Practicing What We Teach and Teaching What We Practice: A Town Hall Model as Curricular Component and Tool for Curricular Reform

The Liberal Arts Endeavor: Enacting Values in General Education Reform

Two significant, overriding trends in reform have emerged in special education at all levels from policy to program implementation during the past decade. These are, first, the movement to integrate students with severe disabilities and those with low-incidence disabilities into general education schools and classrooms for their educational programs; second, the effort to retain students with mild and moderate disabilities in the general classroom as an alternative to pull-out programs. These trends are closely associated. Until recently, parallel trends in general education reform have tended to focus on improvement in curriculum and in instructional techniques. Most recently, however, these reform efforts have shifted in the direction of systematic reorganization of school governance structures, policy, and resource utilization at the school site. This shift presents an opportunity for amalgamation of these various related viewpoints through broad-based, school restructuring policy reform. This amalgamation is particularly reflected in those aspects of restructuring that are concerned with regulatory waivers, site-based management and budgetary control, shared decision making, and full infusion, with school site coordination, of federal, categorical program resources into the general education program. Sufficient parallels exist between the general and special education reform agendas to suggest that the time may be at hand for a shared educational agenda.

Reforming general education is challenging for institutions due to inertia, institutional politics, budgets, and structural barriers. Oregon State University recently adopted a new structure for its general education curriculum that increases access to high-impact practices, decreases overall credit hours in general education, and links directly to social justice education and career programming. The context and processes by which OSU overcame barriers to general education reform are discussed.

This study highlights the efforts of Indiana University East to make substantive changes to its general education program, resulting primarily from state mandates and legislation, on an extremely aggressive timeline. While fraught with challenges, these legislative mandates also presented opportunities for the institution to make necessary and impactful improvements to its general education curriculum, policies, and procedures that may not have occurred without the looming deadlines and requirements of the legislation. Indiana is one of several states that have enacted and implemented similar legislation, causing curricular and procedural change in general education programs throughout the nation. While often difficult to manage, these legislative measures can be viewed as opportunities at institutions, like Indiana University East, that desperately needed general education reform.

This study highlights the efforts of Indiana University East to make substantive changes to its general education program, resulting primarily from state mandates and legislation, on an extremely aggressive timeline. While fraught with challenges, these legislative mandates also presented opportunities for the institution to make necessary and impactful improvements to its general education curriculum, policies, and procedures that may not have occurred without the looming deadlines and requirements of the legislation. Indiana is one of several states that have enacted and implemented similar legislation, causing curricular and procedural change in general education programs throughout the nation. While often difficult to manage, these legislative measures can be viewed as opportunities at institutions, like Indiana University East, that desperately needed general education reform.

General education is closely tied to universities because the holistic and liberal elements of modern general education are key ideals of both traditional Chinese and Western universities. General education plays a key role in the sustainable development of universities and the realization of their educational ideals. This study discusses the development and challenges of general education in Taiwan’s universities, and the role of general education in the sustainable development of universities. According to a literature review, this study explores the following roles: (1) general education as the foundation of university professional education; (2) general education reform as the foundation of university education reform; (3) general education as the educational ideal of universities; (4) general education as a solution for the “knowledge-only” and “dehumanization” problems of universities; (5) general education as a buffer between technology and humanities in universities; (6) general education as a tool for the enrichment of university culture; and (7) general education as a means to achieve the goals of universities and promote their sustainable development.

expressed is that general education is intended to replace what we currently teach, as if general education and depart mentally organized major programs and ancillary offerings are somehow mutually exclusive. It is no doubt possible to take a radical stance on gen eral education, arguing that the truly general and the speci fic are incompatible and that all traces of specialization must be eliminated root and branch. Nor would it be can did to deny that the reform of general education, like any curricular change-, will affect the distribution of resources at the margin. Nevertheless, the aims of general education are not inconsistent with intensive major programs in sci ence or in any other field; on the contrary, rigorous, in depth study of a particular field is, I think, an essential

General education reform is one of the most difficult challenges facing higher education institutions because general education is embedded in organizational culture. This paper examines the reform of general education as a process of organizational change and illustrates how deeper, more sustainable reform may be achieved by integrating cultural and structural approaches to change.

