GENERAL EDUCATION ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
This website, as the title suggests, is about advocating liberal arts education. The section on Research and Publications has some essays and a debate about liberal arts education theory.
http://www.aale.org/index.html
Amiran, MindaRae, Karen Maitland Schilling, and Karl L. Schilling.
“Assessing Outcomes of General Education.” Trudy W. Banta and Associates. Making a
Difference: Outcomes of a Decade of Assessment in Higher Education.
The authors state their goal is to
“explore the impact of two different approaches to general education:
discipline-based distribution and interdisciplinary core curriculum” (78). They
have included a section on how to test for goals (73) and defined the ideal
conditions for learning: “small classes, frequent, serious assignments, and
close faculty-student interraction” (77). They discussed the failure of
standardized tests to measure goals. Their school, the
Association of
This site includes a report called “Greater Expectations.” Chapter 3 discusses what students need in terms of learning.
http://www.greaterexpectations.org/
Broudy, Harry S.
“General Education: The Search for a Rationale.” Phi Delta
Kappa Educational Foundation.
Although this pamphlet is written in support of general education requirements in the K-12 public schools, many of its points are relevant to our discussion. Broudy reminds us that “the high-grade human being is one who thinks critically, places the problems of life in broad perspective, makes his choices in the light of knowledge and wisdom” (12). He states that in order to do these things, humans must be well educated with a liberal curriculum. He also explains some of the recent criticisms of liberal education: “But in a meritocracy. . . there is little patience with any studies that do not directly bear on professional practice” (33). And that past defenses of the liberal arts education have relied on the “gut feeling that the person with an educated mind and spirit is of a finer fiber than the uncultivated one;” (34). This is a short but interesting discussion of the debate over the validity of general education.
Cunningham, William F. General Education and the
This book is a discussion of the place of general education in the liberal college, most specifically a religious school like Notre Dame. It does give an interesting, historical view of the composition of the liberal arts core curriculum. The primary curriculum is to be composed of language, theology, philosophy and history. The secondary curriculum should contain literature, the fine arts, mathematics, natural science and social science. Cunningham also discusses the battle between the culturists and the vocationalists. This source argues for “peripheral studies” in the junior and senior years (our concept of the major.)
Gaff, Jerry G. General Education Today.
This book gives more details and
examples of a interdisciplinary approach to gen ed.
One example is a topic called Exploration of Nature and Society and
Explorations of Ideas in Imagery (for the freshman and sophomore years). These
topics incorporate three topics each: change, the works of Darwin and Marx;
unseen reality, Curie and Freud; and universal patterns, Einstein and Toynbee.
The second course, for sophomore year, incorporates the same three topics in
the arts: Van Eyck and Degas; Bach Beethoven, and Webern; and Faust and Portrait
of the Artist as a Young
---. New Life for the College Curriculum.
This book has three sections: reforming gen ed, assessing the impacts of the reforms, and sustaining improvements in general education. Gaff says the “debate can be boiled down to four Cs: content, coherence, commonality, and comprehensiveness.” The book reports what has been done, how well it worked and what colleges are changing or doing to sustain changes.
Gerretson, Helen and Emily Golson. “Synopsis
of the Use of Course-Embedded Assessment in a
As its descriptive title suggests, this is an article about assessing general education courses. They first discuss how the course objectives were changed to general education learning outcomes. Not all gen ed courses are assessed every year but are done on a rotation basis. This article contains examples of the rubrics the instructors themsmelves devised during workshops.
Ghnassia, Jill Dix and Marcia Bundy Seabury. “Interdisciplinarity and the Public
Sphere.” JGE:The Journal of General Education 51.3 (2002): 153-171.
Ghnassia and Seabury discuss the
need for integrating general education courses. They criticize schools using the
“cafeteria” approach to gen eds and encourage the
interdisciplinary and integrative learning. They also caution against
“presenting” courses to the students and suggest that students need to be
active participants. Most of the article is a detailed description of a course
at the
Gregory,
Gregory says faculty must reeducate themselves on the liberal arts in order to defend them. He talks a lot but does have three suggestions: first, discuss with our students the overall aims of their education; second, resist the utilatarian notions about education today; and finally, think of liberal education as a “program of personal development, not as indoctrination into the values of a particular curriculum.”
