Developing Cognitive, Affective, and Spiritual Dimensions Necessary for Successful Interdisciplinary Studies Programs: A field-tested example.
Presented at the Learning Communities Conference: Interdisciplinary Innovations, Chicago • November, 1999 • Presentation Summary with Research Charts
Part I: Key Characteristics of the Knower at the Basis of Classroom Success
Higher education is undergoing a profound paradigm shift that goes to the heart of the educational enterprise itself — how students learn. This shift is manifesting as movement away from lecture/discussion-based classes to various models of active learning — problem-based learning, service learning, collaborative learning, interdisciplinary studies models, and so on.
This shift promises enormous gains for higher education, in both student learning and student satisfaction. Yet, in the equation of education, even this new paradigm, promising though it is, neglects the most important factor of all: the learners themselves. For all learning involves three fundamental components — a learner, a process of learning, and what is learned. What the students themselves bring to the classroom — their degree of alertness, intelligence, creativity, maturity, receptivity, motivation — determines the outcome of their education to a vastly greater extent than the curriculum we prepare for them, however ingenious and active it may be.
Thus the current paradigm shift is necessary but (as they say in analytical philosophy) not sufficient. Education requires a third and final paradigm shift; one that respects rigorous content and embraces active learning, but includes the as-yet neglected component of the education triad: directly developing the learners themselves.
What are the key factors that must be addressed for this third paradigm shift to be successful, the variables that directly influence what students (and teachers) bring to the learning process?
They might include:
Sleep. Both research and experience indicates that sleep-deprived students are poorer learners than sleep-refreshed learners. What are the implications of this for university life? What do our institutional characteristics reinforce in this area (libraries and computer labs open all night, for example)?
Diet. Studies on preschool children have demonstrated the importance of balanced and nutritious diet on learning ability. Do these results transfer to university students? What do irregular eating habits or diets of junk food diet do for university students’ learning ability?
Health. Health must also play a vital role in learning, including whether students are present or not for classroom activities. Are there ways of ensuring better health — physical, mental, and emotional — for students (and faculty) during their university careers?
Intelligence and creativity. Throughout this century, psychologists have found that intelligence growth levels off in adolescence, then declines; despite many attempts, no one has found a way to increase intelligence after the age of about 15 or 16. Creativity may be somewhat more amenable to growth, but no systematic way of developing broad creative abilities are in wide use. What are the actual limits of creative intelligence? Are there methods to stretch these boundaries?
Emotional balance. Emotional balance and the ability to focus on the present crucially influences successful student engagement with learning processes. You may have prepared a rich learning environment, with engaging and relevant activities. But students often come to your classroom struggling with rocky relationships, newly found loves, financial difficulties, or unfinished assignments. How does this internal noise influence your students’ attention?
Moral reasoning. What values and attitudes about ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity do students bring to the classroom? How do these value affect how they treat and interact with each other in group problem-solving environments? Group dynamics all but determines the success of many active learning strategies — and success in many occupations, since group work characterizes today’s professional environment. How do we ensure enlightened values in these contexts?
Part II: Transcendental Meditation as a Direct Approach to Developing Cognitive, Affective and Spiritual Dimensions of Successful Learners
All students at Maharishi University of Management (M.U.M.) practice the Transcendental Meditation technique twice daily as part of their academic routine. The technique is described as follows at www.tm.org:
“The Transcendental Meditation (TM®) technique is a simple, natural, procedure practiced for 15-20 minutes in the morning and evening, while sitting comfortably with the eyes closed. During this technique, the awareness settles down and experiences a unique state of restful alertness. As the body becomes deeply relaxed, the mind transcends all mental activity to experience the simplest form of awareness, Transcendental Consciousness, where consciousness is open to itself. This is the self-referral state consciousness.
The experience of Transcendental Consciousness develops the individual's latent creative potential while dissolving accumulated stress and fatigue through deep rest gained during the practice. This experience enlivens the creativity, dynamism, orderliness, and organizing power, which result in increasing effectiveness and success in daily life.
The Transcendental Meditation technique is scientific, requiring neither specific beliefs nor adoption of a particular lifestyle. The practice does not involve any effort or concentration. It is easy to learn and does not require any special ability. People of all ages, educational backgrounds, cultures, and religions in countries throughout the world practice the technique and enjoy its wide range of benefits.
Over 500 scientific research studies conducted during the past 25 years at more than 200 independent universities and research institutes in 30 countries have shown that the TM program benefits all areas of an individual's life: mind, body, behavior, and environment.”
M.U.M faculty. have noticed that, over time, meditating students exhibit positive changes in variables associated with successful learning. Research on cognitive, affective and spiritual dimensions of TM meditators confirms this experience.
