Reflecting Critically On Our Efforts To Improve Teaching and Learning

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Donald Schön, in The Reflective Practitioner, describes how professionals act to solve the problems they have set for themselves. Peter Senge, in The Fifth Discipline, introduces the ideas of “mental models” and “learning horizons” to describe learning in organizations. These ideas form the basis of a critical analysis of efforts to improve the quality of teaching and learning in higher education over the last 25 years. (An earlier version of this paper was presented at the University of North Carolina Conference on Faculty Professional Development: Faculty Vitality Through Faculty Development. Chapel Hill, NC. June 1992)