<p>Marathonman, interesting points and reference to the curriculum changes at Bates. </p>
<p>Btw, the pdf version of the report is quite long but makes fascinating reading. Familiar names in higher ed. are involved in this project - such as Derek Bok of Harvard. The gist of it all is a call for a common framework and remapping of liberal education such that "students will still concentrate in selected fields because, while not sufficient, studies in depth are important. They will certainly need a rich mix of arts and sciences courses in order to learn about the wider world." The report goes on to clarify this point "Because competence is always related to context, students need to work on the liberal education outcomes in their major field(s) as well as their precollegiate and general studies. This report does not recommend teaching ?skills? apart from content and context. This report is a call to ensure that students have every opportunity to really develop these essential capabilities, whatever they study and wherever they go to college." </p>
<p>Here are a few passages from the report:</p>
<p>"Movement toward this needed remapping has already begun. The long-standing boundaries between the professional fields and the arts and sciences have started to blur. Engineering and technology fields have forged the way. The Accrediting Board for Engineering and Technology now looks for evidence that programs are teaching students to integrate their liberal arts competencies with their technical studies. Similar developments are emerging across many professional fields, and on many campuses. Simultaneously, many arts and sciences departments are placing new emphasis on ?practical experience? and ?applied learning? through internships, service learning, student projects, and community-based research. Many campuses also are inventing a ?vertical? or four-year framework for general education, with the explicit goal of fostering new connections between students? specialized studies and their broader learning about science, cultures, and society.
Students themselves are adding to this remapping by choosing double majors or majors and minors that freely span the ?liberal arts/ professional? divide. These forward steps notwithstanding, many of the most imaginative efforts to forge new connections between the liberal arts and sciences and professional studies still hover on the margins. Higher education needs new leadership and new determination to move these promising developments from the margins to the center. </p>
<p>Engaging Twenty-First-Century Realities
Breaking out of the academic silos is a good beginning, but much more needs to be done in order to align teaching and learning practices with the realities of the new global century. In the twentieth century, both school and college studies were organized, reflecting the sensibilities of the industrial age, in terms of modular parts: disciplines, subjects, courses, credit hours. But this modular curriculum, organized a century ago and still largely intact, has become increasingly dysfunctional. The disciplines are taught as ends in themselves, and so too are most courses. Yet students are taking courses in many different disciplines, and often at two or more institutions. For many, the result is a fragmented and incoherent educational experience rather than
steady progress toward deeper and more integrated understandings and capacities. </p>
<p>"Because of these inherited
dividing lines, millions of
college students are routinely
compelled to choose either
a liberal arts and sciences
pathway or a professional
pathway just to fill out their
college applications."</p>
<p>The expected curriculum is usually defined, often with enabling state regulation, in terms of specific ?core? subjects in school and specific general education categories in college (see fig. 6). State ?distribution? requirements for students? general education courses are the far-reaching legacy of the mid-twentieth-century view that equated liberal education with general education, and assigned it to the first two years of college. </p>
<p>But the frontiers of knowledge, both in scholarship and the world of work, now call for cross-disciplinary inquiry, analysis, and application. The major issues and problems of our time?from ensuring global sustainability to negotiating international markets to expanding human freedom?transcend individual disciplines. The core subjects provide a necessary foundation, but they should not be taught as ends in themselves. From school through college, students
also need rich opportunities to explore ?big questions? through multifaceted perspectives drawn from multiple disciplines. Even in terms of the old modular curriculum, where each subject has been implicitly defined as a self-contained area of learning, the curricular pathways from school to college have become chaotic and redundant. Thanks to the vigorous promotion of Advanced Placement courses and dual enrollment (college courses for high school students), as many as three million students are already taking ?college-level?
courses before finishing the twelfth grade. At the same time, because of
the shortcomings of school preparation, at least 40 percent of all college
students have to take at least one remedial course in college, essentially
revisiting material that they should have learned in high school. Calls for aligning high school outcomes with college-level skills abound. But the learning students need for this new global era cannot be achieved simply by rearranging the existing patchwork of ?core courses? at the school level and ?general education requirements? at the college level. To help students achieve the essential learning outcomes, it will be necessary to spend time, across all levels of school and college education, revisiting the larger purposes of education and rethinking the kinds of connections across disciplines and levels of learning that will best prepare graduates for a complex and fast-paced world. </p>
<p>Key Questions to guide School?College Planning
The following questions, keyed to twenty-first-century challenges, are intended to spark the needed school?college dialogues?among educators, across disciplines, with employers and policy leaders, and with the wider public. Ultimately, these questions call for the mapping of more purposeful curricular pathways, from school through college and across the disciplines...</p>
<p>Liberal Education & America?s Promise | AAC&U
Global integration is now our shared context. The potential benefits of global interdependence are extraordinary, but so too are the challenges. Wealth, income, and social power are dramatically unequal within and across international boundaries. We are reminded daily of the clash of cultures, histories, and worldviews. The globe itself is fragile and vulnerable as are our shared civic spaces. These global challenges will be with us for the foreseeable future. Yet today, less than 10 percent of four-year graduates are leaving college globally prepared.30 The United States is a world power. But it provides most of its students with a parochial education...</p>
<p>"American college students already know that they want a degree.
The challenge is to help students become highly intentional about
the forms of learning and accomplishment that the degree should
represent.</p>
<p>In today?s academy, many students are not following any comprehensive academic plan at all. Rather, many are working to cobble together a sufficient number of courses that will enable them to meet the required number of credits?typically 60 at the associate?s level and 120 at the bachelor?s level?necessary to earn a degree. Setting goals for educational accomplishment based on the essential learning outcomes can change this haphazard approach to academic study. Each student will know what is expected, and each student can construct a plan of study that simultaneously addresses his or her own interests and assures achievement in the essential learning outcomes. Students will know before they enter college, for example, that they are expected to bring their communication skills?written and oral?to a high level of demonstrated accomplishment. As they work with mentors to plan a course of study, they will learn to seek out,
rather than avoid, courses in which extensive writing and/or oral presentations are required. The same principle applies to all the outcomes. By clarifying the intended forms of learning and their significance, and by helping students connect these broad outcomes with their own individual goals and areas of study, educators will help all students become more intentional about their learning and more likely to reach high levels of accomplishment. </p>
<p>The National Leadership Council recommends that the essential
learning outcomes be used to guide each student?s plan of study and
cumulative learning and, further, that their achievement be the shared
focus of both school and college. </p>
<p>Students should begin intensive work in each of these areas of learning?knowledge, skills, responsibilities, and integrative learning ?as early as middle school. And they should understand that they will be expected?wherever they enroll, whatever their intended career,
and no matter how far they go in college?to attain progressively higher levels of competence in each of these key areas. Teachers, faculty members, and student life professionals should work together to help students understand why these outcomes are important, and how they are applied in work settings, civil society, and students? own lives."</p>
<p>Interesting to note that Smith College is singled out as a pioneer "in integrating engineering education within a liberal arts education." Smith's Picker Engineering Program encourages students "to set their engineering studies in a larger social and global context" while emphasizing the "social, ethical, and professional responsibilities essential to successful practice in the field". The students bring this all together in a senior design project aimed to challenge them to use their societal as well as technical skills.</p>