Realizing General Education by Cynthia A. Wells

Author:Cynthia A. Wells [Wells, Cynthia A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119244677
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2015-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

Competency-Framed2

A third conceptual model of general education focuses on individual abilities and skills of learning and personal growth (Allen, 2006). The model involves a specially created set of general education objectives. A key distinction is that general education models that are framed around competency development focus on process rather than specific content (Katz, 2005).

Stanford University illustrates a general education model that centers on competency development. Stanford's requirements help students “develop a broad set of essential intellectual and social competencies that will be of enduring value” regardless of specific field of study (Stanford University, n.d.). General education requirements introduce students to the “intellectual life of the University” and serve “to foreground important questions and to illustrate how they may be approached from multiple perspectives.”

Stanford students are required to take a specified number of courses within each of four areas of the general education curriculum: Thinking Matters, Ways of Thinking/Ways of Doing (WAYS), Writing and Rhetoric, and Foreign Language. The foundation of the Stanford general education curriculum is the Thinking Matters requirement for which the “main goal is to help students develop the ability to ask rigorous and genuine questions that can lead to scientific experimentation or literary interpretation or social policy analysis.” Most Stanford students fulfill this requirement by taking a stand-alone, designated Thinking Matters seminar during their first year.

The WAYS requirement provides instruction in essential skills and capacities in the areas of aesthetic and interpretive inquiry, social inquiry, scientific method and analysis, formal reasoning, applied quantitative reasoning, engaging diversity, ethical reasoning, and creative expression. Students are required to take 11 certified WAYS courses, and are permitted to overlap general education courses as well as major requirements to meet this requirement.

Students also complete a Writing and Rhetoric requirement that is intended to develop their “abilities in analysis, academic argument, and research-based writing and oral presentation.” One Writing and Rhetoric course is taken in the first year, a second in the sophomore year, and a third in the major. Finally, students have a Foreign Language requirement in which they must complete 1 year of college-level study in a foreign language.

The competency model of general education has a variety of benefits. Arguably, specific skills and abilities being advanced by general education are less controversial than specific content or academic disciplines. It would be rare to hear anyone suggest that strong writing or critical thinking is an unimportant component of a general education. Another benefit is the ability to overlap fluidly if not seamlessly with requirements in the major.

Some of the challenges of the competency development model of general education revolve around what then makes general education courses distinct or necessary beyond the major. After all, major requirements surely include writing and critical thinking. Another challenge, although not unique to this delivery model of general education, is that writing skills and critical thinking skills break down into a variety of subskills. Achieving consensus on where and by whom these are addressed in the curriculum can be a challenge. For example, if writing skills are

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