Principles of Effective General Education

Principle 1: Strong General Education Programs Explicitly Answer the Ouestion : What is the Point of General Education?

Until we know why general education is important, we do not clearly know what we should teach or how we should teach it .... just as the courses in a major ought to be related to one another and ought to be ordered in relation to some center, so should we envisage general education as an organic whole whose parts join in expounding a ruling idea and in serving a common aim. We believe that it is the task of general education to prepare students to:

• understand and deal constructively with the diversity of the contemporary world
• construct a coherent framework for ongoing intellectual, ethical, and aesthetic growth
• develop lifelong competencies such as critical and creative thinking, written and oral communications, quantitative and qualitative reasoning and problem solving.

We believe that it is difficult to implement successfully a general education program when an institution does not have a vision as an operational guide to its instructional programs.

Principle 2: Strong General Education Programs Embody Institutional Mission

A living and vibrant educational vision must be solidly grounded in an institution's mission--its sense of public purpose, the character of its students, its geographical setting, etc. The questions of who are we and what is it we must do need to be answered before a coherent general education program cm be put in place.

Principle 3: Strong General Education Programs Continuously Strive for Educational Coherence

It is the task of general education to introduce students to the breadth of knowledge and also to the lifelong project of making sense and mating coherence out of the variety.This task involves cultivating the highest of critical thinking skills, the integrative habit of mind.

Means to achieve coherence include:

• One way to pursue coherence is through core course content
• Interdisciplinary courses represent another approach; they express the interconnectedness of knowledge by presenting multiple perspectives on issues, concepts, texts, or real world problems
• Another way to foster coherence emphasizes the acquisition of certain intellectual and communication skills.
• Another strategy to foster coherence is to draw attention to both the common ground and the differences among various processes or ways of knowing [this has come to connote much more than just distinctions among various disciplines]
• Focusing on the students' own processes of perceiving or making coherence constitutes another method

Principle 4: Strong General Education Programs are Self-Consciously Value-Based and Teach Social Responsibility

We should teach the conflicts-the political, moral, ethical, and political dimensions of the general education curriculum are present and unavoidable in program implementation, whether or not explicitly stated.

As part of their mission general education programs have a common responsibility to confront multiple problems of the modern world in such a way that students complete our programs prepared not only in their disciplines and professions but also in their abilities to image and to construct better--more humane, just and equitable--futures for themselves and others.

Principle 5: Strong General Education Programs Attend Carefully to Student Experience

They tailor both curricular and co-curricular experiences to engage and empower students and active learners, and recognize the diversity of needs and strengths that students bring with them.

Principle 6: Strong General Education Programs Are Consciously Designed So That They Will Continue to Evolve

In other words, a general education curriculum is not static; it is shaped by creative tensions--and remains subject to oscillations in the forces of the culture and institution within which it exists.

Programs must not just be able to change but in fact should expect and welcome change. Furthermore, strong programs institutionalize the possibility of change.

Without attention to generating this shared consciousness, institutions will likely begin anew the process of curriculum revision when the number of faculty who were not at the institution at the point when the curriculum was first adopted exceeds the number who participated in the process.A more ongoing self-evalution and modification process is needed

Principle 7: Strong General Education Programs Require and Foster Academic Community

Among students: Learning communities are mechanisms designed to provide conununity in institutions that are fragmented, whether by large enrollments, student diversity, large numbers of part-time students and faculty, or specialization and curricular divisions.

Between students and faculty: Several new pedagogics emphasize active classroom involvement on the part of students and foster close student-faculty work.

Among faculty: Interactions among faculty across disciplinary lines, whether in interdisciplinary curricular projects, shared faculty development initiatives, or simply conversations about intellectual issues are essential to sustain a sense of community.

Principle 8: Strong General Education Programs Have Strong Faculty and Administrative Leadership

A strong general education program will not be housed in a 'spare room' of the institution. It will have a specific administrator and an academic committee to provide oversight and direction; clearly established lines of authority, responsibility, and accountability for the curriculum.

Principle 9: Strong General Education Programs Cultivate Substantial and Enduring Support from Multiple Constituencies

Students who understand the role and purpose of general education and are committed to it are its best ambassadors. Working with peers, faculty, and administrators, students can gain a deeper sense of the purpose and values of the program, as well as a sense of its benefits for their futures.

Principle 10: Strong General Education Programs Ensure Continuing Support for Faculty, Especially as They Engage in Dialogues Across Academic Specialties

Principle 11: Strong General Education Programs Reach Beyond the Classroom to the Broad Range of Student Co-Curricular Experiences

General education programs strive to tear down some of the walls between disciplines, opening new doors or windows in the classroom walls dividing philosophy and political science or sociology and zoology.However, the even more formidable walls separating student's experiences of the curriculum from other components of their daily lives are strong countervailing forces to the best of these integrative efforts. Students see connections and ask questions about meaning and value in the curriculum insofar as these intellectual habits are encouraged by their involvements outside as well as inside the classroom. Progranmiing that allows students to take the academic discourse of the classroom into the community is particularly beneficial.

Principle 12: Strong General Education Program Assess and Monitor Progress Toward an Evolving Vision Through Ongoing Self-Reflection

We see assessment as the absolutely vital implementation link between the evolving general education program [principle 6] and the purposes it is to achieve as specified by the point of the program and its role in the mission of the institution [principles 1 and 2].

Too often goal statements for general education programs are the subject of intense debate, and initial design of curricula to meet these goals may involve faculty actively for limited periods of time. In this sense, general education curricula have often functioned as finished products, wrapped and hermetically sealed after periods of intensely involving debate and opened on a cyclical basis every ten years or so with trepidation and hesitation. Strong general education programs, on the other hand, involve faculty oversight groups in ongoing review of questions about teaching and learning; they include the perspectives of faculty, students, administrators, and external constituencies. Assessment of program effectiveness is particularly challenging because of the complex agenda of general education programs. Answers must be sought from the rich array of data gathered throughout the year.