Hegler, Kay L. “Using General Education Assessment Rubrics to Document Basic Skills and Content Knowledge.” AACTE Annual Conference, 2003. (Copy on reserve in the library.)
This paper discusses ways to use and construct rubrics. It includes sample rubrics in areas such as mathematics, communication, writing, natural science, cultural perspectives, etc. It also contains a list of outcomes for general education.
Kelly-Riley, Diane. “WSU Critical Thinking Project: Improving Student Learning Outcomes Through Faculty Practice.” Assessment Update 15.4 (2003): 5-7, 14.
This is a short article which
describes the rubric that
McLeod, Susan H.
and Margot Soven, eds. Writing Across the Curriculum: A Guide to Developing
Programs.
The title is pretty self-descriptive. Chapters 6 and 7 seem particularly relevant. Chapter 6 discusses writing intensive courses including some specific suggestions on number of words and/or percentage of writing required. Chapter 7 explores the connection between WAC and general education courses and includes some common problems with gen ed classes.
The National Forum on College-Level Learning Website.
Sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trust, this site contains information about assessment of college learning. It discusses various instruments used to assess student learning in both the content and abilities areas.
http://collegelevellearning.org/
Osterlind, Steven
J. A National Review of Scholastic Achievement in General
Education. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report.
A description of the BASE test as a measure of knowledge of general education concepts. Lots of charts and information on this test that was administered to over 73,000 students between 1988 and 1993. This is another way to assess general education.
Ratcliff, James L., D. Kent Johnson, and Jerry G. Gaff, eds. Changing
General Education
Curriculum.
This has several useful articles on gen ed requirements. Even though this is found in the book section of the library, the individual articles can also be found on the library databases under the authors and the periodical title of New Directions in Higher Learning. Three look especially interesting:
Johnson, Ratcliff, and Gaff. “A Decade of Change in General Education.”
This chapter discusses “what was changed in general education, how and why, and what remains to be accomplished.”
Johnson and Ratcliff. “Creating Coherence: The Unfinished Agenda.”
This chapter talks about coherence and how to achieve it by overcoming some of the impediments.
Ratcliff. “Re-envisioning the Change Process in General Education.”
Discusses what the title implies.
Schneider, Carol G. “Practicing Liberal Education: Formative Themes in the Reinvention of Liberal Learning.” Liberal Education 90.2 (2004):6(6).
This article discusses the ways that liberal education is prized, despised, and revised. She includes three formative themes in the reinvention of liberal education. (I have put these on the summary sheet.)
Thompson, Robert J. and Matt Serra. “Use of Course Evaluations to Assess the Contributions of Curricular and Pedagogical Initatives to Undergraduate General Education Learning Objectives.” Education 125.4 (2005):693(9).
A current and interesting article on Duke’s revision of its general education program. An inclusion of theory of gen ed is presented along with a description of their assessment process. It includes tables delineating learning objectives in general and specific areas of general education.
Winter, David G., David C. McClelland, and Abigail J. Stewart.
A New Case for the Liberal Arts.
The preface of this book states its exigence as an attempt to “bridge the gap between educational policy makers and social scientists.” It includes chapters on evaluating liberal education, measuring outcomes, the importance of liberal arts on adult life, etc. The book contains a list of 9 liberal arts goals (included on my separate summary sheet.) It posits that measures of a liberal arts education are operant behaviors rather than knowledge or fads. To that end, the authors propose ways to measure cognitive, motivational, and emotional outcomes (Table 2 – p. 50). This book is arguing for an entire liberal arts education and does say at one point that “merely adding a few liberal arts courses to the catalogue of an institution like State Teachers College probably would not bring about any substantial change in its effects on students” (183).
Yancey, Kathleen
Blake and Brian Huot, eds. Assessing Writing Across
the Curriculum: Diverse Approaches and Practices. Perspectives on Writing:
Theory, Research, Practice, Vol. I. ERIC, 1999. Available
Microfiche. WIU Library,
This is a three fiche set of essays by various academicians on aspects of WAC. Especially interesting would be the chapter by Martha Townsend “Integrating WAC into General Education: An Assessment Study” along with several chapters on assessment.
Young, Art and Toby Fulwiler. Writing Across
the Disciplines: Research into Practice.
1986 is kind of old, but this book
was cited as research in some of the more recent articles. These essays
document the beginnings of the research and discussion of WAC or WID at