Other Resources on General Education

Association for General and Liberal Studies, Improving Learning in General Education: An AGLS Guide to Assessment and Program Review.  AGLS, 2007.

The  AGLS Guide invites institutions to review their commitments to the principles of a student-centered, outcomes-and-assessment approach to general and liberal education. It includes a set of continuous-quality-improvement questions that center on fundamental issues such as the connection between mission and general and liberal learning, asking users to consider how they actualize, judge, and improve their programs.  More information is available on the AGLS website.

Astin, Alexander W. What Matters in College? Four Critical Years Revisited. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1992.

In exploring the relations between outcomes in college and features of the educational environment, Astin concludes that peer involvement and student/teacher interaction are far more significant in shaping persistence and achievement than curricular structure or particular content. Based on this and earlier research, Astin strongly endorses collaborative and other forms of active student learning.

-----. "Involvement: The Cornerstone of Excellence." Change 17 (July/August 1985): 35-39.

Excellence often is defined in terms of resources (physical plant, library volumes, endowment) or reputation (faculty research, student test scores, graduates earning advanced degrees). Excellence in education, however, ought to mean developing the talent of students, indicated by the "value added" to the student by the college. Research shows that student involvement in the academic enterprise—in all of its forms—is the most powerful educational force.

Boyer, Ernest L. College: The Undergraduate Experience in America. New York: Harper & Row, 1987.

This book provides a comprehensive look at undergraduate education, drawing on national surveys of students and faculty members. It contains useful analyses and suggestions concerning the curriculum, faculty, and students as well as whole institutions. Boyer argues that general education and the college major should be mutually reinforcing.

Boyer, Ernest L., and Arthur Levine. A Quest for Common Learning. Washington: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 1981.

This volume argues that general-education revivals occur during times of social fragmentation and that general education functions to restore social bonds. Boyer and Levine recommend a core curriculum stressing concerns common to all people. Topics for a common core include the use of symbols, membership in groups and institutions, activities of production and consumption, relationships with nature, sense of time, and beliefs and values.

Carnochan, W. B. The Battleground of the Curriculum: Liberal Education and American Experience. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993.

Carnochan maintains that contemporary debates over the role of higher education within the United States and the "curricular wars" being fought today are part of a controversy spanning the last two centuries. This book examines higher educational practices in the context of Americans' particular history and culture, and points out the social and historical constructedness of our concept of "liberal education."

Cheney, Lynne V. 50 Hours: A Core Curriculum for College Students. Washington: National Endowment for the Humanities, 1990.

This booklet argues that all students—whatever their academic major or intended career—should take fifty semester hours of work in general education. This work should be spread among several content and skill areas, which Cheney discusses with some specificity and illustrates through NEH-funded projects.

Gabelnick, Faith, Jean MacGregor, Robin S. Matthews, and Barbara Leigh Smith. Learning Communities: Creating Connections among Students, Faculty, and Disciplines. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, no. 41. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990.

Learning is an individual but not solitary activity, the authors argue; at its best it occurs in a community of learners. The authors describe various forms of learning communities, the advantages for faculty members and students, strategies for developing them, and some of their consequences.

Gaff, Jerry G. "Avoiding the Potholes: Strategies for Reforming General Education." Educational Record 60 (Fall 1980): 50-59.

This paper is a primer for faculty and administrative leaders of a curriculum reform process. It stresses the importance of following an effective process, identifies forty-three procedures used by curriculum committees that lead to potholes, and discusses alternative strategies that may be more successful.

-----. New Life for the College Curriculum: Assessing Achievements and Furthering Progress in the Reform of General Education. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991.

The first section discusses the need for curriculum reform and describes emerging curriculum trends. The second section contains the results of a survey analyzing the consequences of changes in general education reported by campus leaders. Gaff offers suggestions for making general education more central to academic life.

Gaff, Jerry G., James L. Ratcliff, and Associates. Handbook of the Undergraduate Curriculum: A Comprehensive Guide to Purposes, Structures, Practices, and Change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1996.