Cognitive Dimensions of Successful Learners
Intelligence
Students at Maharishi International University (now M.U.M.), who regularly practiced Transcendental Meditation, increased significantly in intelligence over a 2-year period, compared to control subjects another Iowa university. This finding corroborates the results of two other studies showing increased IQ in Maharishi International University students.
Reference I: Transcendental Meditation and improved performance on intelligence-related measures: A longitudinal study, Personality and Individual Differences 12: 1105-1116, 1991.
Reference II: Longitudinal effects of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program on cognitive ability and cognitive style, Perceptual and Motor Skills 62: 731-738, 1986.
Creativity
This study used the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking to measure figural and verbal creativity in a control group and in a group that subsequently learned the Transcendental Meditation technique. On the posttest 5 months later, the Transcendental Meditation group scored significantly higher on figural originality and flexibility and on verbal fluency.
Reference I: The TM technique and creativity: A longitudinal study of Cornell University undergraduates, Journal of Creative Behavior 13: 169-190, 1979.
Reference II: A psychological investigation into the source of the effect of the Transcendental Meditation technique, (Ph.D. dissertation, York University) Dissertations Abstracts International 38, 7-B: 3372-3373, 1978
Field Independence
Field independence has been associated with a greater ability to assimilate and structure experience, greater organization of mind and cognitive clarity, improved memory, greater creative expression, and a stable internal frame of reference. The results show that practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique develops greater field independence. This improvement in Transcendental Meditation meditators is remarkable because it was previously thought that these basic perceptual abilities do not improve beyond early adulthood.
Reference I: Influence of Transcendental Meditation upon autokinetic perception, Perceptual Motor Skills 39: 1031-1034, 1974.
Reference II: Longitudinal effects of the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program on cognitive ability and cognitive style, Perceptual and Motor Skills 62: 731-738, 1986
Learning ability
College students instructed in Transcendental Meditation displayed significant improvements in performance over a 2-week period on a perceptual and short-term memory test involving the identification of familiar letter sequences presented rapidly. They were compared with subjects randomly assigned to a routine of twice- daily rest with eyes closed, and with subjects who made no change in their daily routine.
Reference: Meditation and flexibility of visual perception and verbal problem solving, Memory and Cognition 10: 207-215, 1982.
Affective Dimensions of Successful Learners
Reduced Anxiety
A statistical meta-analysis of all available studies (99 independent outcomes), indicated that the effect of Transcendental Meditation on reducing trait anxiety was approximately twice as great as that of all other meditation and relaxation techniques, including progressive muscle relaxation. Duration of study, dropout rate, and number of follow-up hours were statistically controlled, and samples were matched for type of poulation. Analysis also showed that the positive result for the TM program could not be attributed to subject expectation, experimenter bias, or quality of research design.
Reference: The effects of meditation and relaxation techniques on trait anxiety, a meta-analysis, Journal of Clinical Psychology 45: 957-974, 1989.
Self-actualization
Subjects practicing the Transcendental Meditation technique, measured once prior to beginning the technique and again two months later, showed significant positive improvements in personality traits when compared to a matched control group. The test used was the Personal Orientation Inventory (POI), which was developed by Shostrom to measure well-known psychologist Abraham Maslow’s concept of self-actualization. Two other studies also using the POI confirmed these results.
Reference I: Influence of Transcendental Meditation on a measure of self-actualization, Journal of Counseling Psychology 19: 184-187, 1972.
Reference II: Influence of Transcendental Meditation: a replication, Journal of Counseling Psychology 20: 565-566, 1973.
Reference III: Transcendental Meditation and psychological health, Perceptual and Motor Skills 39: 623-628, 1974.
Spiritual Dimensions of Successful Learners
Moral Reasoning
A study of 96 meditators, 20 non-meditators, and 10 pre-meditators measuring the relationship between practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique and moral reasoning, as measured by Kohlberg’s Moral Judgment Interview found the meditators scores for moral maturity were significantly higher than for non-meditators. It was also found that meditators exhibited significantly less preconventional (stage 2) thinking and significantly more conventional (stage 4) thinking than did non-meditators. No statistical difference was found between nonmeditators and pre-meditators, suggesting that differences between the nonmeditation and meditation groups in moral reasoning were due to practice of the Transcendental Meditation technique.
Reference I: A study of the relationship of the Transcendental Meditation program to Kolhberg’s stages of moral reasoning, Dissertation Abstracts International 36: 4361-4362, 1975.
Reference II: Kohlbergian cosmic perspective responses, EEG coherence, and the Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi program, Journal of Moral Education, 1983.
