The impact of liberal arts education on Egyptian student identity and worldview: A study of the core curriculum of AUIC

• In Event: Round-Table Session 5
  In Round-table Session: Education Reform and Curricula in the MENA Region: Rethinking North-South Dichotomies

Proposal

The basic tenet of Liberal Arts Education is a solid belief in the primacy of holistic education. In contrast to other forms of higher education, it decidedly delves into the complicated task of engaging with student ontological, epistemological and axiological foundations. The central promise of a Liberal Arts Education program is its ability to “disorient ... and reorient” the mind in its attempt to ripen character (Harvard University, 2007). The primary goal of its curricular structure is to design a rich and diverse educational experience capable of engendering powerful dynamics, able to depict and profoundly stimulate complexities of human character, including motives, attitudes, and perceptions (King, Brown, Lindsay, & Vanhecke, 2007). In short, Liberal Arts Education advocates an enquiry about life at its very fundamental level.

By the turn of the third millennium, global educational policies shifted toward ameliorating occupational, vocational and technical education (Mundy, & Verger, 2015), approaches in which attention is geared towards achieving advanced proficiency and expertise at one particular area of knowledge. On the other hand, integrative attempts were more directed towards the Natural and Applied Sciences and Maths, into what became known as STEM initiatives (Freeman, Marginson, & Tytler, 2014). This trending pedagogical wave seems to have overshadowed the importance of Liberal Arts Education, and of Humanities education in general. In her global study, Kara Godwin (2013) recorded 183 Liberal Arts Education programs worldwide; 17 of which are located in the Middle East, with AUC being the only institution inside Egypt.

The mandate of Liberal Arts Education is to form/alter perceptions of oneself “identity”, and of the world “worldview”. Perhaps, no region in the world severely needs this more than the Middle East, where a crisis to adequately deliver such critical task is deeply rooted (Fahmy, 2017). In the midst of a turbulent socio-political environment, in which the youth are fiercely subjected to the competing forces of globalism, fundamentalism, and nationalism, and to struggles over power structures, a conflict is evidently created in the minds and hearts of the young populace; the most two important outcomes shaping out of it are: identity, and worldview (Gerson, & Neilson, 2014).

Pedagogical frameworks based on Liberal Arts Education offer unique platforms to educate Humanities. The American University in Cairo positions itself as one of the very few Liberal Arts Education institutions in the Middle East. It has a Core Curriculum program that places “identity” and “worldview” as its principal focus. According to the university, the Core Curriculum “strives to familiarize students with a diverse body of knowledge and intellectual tradition, and helps them understand themselves, in addition to their culture, society and place in the world” (The American University in Cairo, 2017).

As such, an evaluation of the unique model presented at AUC is worth investigating, coupled with several main questions: What is the impact of this Liberal Arts Education model - precisely, the Core Curriculum - on student identity and worldview? How do students respond to the Core Curriculum? And, how does the Core Curriculum entangle with the complex socio-political context?

This study evaluates the Core Curriculum program at AUC, and its impact on the identity and worldview of Egyptian students. In the process, it resolves to perceive the program specifically as an initiative of an educational medium across which curriculum planners, faculty and students dynamically interact. In other words, the study treats the Core Curriculum, not as a rigid content, but as an organic system subject to complex internal and external influences. The study asks questions about the Core Curriculum’s structure, about its delivery, and about its outcome; in doing so, it collects answers from planners, from teaching faculty and from students.

This research captures the dynamics of the Core Curriculum program among its constituencies. It employs mixed-methods to describe how planners, faculty and students perceive the program, and to unravel the complexity of interactions under study. It incorporates three levels of analysis: 1. Document analysis to trace the pedagogical shifts in the program, and comprehend its underlying philosophy and structure. 2. Analysis of qualitative interviews for selected faculty. 3. Analysis of semi-structured surveys for students.

Finally, the paper dedicates special attention to discussing the implications of its findings about the impact of the Core Curriculum at AUC, as a leading Liberal Arts Education model in Egypt and the Middle East, on student identity and worldview. In so doing, the paper means to make a much needed contribution on Liberal Arts Education in the Middle East, in general, and in Egypt, in specific.

List of References

Fahmy, K. (2017). The Crisis of the Humanities in Egypt. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 37(1), 142-148.

Freeman, B., Marginson, S., & Tytler, R. (Eds.). (2014). The age of STEM: educational policy and practice across the world in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Routledge.

Gerson, M. W., & Neilson, L. (2014). The importance of identity development, principled moral reasoning, and empathy as predictors of openness to diversity in emerging adults. SAGE Open, 4(4), 2158244014553584.

Godwin, K. A. (2013). The global emergence of liberal education: A comparative and exploratory study (Doctoral dissertation, Boston College).

Harvard University. (2007). Report of the Task Force on General Education. Cambridge, MA. Retrieved from: provost.umd.edu/SP07/HarvardGeneralEducationReport.pdf

King, P. M., Brown, M. K., Lindsay, N. K., & Vanhecke, J. R. (2007). Liberal arts student learning outcomes: An integrated approach. About Campus, 12(4), 2-9.

Mundy, K., & Verger, A. (2015). The World Bank and the global governance of education in a changing world order. International Journal of Educational Development, 40, 9-18.

The American University in Cairo. (2017). 2017-2018 Academic Catalogue. Cairo, EG. Retrieved from: catalog.aucegypt.edu/preview_program.php?catoid=20&poid=3681

Author

• Rami W. M. Guindi, The American University in Cairo