This comprehensive volume includes essays by higher education practitioners and scholars on all aspects of the undergraduate curriculum, including effective practices, research, management, and assessment. The book provides an overview of the debates and reforms shaping higher education today. The essays offer theoretical frameworks as well as program designs and instructional strategies for strengthening and transforming the curriculum.

Gardner, John N., Gretchen Van der Veer, and Associates. The Senior Year Experience: Facilitating Integration, Reflection, Closure, and Transition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998.

Sequel to the 1989 volume The Freshman Year Experience, this compilation of essays provides a blueprint of successful strategies and ideas to enrich students' final year of college. Viewing the senior year as one of student transition, the editors and contributors offer information on senior courses and programs as well as "practical strategies for improving the passage from senior year into the workforce or graduate school."

Johnston, Joseph S. Jr., et al. "The Demand Side of General Education: Attending to Student Attitudes and Understandings." Journal of General Education 40 (1991): 180-200.

The purpose of this article "is to make a case for focusing on student attitudes and understandings in attempts to strengthen general education." Arguing that general education reforms are at an impasse, the authors recommend that campuses turn their attention from what the institution provides to what the students think and need. In addition to lack of leadership and organizational support for general education, inappropriately trained faculty, disincentives to faculty for general education teaching and advising, and higher education institutions' inertia in improving the process of general education, students' attitudes and understandings of general education prevent them from recognizing the value of general education. This essay recommends integrating student services such as orientation and career guidance into academic advising and calls for greater assessment of students' general cognitive development, attitudes, and proclivity toward learning.

Kanter, Sandra L., Zelda F. Gamson, and Howard B. London. Revitalizing General Education in a Time of Scarcity: A Navigational Chart for Administrators and Faculty. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 1997.

Revitalizing General Education in a Time of Scarcity examines how higher education institutions have designed and carried out reforms in general education, paying special attention to the implementation of curricular changes. The book provides a conceptual framework for looking at curriculum change through organizational, economic, political, and cultural lenses, and includes fifteen detailed case studies of institutional revisions.

Newell, William H., ed. Interdisciplinarity: Essays from the Literature. New York: College Entrance Examination Board, 1998.

This anthology contains numerous essays discussing the potential of interdisciplinary study and suggesting solutions to many practical problems encountered by college and university interdisciplinary programs in the face of institutions structured around academic disciplines. Growing out of the 1992 Institute in Integrative Studies, the book demonstrates how present conditions in higher education call for greater interdisciplinarity within institutions. The essays lay out the major issues and evaluate the current status of interdisciplinarity, while Newell provides a literature review and research agenda.

Nussbaum, Martha C. Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997.

A comprehensive synthesis of more than 2,600 studies of the effects of college on a variety of college outcomes, ranging from cognitive, moral, and attitudinal development through socioeconomic attainment and the quality of life. The authors report that "evidence unequivocally indicates that greater content learning and cognitive development occur in classrooms where students are engaged in and by the instructional … process."

Rudolph, Frederick. Curriculum: A History of the American Undergraduate Course of Study Since 1636. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1977.

Part of a Carnegie Council on Policy Studies in Higher Education series, this book offers a comparative, historical perspective on the curriculum in American higher education. Placing the undergraduate curriculum in its shifting social context, Rudolph traces its historical developments and changes from 1636 to 1976.

Smith, Barbara Leigh, and Jean MacGregor. "What is Collaborative Learning?" In Collaborative Learning: A Sourcebook for Higher Education, edited by Anne Goodsell, et al. Syracuse, N.Y.: National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, 1992.

A comprehensive overview of the characteristics, assumptions, goals, and approaches of collaborative learning by two well-known pioneers in the field. This booklet makes distinctions among terms often confused with one another (cooperative learning, learning communities, learner-centered instruction, group work, and so forth) and provides definitions. Descriptions of successful programs are included.

AAC&U offers these resources only as possible models of interest and has not submitted each of them to any substantial peer or quality review. If you have questions about any particular resource, please contact the institution sponsoring it directly.