright graduate students and junior faculty -- including many minorities, women, and some majority males -- become disenchanted with academia or fail to be accepted and rewarded by the tenured faculty?
Ibarra introduces a theory of "multicontextuality", which proposes that many people learn better when teachers emphasize whole systems of knowledge and that education can create its greatest successes by offering and accepting many approaches to teaching and learning. This revolutionary paradigm also addresses why current thinking about academic systems and organizational culture, affirmative action, and diversity must be revised. Ibarra bases his groundbreaking proposals upon his own synthesis of findings from anthropological, educational, and psychological studies of how people from various cultures learn,as well as findings from extended interviews he conducted with Latinos and Latinas who pursued graduate degrees and then either became university faculty or chose other careers.