Seleceted Annotated Bibliography on General Education
Astin, Alexander W. What Matters in College? Four Critical Years Revisited. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992.
In exploring the relations between outcomes in college and features of the educational environment, Astin concludes that peer involvement and student/teacher interaction are far more significant in shaping persistence and achievement than curricular structure or particular content. Based on this and earlier research, Astin strongly endorses collaborative and other forms of active student learning.
-----."Involvement: The Cornerstone of Excellence." Change 17 (July/August 1985): 35-39.
Excellence often is defined in terms of resources (physical plant, library volumes, endowment) or reputation (faculty research, student test scores, graduates earning advanced degrees). Excellence in education, however, ought to mean developing the talent of students, indicated by the "value added" to the student by the college. Research shows that student involvement in the academic enterprise - in all of its forms - is the most powerful educational force.
Boyer, Ernest L. College: The Undergraduate Experience in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.
This book provides a comprehensive look at undergraduate education, drawing on national surveys of students and faculty members. It contains useful analyses and suggestions concerning the curriculum, faculty, and students as well as whole institutions. Boyer argues that general education and the college major should be mutually reinforcing.
Boyer, Ernest L., and Arthur Levine. A Quest for Common Leaming. Washington: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1981.
This volume argues that general-education revivals occur during times of social fragmentation and that general education functions to restore social bonds. Boyer and Levine recommend a core curriculum stressing concerns common to all people. Topics for a common core include the use of symbols, membership in groups and institutions, activities of production and consumption, relationships with nature, sense of time, and beliefs and values.
Carnochan, W. B. The Battleground of the Curriculum: Liberal Education and American Experience. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993.
Carnochan maintains that contemporary debates over the role of higher education within the United States and the "curriculm wars" being fought today are part of a controversy spanning the last two centuries. This book examines higher educational practices in the context of Americans' particular history and culture, and points out the social and historical constructedness of our concept of "liberal education."
Cheney, Lynne V. 50 Hours: A Core Curriculum for College Students. Washington: National Endowment for the Humanities, 1990.
This booklet argues that all students - whatever their academic major or intended career - should take fifty semester hours of work in general education. This work should be spread among several content and skill areas, which Cheney discusses with some specificity and illustrates through NEH-funded projects.
Gabelnick, Faith, Jean MacGregor, Robin S. Matthews, and Barbara Leigh Smith. Learning Commmities: Creating Connections among Students, Faculty, and Disciplines. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no. 41. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990.
Learning is an individual but not solitary activity, the authors argue; at its best it occurs in a community of leaners. The authors describe various forms of learning communities, the advantages for faculty members and students, strategies for developing them, and some of their consequences.
Gaff, Jerry G. "Avoiding the Potholes: Strategies for Reforming General Education." Educational Record 60 (Fall 1980): 50-59.
This paper is a primer for faculty and administrative leaders of a curriculum reform process. It stresses the importance of following an effective process, identifies forty-three procedures used by curriculum committees that lead to potholes, and discusses alternative strategies that may be more successful.
------. New Life for the College Curriculum: Assessing Achievements and Furthering Progress in the Reform of General Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991.
The first section discusses the need for curriculum reform and describes emerging curriculum trends. The second section contains the results of a survey analyzing the consequences of changes in general education reported by campus leaders. Gaff offers suggestions for making general education more central to academic life.
Gaff, Jerry G., James L. Ratcliff, and Associates. Handbook of the Undergraduate Curriculum: A Comprehensive Guide to Purposes, Structures, Practices, and Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996.
This comprehensive volume includes essays by higher education practitioners and scholars on all aspects of the undergraduate curriculum, including effective practices, research, management, and assessment. The book provides an overview of the debates and reforms shaping higher education today. The essays offer theoretical frameworks as well as program designs and instructional strategies for strengthening and transforming the curriculum.
Gardner, John N., Gretchen Van der Veer, and Associates. The Senior Year Experience: Facilitating Integration, Reflection, Closure, and Transition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998.
Sequel to the 1989 volume The Freshman Year Experience, this compilation of essays provides a blueprint of successful strategies and ideas to enrich students' final year of college. Viewing the senior year as one of student transition, the editors and contributors offer information on senior courses and programs as well as "practical strategies for improving the passage from College Curriculum."
-----.American Pluralism and the College Curriculum: Higher Education in a Diverse Democracy. Washington, DC, 1995.
The third report in the AAC&U's American Commitments initiative explores curriculum practices that help prepare all students for a diverse society. It makes specific recommendations for teaching diversity across the curriculum, in both general education and major programs, and it describes effective diversity courses and requirements in a broad range of institutions - large and small, public and private, two- and four-year.
