The College Curriculum ― A Reader

Editor DeVitis (higher education, Old Dominion U.) offers this collection of essays exploring the construction of college curricula, divided into two parts. Part One aims to give a general picture of undergraduate programming, posing the question of what the common goals of undergraduate education are or should be. This part includes pieces on the meaning of liberal education, civics and community service, student motivation, and influences on curricular design. Part Two, comprising over three-quarters of the volume, examines particularly distinctive programs, often emphasizing a unique pedagogic strategy or topic focus, as a means of showing the diversity that can exist within the general structure outlined in Part One. The practices of required general education, individualized learning plans, STEM focus, interdisciplinary approaches, and applied, pragmatic, or socially embedded curricula are covered. The book is not indexed. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Joseph L. DeVitis has taught at five universities in his 40-year academic career. Recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the College of Education, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he is a past president of the American Educational Studies Association (AESA), the Council of Learned Societies in Education, and the Society of Professors of Education. Author or editor of 15 books, he has written extensively on moral development, liberal education, collegiate service-learning, and educational reform. His most recent books are a series of notable readers for Peter Lang Publishing: Contemporary Colleges and Universities (2013); Critical Civic Literacy (2011); Character and Moral Education (2011), edited with Tianlong Yu; and Adolescent Education (2010), edited with Linda Irwin-DeVitis. The latter two books received Critics Choice Awards from AESA as outstanding books of the year.