Placing literature in the core of the curriculum, along with lots of writing and some listening and speaking activities, is a wonderful idea, one which most good English programs and teachers have always used, even through the electives and the back-to-basics periods of recent years. The gap lies in the teaching of writing, especially knowledge…

The National Institute for Curriculum Development (SLO) in the Netherlands originated in 1975 to evaluate and redesign existing curricula and to coordinate programs at various levels. The SLO Humanities department, which includes the subjects of geography, history, and economics, has been engaged in curriculum development in lower vocational and…

If social studies is going to contribute to the overall qualitative improvement of public schools, educators must agree on a social studies core curriculum for all students. Social studies educators can take credit for having had a role in the maintenance of one of the world's oldest constitutional democracies, and as a national assessment…

The option for small high schools to consider non-traditional approaches to instruction may be a viable way to meet the instructional needs of individual students in Texas' rural communities and comply with the curriculum requirements specified in Chapter 75 (recently passed by the 67th Texas Legislature). Effective in 1985, school districts will…

Records for students receiving an undergraduate degree at the University of Alabama were examined, to compare education majors and other majors for grades in similar courses in seven specified curriculum areas: freshman composition, mathematics, humanities, social science, natural science, writing, and computer language or foreign language. The…

The school of communication at Northern Arizona University identified four areas--survey, written, oral, and theory--to be included in the core curriculum for all communication majors. As a follow-up to the deliberation by the school's curriculum committee, a study was undertaken to determine if such central curricula could be found in similar…

This paper begins with a literature review of the objectives of general education, giving special consideration to the possible role of communications skills. Because of current discussion and disagreement about what the basic general education requirements of a university should include, a survey was administered in 1981-82 to full-time faculty…

Saint Francis College (SFC), in Pennsylvania, is a private, Catholic, coeducational institution of 1,200 full-time undergraduates. Over 55 percent of the student body is enrolled in pre-professional majors; majors in the traditional liberal arts now account for only 13 percent of the student population. Faculty some time ago began to question…

A curriculum activity was initiated to provide preservice teachers with a personal knowledge base of active research procedures through the use of class-related activities. A research component was included in a required preservice class in assessment. Following the principles of scaffolding theory, students who had studied the elements of…

Placing education majors in field-based experiences before student teaching has become a common practice in teacher preparation. Two introductory education courses offered at Northwest Missouri State University were designed to provide education majors with classroom experiences early in their program of study. The courses, Observation and…

A basic public speaking/communication course at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, a general degree requirement, is using computer mediated technologies to make the class more innovative and applicable. The basic course should provide experiential knowledge of the fundamentals of delivering an effective presentation, and, in a more general…

Forty students in the Executive MBA (Master of Business Administration) program at Xavier University (Cincinnati, Ohio) completed a required overseas study tour, with approximately half visiting Japan and Singapore and half visiting England, Belgium, and Germany. The purpose of the tour was to explore and assess innovative business strategies,…

Historically, the study of measurement and evaluation has not been highly valued by elementary education majors. In fact, research suggests that only a minority of teachers show evidence of adequate preparation in these areas. To motivate students to have more interest in the subject, this study examined the contents of a tests and measurements…

This paper describes the problems and successes associated with the introduction of a compulsory computer literacy course to approximately 600 professional year students in the Faculty of Education Department at the University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada) during the fall 1984 and spring 1985 semesters. The events leading up to the introduction of…

To investigate the extent to which graduate level education students found a required educational research course helpful, a questionnaire elicited occupation information about the student and about when the course was taken, the degree pursued, and degree attained. Additionally, the questionnaire asked the extent to which the course was…