Many core graduate-level seminars claim to expose students to their discipline's "canon." The contents of this canon, however, can and do differ across departments and instructors. This project employs a survey of core American politics PhD seminar syllabi at highly ranked universities to construct a systematic account of the American…

This research aims at describing the 2013 Curriculum implementation for science learning on the planning, classroom implementation, and assessment stages, as well as the obstacles faced by teachers and their efforts to overcome them. This qualitative research was by involving Grade 4 teachers, students, and the principal of a primary school in…

Given that so many college students take Introduction to Sociology or Social Problems or both, we wondered about the amount of content overlap in these courses. We designed a study that used content analysis of syllabi from these courses in order to measure the amount of convergence between the two classes. In our sample, nearly 70 percent of the…

Despite efforts of both administration and faculty, the intent and the execution of new curricular initiatives are not always in alignment. To understand how the declaration of a campus-wide general education initiative was being implemented, this article combines analyses of syllabi and courses from across disciplines. In an initial review, the…

There is increasingly a call for clinical relevance in the teaching of the biomedical sciences within all health care programs. This presupposes that there is an understanding of what is "core" material within the curriculum. To date, the anatomical sciences have been poorly served by the development of core syllabuses, although there…

There is a growing imperative to prepare MSW social work students for trauma-informed evidence-based practice. Given strong recommendations and promising developments within social work education and practice in this regard, a clinical elective for the advanced-year MSW student that combines the guiding principles of trauma theory and…

The purpose of this article is to provide a content analysis and statistics on the law-related core course requirements in colleges of business to assist professors and administrators in making curriculum decisions. It examines the name of "undergraduate" law-based course requirements in the business core in 404 universities accredited by the…

This cross-disciplinary study examined syllabus quality (n = 280) and the connection of learning outcomes to the Dimensions of a Duquesne Education for two purposes: informing instructional development and writing an accreditation self-study. Three researchers coded the syllabi for learning outcomes, assessment, and the presence of these…

What does it mean to be a college graduate? One knows about the time and ever-increasing amount of money that a diploma demands. But when it comes down to what matters--the skills and knowledge acquired--what does a college degree mean? That is the question the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) answers in this book. Inside one will…

Course work in philosophy is typically required as part of a core curriculum for preservice teachers who enter undergraduate teacher education programs in Catholic colleges and universities. The purpose of this study was to explore requirements in philosophy in undergraduate teacher education programs at selected Catholic colleges and universities…

This paper describes an innovative, integrated implementation of the core Information Systems courses. While the published IS curriculum provides standards on course "content", it gives little direction on the "implementation" of the courses. At Brigham Young University, we have reengineered the traditional topics of analysis,…

The crisis in higher education is about more than money. It is about what one has been paying for, paying for dearly. The public, even in these hard times, supports higher education with its tax dollars. And families make huge sacrifices to send their sons and daughters to college. They deserve in return higher education that provides real…

In 1982, a committee was formed to review, evaluate, and adjust the liberal arts core curriculum of Hilbert College in New York State. After completing its initial review, the committee concluded that, while there was a general appreciation within the college community for the current liberal arts core, a sufficient integration of the various…

A study was undertaken to assess the extent to which the basic speech communication course fulfilled the needs of students and alumni of a large midwestern university. Specifically, the study sought to discover whether the basic course should be required and whether public speaking, interpersonal communication, or another activity should be the…

The school of communication at Northern Arizona University identified four areas--survey, written, oral, and theory--to be included in the core curriculum for all communication majors. As a follow-up to the deliberation by the school's curriculum committee, a study was undertaken to determine if such central curricula could be found in similar…