Beyond Reason and Tolerance: The Purpose and Practice of Higher Education [Kindle]

The major challenges facing higher education are often framed in terms of preparing students for life long learning. Society’s 21st century needs require civic minded individuals who have the intellectual and personal capabilities to constructively engage political, ethnic, and religious differences, work effectively, and live together with many different kinds of people in a more global society.

In this volume, Robert J. Thompson aims to influence the current conversation about the purposes and practices of higher education. Beyond Reason and Tolerance adopts a developmental science basis to inform the transformations in undergraduate educational practices that are necessary to empower students to act globally and constructively engage difference.

It synthesizes current scholarship regarding the nature and development of three core capacities deemed essential: A personal epistemology that reflects a sophisticated understanding of knowledge, beliefs, and ways of thinking; empathy and the capacity to understand the mental states of others; and an integrated identity that includes values, commitments, and a sense of agency for civic and social responsibility.