Cultivating Inquiry-Driven Learners: A College Education for the 21st Century

May 13, 2013

Clifton Conrad proposes a unifying purpose for a college education: cultivating inquiry-driven learners who can develop promising ideas for successfully navigating the rapidly-changing and inequitable world of the 21st century. The current default purpose for a college education is to develop students as knowledge-inundated workplace commodities. This view emphasizes preparation for employment, and student learning primarily focuses upon knowledge transfer, much of which will have a shelf life of only a few years within the 21st century context. Instead, Conrad believes colleges and universities should prepare students to creatively engage real world-challenges, such as poverty, population growth, and inequitable class structures; environmental challenges; changes in technology; and dynamically-changing political, social, economic, and personal relationships.

Conrad and colleague Laura Dunek develop this idea in the book, Cultivating Inquiry-Driven Learners: A College Education for the Twenty-First Century, (Johns Hopkins U Press). More information is available here.