Editor's Note

Abstract

Editor's Note Claire Major Welcome to the Journal of General Education, Volume 55, Issues 3–4! This issue presents five articles and a book review that focus on a variety of aspects of general education. Taken in their entirety, they tackle important questions and in so doing describe influences on general education that range from external forces to internal actors. Questions about the curriculum have always been at the fore of concerns about general education. What should be taught? Who decides? These questions are not as simple as they sound and have been the topics of lively and heated debates for centuries. Steele, in her article titled "Curricular Wars," considers the politics of curricular change and argues for the important role academic administrators play and the skills they must have to be effective change agents, using a case study that illustrates her point. Recently, internal and external constituents alike have begun to consider questions about higher education and its fundamental nature. Is it an industry? Is it a service? Is it something else entirely? Does what higher education is change what it is that educators do? In an article titled "Out Out, Damned Spot: General Education in a Market-Driven Institution," Harris argues that it is critical that we understand the implications of teaching and learning in general education in a market-oriented environment. Many questions have arisen as of late as to what skills college graduates should have, and although there does not seem to be universal agreement on much, educators, employers, and policy makers alike seem to agree that both critical thinking and communication are important skills for college graduates to have gained. The next question, then, becomes how best to teach students these skills. Two articles focus on student writing and ways to support and develop student writing skills. Krause's research-based article, "Supporting First-Year Writing Development Online," examines first-year student perceptions of Web-based writing support and reports positive results when considering the support as supplemental to, rather than as a replacement for, traditional instruction. In "Brief Daily Writing [End Page vii] Activities and Performance on Major Multiple-Choice Exams," Turner, Bliss, Hautau, Carroll, Jaspers, and Williams find that writing activities deepened knowledge and thinking ability and ultimately increased performance on multiple-choice examinations. Finally, in "Stand-Alone Versus Integrated Critical Thinking Courses" Hatcher considers the difference between stand-alone courses designed to teach critical thinking and integrating critical thinking into other courses. The author uses data acquired through two well-known critical thinking tests during a 15-year single-institution study to support the proposition that integrated courses have some advantages. This issue also contains a book review that focuses on student experiences in the first year. Rogers describes Barefoot, Cutright, Morris, Schroeder, Scwartz, Siegel, Swing, and Gardner's Achieving and Sustaining Institutional Excellence for the First Year of College (2005). Rogers recommends this work for those interested in sustaining first-year experience programs at their institutions. I hope you will enjoy this issue and that, in reading these important works, you will be inspired to make your own contributions to the Journal of General Education! For guidelines for submitting articles, see those contained in this volume or visit the following URL: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_general_education/information/guidelines.html. Copyright © 2006 The Pennsylvania State University