General Education Reform: Thinking Critically about Substance and Process

Introduction

Any institution of higher education intending to conduct a major reform of its general education program inevitably will confront the multiple challenges of designing and delivering a curriculum with "understood purposes and proven effectiveness" (Reynolds, 1998, p.150). Successfully meeting those challenges may entail significant alteration of the substance and oversight procedures that typify the program being replaced. The relevant literature available for consultation is substantial, but typically offers case studies that are success stories. We believe, however, that much can be learned from curriculum reform experiences that are unsuccessful. Hence, in this essay we pursue two interrelated goals. First, we examine the substance of a new program of general education at James Madison University (JMU) and identify design weaknesses in the new curriculum. Second, by highlighting problems encountered in the reform process at JMU, we infer a set of strategies for effective general education reform.

Historical Background

JMU began as the State Normal and Industrial School for Women at Harrisonburg, Virginia, in 1908. It became the State Teachers College at Harrisonburg in 1924. Its tradition was that of an industrial-vocational school with a heavy emphasis on teacher education. The school became coeducational in 1966. In the late 1960s, the faculty voted to transform the college into a liberal arts college. The curriculum was changed so that a new "general studies program" was created and organized around distribution areas in the humanities, arts, sciences, mathematics, social sciences, and history. The name of the school was changed to James Madison University in 1977. In the mid-1980s JMU revised its general education program and created the Liberal Studies Program (LSP).

The design of Liberal Studies reflected what were then new trends in general education curriculum. In addition to the basic liberal arts approach carried through from the previous program, new emphasis was given to lifelong learning, interdisciplinary perspectives, written communication skills, and critical thinking. A set of 16 learning goals was devised that required students to take courses from a prescribed range of areas, typically by choosing from an approved menu of discipline-based courses within each area. Structurally similar to most programs using distribution requirements, the LSP nonetheless had a distinctive feature in the role played by elected faculty in its design, implementation, and oversight. The faculty serving on the oversight committee, chaired by the Dean of Letters and Sciences, were drawn from the traditional "liberal arts" disciplines. These faculty developed and publicized the criteria for course approval, evaluated course proposals, and had administrative approval for periodic review of the LSP. The committee enjoyed widespread faculty support because it was composed of members whose expertise and training qualified them well to represent those entrusted with the responsibility of teaching the courses that comprised the LSP. The Liberal Studies Program was very recently replaced by the new "General Education Program" (GEP) and it is the latter program that is the subject of our essay.

Devising the New General Education Curriculum

There are a variety of possible structures for a general education curriculum. Most schools have chosen one of two structural types: a core curriculum in which students take the same general education courses or a set of distribution requirements in which students choose their classes from a designated "menu" of courses. ¹ The Liberal Studies Program at JMU was essentially a menu approach. The main concerns regarding the operation of this program were the fairly standard ones of quantity-quality conflicts and the need to broaden the adoption of integrative techniques. Encouraging the follow-up of widespread writing across the curriculum, for example, was recognized as an ongoing difficulty. Yet, there was no general concern among JMU's faculty that the LSP was structurally flawed. Indeed...