Identity, Learning, and the Liberal Arts

This volume examines the claims made for liberal learning and argues that we may indeed have good ground for our claims that liberal learning can play a transformative role in our students' lives if we can develop a conversational relationship between those in liberal studies and those who work with student development theory. Such a conversation reveals that the skills of academic inquiry inherent in liberal learning are the skills of personal development inherent in student development theory. By bringing both together, we can develop a composite to ground our claims about the transformative power of liberal learning and outline a pedagogical direction to realize in the classroom, in service learning, and in residential living/learning centers. The contributors to this volume bring their expertise in the core liberal arts disciplines and student development. They share their pragmatic experience in effecting quality liberal learning experiences for our students and do so in ways that can be easily put into practice in any campus setting. This is the 103rd volume in the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series "New Directions for Teaching and Learning".