Humphreys, Debra. General Education and American Commitments: A National Report on Diversity Courses and Requirements. Washington, DC: Association for American Colleges and Universities, 1997.
One of a series of publications emerging from the AAC&U's multi-project initiative, "American Commitments: Diversity, Democracy, and Liberal Learning," this report examines national trends in curricular transformation and traces the development of new intellectual and institutional frameworks for diversity in general education programs, courses, and requirements. It analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of various curriculum models and provides exemplary syllabi and diversity curricula.
Jeavons, Thomas. Learning for the Common Good: Liberal Education, Civic Education, and Teaching about Philanthropy. Foreword by Robert L. Payton. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges, 1991.
A classic analysis of the centrality of service learning in liberal education, accompanied by a study of student experiences in service-linked courses and numerous examples from every kind of campus. The author argues that liberal arts comes about philanthropy and volunteerism can improve the quality of undergraduate education in general.
Johnston, Joseph S. Jr., and Richard J. Edelstein. Beyond Borders: Profiles in International Education. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business, 1993.
Johnston and Edelstein recommend that international studies be integrated into the college curriculum as part of liberal education. Beginning with a comprehensive review of current literature in international studies, this monograph provides guidelines for the successful internationalization of higher education, as well as profiles of promising educational models and international studies initiatives undertaken by various colleges and universities.
Meacham Jack. Assessing General Education: A Questionnaire to Initiate Campus Conversations. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 1996.
Conceived as a way "to help college and university faculty and academic administrators initiate a conversation about general education," this questionnaire identifies 28 categories in which to think about and assess general education curricula. Educational practitioners can use this document to analyze their own curriculum and compare their own and others' perspectives on the core curriculum.
Network for Academic Renewal Talking Points on General Education: Institutional Package. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 1994.
The Institutional Package includes a workbook with a series of structured exercises on general education called "conversation starters," a case study of a revamped general education curriculum, and institutional policies promoting general education, all of which are included in the Individual Package, as well. In addition, the Institutional Package contains a 64-minute videotape from the 1991 AAC&U Asheville Institute on General Education and Proceedings of the 1991 Asheville Institute.
Project on Strong Foundations for General Education. Strong Foundations: Twelve Principles for Effective General Education Programs. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges, 1994.
This monograph recommends strategies and procedures for sustaining vitality and strength in general education. Twelve principles are drawn from practices at colleges and universities that have made a variety of improvements in general education curricula. Included are examples appropriate to all types of colleges and universities.
Schmitz, Betty. Core Curriculum and Cultural Pluralism: A Guide for Campus Planners. Washington, DC: Association for American Colleges, 1992.
This study reports on emerging models for multiculturalism in core curricula and provides a practical roadmap for academic leaders working to design new general education programs. it includes sample syllabi, core proposals, curriculum profiles and a step-by-step guide through the potholes of curriculum change and faculty development.
Schneider, Carol G. "Engaging Cultural Legacies: A Multidimensional Endeavor." Liberal Education 77 (May/June 1991): 2-7.
This introduction to a special issue of AAC&U's journal on the Association's Cultural Legacies project describes efforts to engage cultural diversity in core programs. This issue also contains brief reports on the core programs at seventeen of the sixty-three institutions participating in the Cultural Legacies project.
Schneider, Carol G., and Robert Shoenberg. Contemporary Understandings of Liberal Education. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges and Universities, 1998.
This discussion paper examines the emergence of broad agreement on what students ought to learn from thier baccalaureate studies and finds a strong trend toward collaborative, experiential, service, and integrative modes of learning. But the authors also contend that outdated structures, practices, and reward systems frustrate higher educations's ability to reap the full benefits of new directions in general education reform.
Task Group on General Education. A New Vitality in General Education:Planning, Teaching, and Supporting Effective Liberal Learning. Washington, DC: Association of American Colleges, 1988.
General education is defined as "the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that all of us use an live by during most of our lives - whether as parents, citizens, lovers, travelors, participants in the arts, leaders, volunteers, or good Samaritans." This monograph provides many examples of curricular alternatives, approaches to teaching and learning, and administrative support necessary for effective general education.
Zemky, Rober. Structure and Cohereme: Measuring the Undergraduate Curriculum. Washington, DC: AAC, 1989.
After studying more than twenty-five thousand student transcripts, Zemsky concludes that, "there is notable absence of structure and coherence in college and university curricula." This monograph discusses breadth and depth in college students' learning in light of the results.
