On defining coherence and integrity in the curriculum

Abstract

In the AAC report, Integrity in the College Curriculum: A Report to the Academic Community (1985), four terms are used frequently to convey a sense of desired excellence in postsecondary education. The terms are curricular coherence, curricular integration, curricular rigor and, lending the report its title, curricular integrity. Although the report's language implies meanings of these terms, its imprecision may lead to multiple interpretation by readers. Faculty who desire to implement curricular changes based on the AAC report, as well as institutional researchers who desire to assess such changes, will need to define these terms more precisely. It is my intent in this brief article to propose some useful definitions and to encourage others to disagree or to expand on these suggestions. My argument begins with the useful notion that a curriculum is an academic plan. Both the AAC report and the earlier NIE report Involvement in Learning (1984) imply that curriculum may mean either a collection of course descriptions or, ex post facto, the intended or serendipitous experiences that students have while in college. Rather, in my judgment, curriculum is an academic plan, constructed by the faculty and possibly other knowledgeable individuals. The curriculum resembles a tik designed to lead to a desired destination. Like the planned trip itinerary, the curriculum or academic plan contains a number of elements appropriate to the outcomes to be achieved. Such elements include objectives specifying concepts, behaviors, skills, and attitudes to be learned, an explicit connection of the objectives to the needs of society and of individual learners, some evidence that the plan anticipates the prior experiences and knowledge of the students, a set of instructional techniques and learning aids believed to help learners achieve the objectives, and a specification of roles and obligations for the teacher and the learner. Thus the itinerary may vary as a function of different sets of students and teachers, although all are headed for a similar destination. Most importantly (but currently lacking in some Research