Ego Development
Subjects at M.U.M. scored higher at pre-test on Jane Loevinger's test of ego development than subjects at the other three universities. Only 3% scored in the second highest stage at one of the three control universities (0% scored at this level at the two other controls). Nine percent of M.U.M. students scored in the highest two stages at pre-test, but this may have been because many of these students had already been practicing TM for some years before they became students. At post-test, 3% of the subjects from two of the control universities scored in the highest stages, whereas 38% of the M.U.M. alumni scored at these levels. Loevinger and others have associated individuals functioning in the higher stages of ego development with manifesting wisdom.
Reference: Transcendental meditation and awakening wisdom: A 10-year longitudinal study of self-development (meditation). Dissertation Abstracts International 51(10): 5048B, 1990.
Part III. Transcendental Meditation, the Science of Creative Intelligenc,e and Interdisciplinary Studies programs
It is obvious that a number of the qualities cited above, that make for good learners in general, are also relevant to learning communities with interdisciplinary themes. In particular broad comprehension, cognitive flexibility, and the ability to synthesize diverse points of view (that characterizes growing wisdom) will help students adjust to interdisciplinary settings. At Maharishi University of Management, in addition developing these qualities directly through Transcendental Meditation, we have instituted a transdisciplinary approach to our curriculum that provides intellectual reinforcement for a diverse, yet integrated approach to knowledge.
The most common approach to interdisciplinary studies is thematic in which professors from multiple disciplines collaborate on courses organized around particular problems or issues. Exploratory research indicates, however, that specific cognitive and affective characteristics of faculty and students can either foster or hinder the success of interdisciplinary approaches. For example, a very practical challenge that occurs among faculty from different disciplines teaching theme-based courses, is the challenge of faculty with different training and backgrounds communicating effectively with each other (and therefore with the students). As the University of South Florida noted last year in assessing its learning communities experiments: “. . .we have been surprised to observe the difficulties faculty face when crossing disciplinary borders. While faculty may share pedagogical goals (to inspire critical thinking, for example), they may use different approaches to achieve goals. They may use conflicting measures to evaluate whether students have achieved goals. They may use different disciplinary terms to describe similar concepts.” [Reference: Moxley, J. (1998). Project Summary—The flexible learning community model. http://www.usf.edu/~writing/lc/evaluation97-98.html]
Overcoming this point of using different disciplinary terms to describe similar concepts is a goal of a transdisciplinary approach to interdisciplinary studies. Furthermore, some educators argue that thematic interdisciplinary studies should be supplemented with a transdisciplinary approach that teaches principles that are universal enough to integrate and synthesize student understanding of the disparate disciplines, to foster their ability to be ‘at home with all knowledge.’
In the last decade, modern theoretical physics has identified and mathematically described a unified field at the basis of all nature. All matter and energy in the universe are now understood to be excitations of this all-pervading unified field. This field is an area of life where all laws of nature are contained in seed form, a potential ‘home of all knowledge.’
Physics has gained its knowledge of the unified field through an objective approach to knowledge. Detailed knowledge of this area has been available for thousands of years, however, based upon the ancient Vedic tradition of gaining knowledge through exploration of deep levels of consciousness. At Maharishi University of Management we have incorporated into our curriculum a transdisciplinary approach, based on this Vedic knowledge and its techniques for research in consciousness. The transdisciplinary discipline used is called the Science of Creative Intelligence (SCI). SCI’s two primary components are: 1) An experiential approach, based on student and faculty practice of the Transcendental Meditation program, and 2) An intellectual approach in which faculty refer in all courses to a set of universal principles of natural law that can be located in all disciplines. These principles, derived from analysis of experiences during the Transcendental Meditation technique, are stated in a common language and provide students with a unified and coherent view of the relationship between all disciplines.
All students who attend M.U.M. take a 4 unit Science of Creative Intelligence course their first block. Our experience has been that intellectual understanding of these basic principles and qualities gained through this course serves a useful integrative function in our curriculum. The vocabulary of the SCI curriculum addresses the need for a common language that can mediate between the specialized languages of the disciplines. In addition, when faculty locate these principles and qualities in each of the different modern disciplines, students intuitively see the commonalties, as well as the differences, between these disciplines.
Teaching all disciplines in the light of these principles—that is, using the principles as advanced organizers when introducing new disciplinary material—helps the students to understand this new material as it is related to concepts they already understand. As an extra value, students also feel more connected to the disciplinary knowledge being presented when it is related to principles that are associated with a feature of their life that is intimate and personally important to them—their experience during TM.
We're faced with many challenging problems in the world today. It is the global nature of these problems that has, in part, stimulated the increasing interest in interdisciplinary studies programs and learning communities. I hope that the description of the role of TM and SCI in our curriculum, given in this session, has clarified the role they can play in communities of learning and interdisciplinary studies programs, of whatever size, to supplement and facilitate whatever other means we are already utilizing for developing these critically needed qualities in our faculty and students.