Curriculum Patterns Research Articles

An Integration of Knowledge and Experience

the two has generally been used to describe a variety of curricular patterns that have little in common. To convey the notion of genuine interdisciplinary work, the word integrated might be more appropriate because it connotes wholeness. This is no finicky debate over educational terminology. If interdisciplinary studies are to achieve their proper educational objectives, a sense of integration must be provided. In deciding what constitutes a sound interdisciplinary approach, it is important to ask why early efforts that aimed at improving general undergraduate education failed. What kinds of interdisciplinary approaches have been designed over the past half century, and what were their strengths and weaknesses? Consider the reasons for developing a more adequate general education program in the first place. As the late James B. Conant pointed out when he was president of Harvard 30 years ago, undergraduate education had become so specialized that it failed to educate youth to understand themselves and the world in which they lived. He and the Harvard committee that wrote Education for a Free Society, the so-called Redbook, therefore proposed broader, more inclusive, thematic sets of courses in the various major divisions of knowledge. Harvard launched several such programs in the social sciences, the physical sciences, and the humanities, and numerous other institutions adopted roughly similar curricular arrangements. Conant himself was so intensely interested in the new approach that, in addition to his presidential duties, he taught a onesemester interdisciplinary course in the sciences each year. For reasons of space, one example must suffice to explain the differences between typical elementary courses and the more general courses Harvard proposed. In science the new courses would not offer the student bits and pieces of elementary physics, chemistry, or biology, nor would they cover all the preparatory material for future instruction in the sciences. Instead, they would integrate several of the sciences around themes or major breakthroughs to make science meaningful to the students. In some ways the Harvard program was successful; students liked most of the general courses and a modest percentage of the faculty participated with considerable enthusiasm. In the minds of the faculty as a whole, however, the program was unsatisfactory. It took students from their specialized courses and conflicted with the traditional systematic treatEARL J. McGRATH is executive director of the Program in Liberal Studies at the University of Arizona. He is the author of two monographs published by the Lilly Endowment: Values, liberal Education, and National Destiny and General Education and the Plight of Modern Man. Dr. McGrath is a former U.S. Commissioner of Education.

Comparative Prediction of First Year Graduate and Professional School Grades in Six Fields

The validity of predictors of academic performance in six postgraduate fields were compared. The fields included three liberal arts areas and three professional areas: arts and humanities, biological and physical science, social science, law, medicine, and business. The predictors included information about students' backgrounds, self-conceptions, values, nonacademic achievements, and curricular patterns as well as admissions test scores and grades. In most fields, grades were predicted by academic ability and by prior achievement, self-confidence, and previous accomplishment in the field. Background variables predicted grades only in law and arts and humanities. The predictive power of admissions tests varied from field to field.

Comparison of Communication Curricular Patterns and Objectives Hith Communication Needs of Business

Comparison of Communication Curricular Patterns and Objectives Hith Communication Needs of Business

Curricular patterns in physical therapist assistant education.

A survey of the ten physical therapist assistant programs with students enrolled during the 1968–1969 academic yearsis reported. The purpose of the survey was to obtain data on current methods of curricular organization, instructionaltechniques, and sequential patterns used to organize and integrate major subject matter concepts. Results revealed little uniformity in number of courses, hours of didactic and clinical experiences, or sequence of organization.

An Undergraduate Curriculum in Risk and Insurance for Non-Majors

Some five years have elapsed since the A.R.I.A. first published a carefully drafted booklet entitled, Curricular Concepts In Risk and Insurance. While the document did not attempt to suggest in detail the number of courses or classroom hours of instruction in risk and insurance for particular institutions, it has nonetheless provided an important conceptual framework that can be accommodated to a variety of curricular patterns. Today, no less than when this booklet was first written, undergraduate curricula in risk and insurance-indeed, in business administration generally-continue to be examined critically by many colleges and universities. In the statement that follows Professor Robert M. Crowe, Associate Professor of Insurance and holder of the W. Frank Hipp Chair in Insurance at the University of South Carolina, relates some of the curricular changes that have taken place at his institution during the past year. Readers of the Journal are invited to comment on this approach or relate the experiences at their own colleges and universities in arriving at a workable undergraduate curriculum in risk and insurance. Comments of approximately 1500 words in length will be published in subsequent issues of the Journal.

Gains in Various Measures of Communication Skills Relative to Three Curricular Patterns in College

Gains in Various Measures of Communication Skills Relative to Three Curricular Patterns in College

ADVANCES IN CONTINUING MEDICAL EDUCATION

The continuing education of the practicing physician has been described frequently as the last remaining undeveloped frontier in American medical education. According to this philosophy, most of the major objectives and procedures of undergraduate and graduate medical education have been well defined and generally accepted and most of the major problems resolved. Only in the field of continuing or postgraduate medical education is there need for intensive development of new programs and unrestricted opportunity for bold imagination in the design of new curricular patterns. This is undoubtedly an oversimplification of the status of undergraduate and graduate medical education. Those who have observed the evolutionary changes in American medical schools over the past years are aware that there is nothing static about the pattern of education leading to the M.D. degree. And major problems are still present in such matters as medical school financing, recruitment of to -level students and faculty,

Contemporary Secondary-School Curricular Patterns

Contemporary Secondary-School Curricular Patterns

A Comparative Study of the College Experiences of Graduates of the Core and of the Conventional Curricula

THE CURRICULUM has been the s ub j e c t of I much study and experimentation during the past three decades. Many curricular patterns have been developed as educational workers have tried to translate the newer concepts of curriculum,in terms of the learning experiences of the child, into functional forms for school programs. A mong these proposals has been the curricu lum. Briefly, the core has been defined as part of the total school curricu lum which endeavors to assist pupils in meeting the needs most common to them and to s o c i e t y without regard to any subject-matter classifica tion. x Since the Eight Year Study2 of the Pro gressive Education Association, which affirm e d that the secondary school could provide a sound, flexible education to meet pupils' present and future life needs, there has been much education al interest in the effects of curricular experi mentation upon the high school students' prepa ration for and adjustment to the demands of col lege life. The curriculum at the Highland Park (Il linois) High School was established as an elective program in 1943. The subject matter fields util ized during the last twelve year s have been: Grade IX, English and social science; Grade X, English-speech and biology; Grade XI, American history and American literature; and Grade XII, English (great books). The present investigation was a longitudinal study of the graduates of the curriculum during their matriculation at colleges, using graduates of the conventional curriculum in the same high school asa control group.

Current school mathematics curricula in the Soviet Union and other Communist countries

Russians follow developments in American education with interest. Most certainly we should acquaint ourselves with the basic Russian curricular pattern.

Curricular Patterns of Some Institutions Preparing Art Teachers

Curricular Patterns of Some Institutions Preparing Art Teachers