With the change of the modern medical model and the medical environment,there are various challenges that medical education confronts.Although medical education is focusing on professional medical knowledge,how to enhance the general education and make it blend into the professional medical education becomes an important issue nowadays.Recently,a series of active explorations and measures have been applied in Guangzhou Medical College to push forward the general education reform,which will give benefits to others. Key words: Medical colleges; General education; Teaching reform ; Exploration

After World War II, Taiwan underwent profound economic, social, cultural, political and educational transformation. A major part of the transformation of its higher education system was the introduction of general education programs. This chapter discusses the experience of higher education institutions in promoting general education in postwar Taiwan, taking the reform of general education at the National Taiwan University as a case study.

This article investigates efforts by a small regional university without a geography department to incorporate geography into its general education curriculum as part of a “quality enhancement” process mandated by its accreditor. Drawing on interviews and surveys of students and faculty, we highlight lessons learned that may be useful for institutions considering similar changes—including the importance of valuing disciplinary expertise, addressing faculty contingency, and engaging with existing research on geographic education and pedagogy. The initiative, while limited in significant ways, also suggests opportunities for advocates of geography to engage with agendas around general education reform and accreditation.

General education is an important part of university education aiming at cultivating students’ comprehensive quality and sense of responsibility. As professional sports colleges and universities, higher sports colleges implement the curriculum reform of general education relatively late, and there is a problem of curriculum system construction in the process of implementing general education. The purpose of this paper is to research and discuss the application of general education management in higher education based on fuzzy cluster analysis in the Internet environment. This paper first discusses the teaching mode in the Internet environment and then analyzes the application of fuzzy cluster analysis in general education. Through fuzzy cluster analysis, the students’ understanding of general education before and after learning general education courses is compared, which paves the way for the promotion of general education in colleges and universities. Finally, this paper takes the general education curriculum system of higher physical education colleges as the research object and conducts fuzzy cluster analysis on it. The experimental results show that before studying general courses, 66.7% of the students hope to improve their language communication and expression skills, and 52.8% and 46% of the students hope to improve their practical ability and logical thinking ability. After receiving general education, only 23.5% of students have improved logical thinking ability, and only 13.7% of students have improved language communication and expression skills. The results show that general education does not meet the expectations of students, general education in higher physical education colleges is not effective, and the realization of general education needs to be further improved. To this end, schools can purchase network information resources, cooperate with well-known universities at home and abroad, develop general education courses with a global perspective, train students’ spirit of independent thinking, and master correct thinking methods.

As one of the national key comprehensive universities with a long history of China, W University has always been forefront in reforming general education. The implementation of general education has been started since 2003, at the same time some beneficial exploitations were conducted in W University, which thus was considered as one of the three modes of general education in mainland's universities and colleges[1]. In 2013, W University carried out the second round of reform of general education, and now the third wave is undergoing, that was based on a university-wide discussion on reform of undergraduate education in August, 2015[2]. The discussion focused on the reform of general education and stimulated people's interest on these changes. Therefore, this research team carried out two university-wide large-scale questionnaire surveys separately in May 2015 and November 2016 to find out undergraduates and instructors' opinions about the previous two reforms. Through analysis of status quo of implementation and undergraduates and instructors' questions and suggestions, this paper can provide references for new reforms.

At Eastern Washington University, integrating basic library skills has become part of a unique computer literacy program stemming from a general education (GE) reform. The new GE curriculum has been designed to prepare students with writing, mathematics, and computer literacy skills. The computer literacy courses teach basic computer skills as well as how to access and use electronic information resources. The instructional services librarian, in cooperation with the computer literacy director, designed a lecture and lab assignment covering the components of the library’s information system, Griffin. Seven 50‐minute lectures were provided. After lecture, students were given a library assignment to complete. Pretests and post‐tests were used to evaluate students’ learning. Relationships between lab assignments and lecture attendance to post‐test scores also were analyzed. In this article, Fenske examines the development and design of the instructional program, the assessment of students’ learning, and the overall effectiveness of the program.

As medical education is a highly professional education, it is necessary to carry out general education, but at present, how to carry out is still under exploration. This paper attempts to discuss general education of medical students combined with the features of medicine. The focus contents, the implementation are interpreted, hoping to provide the reference for the future reform of general education for medical students. Key words: Medical student; General education; Ability; Thinking