After more than 20 years of exploring liberal arts education in Chinese universities, its curriculum development has been institutionalized. Efforts to build localized curricula that fit the realities at each institution have shifted from focusing on quantity and structure to emphasizing curriculum quality assurance based on teaching evaluation by…

Mark Van Doren, the noted literary scholar, once remarked, "The college is meaningless without a curriculum, but it is more so when it has one that is meaningless." Many current critics of undergraduate curricula in America assent to the crucial need for programmatic renewal in our colleges and universities. They bemoan the cookie-cutter…

Teacher preparation in the Commonwealth of Virginia requires numerous competencies. Faced with the challenges of creating a new general education core, faculty at Emory & Henry College exploited the synergies of the new program, teacher preparation competency requirements and the literature on effective teachers to reinforce a 172-year-old…

This essay explores the nature of the curriculum content of liberal studies--a core school subject in the new senior secondary curriculum in Hong Kong--with reference to the curriculum-making processes entailed in the formation of that subject. The central thesis is that a school subject is introduced to schools and classrooms as a distinct…

Media education has been around for quite some time in the West (Bazalgette et al. 1990), but it only started to gain acceptance in Asia (Cheung 2005), particularly in Hong Kong, in the last decade. Recently, it has been gaining more attention in Hong Kong thanks to the curriculum reform in which liberal studies will become one of the four core…

Liberal Studies (LS) has recently been confirmed to be offered as an independent core subject in the local senior secondary school curriculum in 2009. There had been some controversy concerning its status as an independent core subject to be publicly examined in the coming proposed public examination in Secondary 6. This article argues that the…

Three faculty members of Concordia University in Montreal, who played integral roles in the formation of a highly successful core curriculum as part of their institution, discuss the logistics, the politics, and the philosophy behind the founding and growth of their Liberal Arts College. For Frederick Krantz, their program is Platonic. The author…

Four years ago Sterling College began to develop a competency curriculum. This document presents a working definition and basic assumptions about this curriculum. The curriculum includes 9 college-wide competencies that are required for graduation and that are predicted on several basic assumptions: (1) The curriculum includes the total program of…

The target of present-day curriculum revivalists is the curriculum that came into being in the late 1960s. The purpose of the reform is to restore a sense of a shared or common culture among undergraduates and thus among the leaders of American society. (MLW)

In 1970 many course requirements were relaxed, but 10 years later many colleges and universities are again requiring students to select some courses from a core group of basic subjects (core curriculum). The development of core curricula is analyzed and what is actually occurring on campuses is detailed. (MLW)

Small programs can make a big difference on college campuses. At Duke University, a few dedicated people, with the support of college administrators, exploited the all-too-evident liabilities of curriculum fragmentation, political correctness, and the lack of direction felt by undergraduate students to create intellectually valuable and…

Developing a core curriculum at Harvard College involves the problem of producing change in a self-governing but externally-oriented community. Critics of Harvard's curriculum planning are answered in this essay, which focuses on the problems and positive aspects of faculty involvement in the curricular change process. (JMD)

The article describes how one liberal arts college, Mount Saint Mary's College (Maryland), developed a core curriculum over a four-year period. The curriculum's roots in a faculty survey and issues of consensus and debate (especially the curriculum's principle of integration) are discussed. Principles such as detailed organization with flexibility…

Reports on a survey of chief academic officers of colleges and universities regarding curricular changes in general education. Most felt curricular reforms resulted in higher quality and greater coherence in the educational program, and a greater understanding and appreciation of general education among campus constituencies. (DMM)

The problems of traditional overspecialization in British universities and current efforts to liberalize the curriculum are discussed in the context of the historical development of the university and curriculum structure. (MSE)