Honors Education And The Foundation Of Fairness

How can we support, develop and maintain higher education programs that focus on high academic achievement, while at the same time allowing equitable access to, and progress in, higher learning? This volume focuses not only on a diverse population in higher education, but on creating and supporting a population fundamentally created in, and informed by, fairness. The nature of fairness, and its many dimensions, underpins the discussions here. By focusing on equity, the contributors to this book shine light on conditions and instances of inequity. They explore questions of enrollment in honors programs, and about advising honors students. They discuss people with disabilities in honors programs and colleges, and the general existence or non-existence of civility. They advocate for supporting a wide range of identities and goals, collaboration, and types and styles of pedagogy.. This book considers the role of honors education in enhancing the educational opportunities for all, and presents a call to action to those who seek to do that.

This volume is constructed around several significant questions, relevant to every honors program and national perspective. These questions are: “How do various nations view honors education?”, “How do ideas about honors achievements compare internationally?”, “Who defines honors education in each nation and how similar are those definitions from place to place?”, and “What do nations consider most significant when an undergraduate is said to “graduate with honors”?” The cross-disciplinary, intersecting epistemology of honors education stands out worldwide. No matter whether it is known as “honors”, “honours” or “talent-development”, honors education is associated with a student-centric ethos of attainment-setting, and with comprehensive and often creative approaches to teaching and learning. Today, in our more globally connected world, there is good reason to closely and critically consider how an exploration of honors education worldwide can empower both educators and students to match personal and communal aspirations with educational outcomes.

Higher education, further education, vocational education and continuing education all refer to progression to a third educational step. That is, a step beyond secondary education, which itself is a step beyond elementary or primary education. While optional, continuing beyond secondary education most often suggests some form of need ‘to acquire advanced knowledge’. But advanced in what way? Advanced in focus? Advanced in depth? Advanced in application? Advanced in the range of knowledge of those who teach in it? Advanced in expectation? Honors education, which is present globally and is highlighted in the United States through a distinctive 100-year history, has reflected on, and continues to reflect on what ‘advanced’ higher education might entail. Consequently, here in Advancing Honors Education for Today and Tomorrow contributors consider some of the interests that strike them as significant in the present and future of advanced learning.

This volume is constructed around several significant questions, relevant to every honors program and national perspective. These questions are: "How do various nations view honors education?", "How do ideas about honors achievements compare internationally?", "Who defines honors education in each nation and how similar are those definitions from place to place?", and "What do nations consider most significant when an undergraduate is said to "graduate with honors"?" The cross-disciplinary, intersecting epistemology of honors education stands out worldwide. No matter whether it is known as "honors", "honours" or "talent-development", honors education is associated with a student-centric ethos of attainment-setting, and with comprehensive and often creative approaches to teaching and learning. Today, in our more globally connected world, there is good reason to closely and critically consider how an exploration of honors education worldwide can empower both educators and students to match personal and communal aspirations with educational outcomes.

In education, sorting students according to attainment is common. Such sorting clearly sets up the potential for exclusion, based on the attainment ideals and on the modes of selection. Ideals of inclusion suggest diversity, and those of equity, by reference to impartiality, suggest freedom from bias. Honors education, which celebrates excellence, and references “honor” and all that word and concept infers, heightens and promotes the principled recognition of attainment, giving rise to questions of diversity, equity and inclusion. The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), in its Ten Steps to Equity in Education, notes that inclusion is intertwined with fairness. How can honors education—and in the case of the discussions in this book, largely honors in US higher education—promote fairness, be diverse, and support equity? If it does not do so, how can it at all claim to be offering a principled version of what the National Collegiate Honors Council (USA) says are “opportunities for measurably broader, deeper, and more complex learning-centered and learner-directed experiences for its students”? In 2015, the National Society for Minorities in Honors (www.nsfmih.org) was launched in the USA to specifically explore, support and promote diversity, equity and inclusion in and across honors colleges and programs. The first annual NSFMIH conference was held at Oakland University, Michigan. This book began at that inaugural conference, and has been enhanced by enthusiastic contributions beyond that event as well.

In education, sorting students according to attainment is common. Such sorting clearly sets up the potential for exclusion, based on the attainment ideals and on the modes of selection. Ideals of inclusion suggest diversity, and those of equity, by reference to impartiality, suggest freedom from bias. Honors education, which celebrates excellence, and references "honor" and all that word and concept infers, heightens and promotes the principled recognition of attainment, giving rise to questions of diversity, equity and inclusion. The Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), in its Ten Steps to Equity in Education, notes that inclusion is intertwined with fairness. How can honors education--and in the case of the discussions in this book, largely honors in US higher education--promote fairness, be diverse, and support equity? If it does not do so, how can it at all claim to be offering a principled version of what the National Collegiate Honors Council (USA) says are "opportunities for measurably broader, deeper, and more complex learning-centered and learner-directed experiences for its students"? In 2015, the National Society for Minorities in Honors (www.nsfmih.org) was launched in the USA to specifically explore, support and promote diversity, equity and inclusion in and across honors colleges and programs. The first annual NSFMIH conference was held at Oakland University, Michigan. This book began at that inaugural conference, and has been enhanced by enthusiastic contributions beyond that event as well.

This volume is constructed around several significant questions, relevant to every honors program and national perspective. These questions are: â oeHow do various nations view honors education?â , â oeHow do ideas about honors achievements compare internationally?â , â oeWho defines honors education in each nation and how similar are those definitions from place to place?â , and â oeWhat do nations consider most significant when an undergraduate is said to â oegraduate with honorsâ ?â The cross-disciplinary, intersecting epistemology of honors education stands out worldwide. No matter whether it is known as â oehonorsâ , â oehonoursâ or â oetalent-developmentâ , honors education is associated with a student-centric ethos of attainment-setting, and with comprehensive and often creative approaches to teaching and learning. Today, in our more globally connected world, there is good reason to closely and critically consider how an exploration of honors education worldwide can empower both educators and students to match personal and communal aspirations with educational outcomes.

Includes index.

"The argument I make here is that each of us in honors in America is naïve if we believe that honors does not have to change integrally, significantly, if we are to continue to be productive players on the world stage as well as on the campuses of our home institutions. Thus, in what one might think of as the twilight of my career, I am asking for a spotlight on engagement, diversity, equity, and inclusion in honors, and I am sending out a call to each reader of this monograph and the previous diversity monograph, Setting the Table for Diversity, that for social justice to exist, diversity, equity, and inclusion for all must become what we in honors are about, centrally, obsessively, perennially. This has to be our mission, the dawn of our new morning. We cannot remain in mourning instead for a dream of honors as an exclusive domain, nor can we remain with a vision of our home honors programs or honors colleges as doing enough simply by maintaining a kind of philosophical status quo in regard to whatever we have already achieved in honors on our home campuses. There are no laurels sufficient for us to rest upon"--Page 4 of cover.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The acclaimed social psychologist challenges conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to conservatives and liberals alike—a “landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself” (The New York Times Book Review). Drawing on his twenty-five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, Jonathan Haidt shows how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings. He shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about right and wrong, and he shows why each side is actually right about many of its central concerns. In this subtle yet accessible book, Haidt gives you the key to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our eternal divisions and conflicts. If you’re ready to trade in anger for understanding, read The Righteous Mind.