Accompanying the Student: the Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm and Prior Learning

At the University of San Francisco’s School of Management (SoM), working adults enrolled in our Bachelor of Science in Management degree completion program participate in a process of experience and reflection that prepares them, as our slogan proclaims, to “change the world from here.” Before our working adult students take a management or business class, they are introduced to a process we call the Interdisciplinary Studies Assessment (ISA), a prior learning opportunity that is distinctive for how it works within an Ignatian Pedagogical Paradigm (IPP) that recognizes that learning is a lifelong journey that can take place in a variety of settings. Through the ISA, students get credit not for life experience but credit for learning from life experience as demonstrated in the composition of course equivalent essays