| The traditional rationale for general education has been the socialization of youth into a unified cultural heritage. However, undergraduates today are diverse in terms of race, class, religion, and other forms of difference. With the notion of a shared cultural heritage no longer viable, we are faced with the question, what knowledge---and whose?---should the university teach? While numerous studies have examined the process of general education reform, few researchers have entered classrooms to examine the enactment of curriculum. My dissertation addresses this gap through an ethnographic study of the relationship between culture and the enacted curriculum in courses that offered multicultural and interdisciplinary curriculum, two commonly prescribed general education reforms.;During the 2000--01 and 2001--02 academic years I was a participant-observer in six courses in a general education reform at Southwestern University (SWU), a public research university. I observed classes, office hours, and fieldtrips; taking fieldnotes and tape recording events and interviews. I conducted interviews with classroom participants and administrators. I also gathered documents such as handouts, assigned texts, and student work.;My study documents a series of interlocking dilemmas. The faculty encountered two institutional dilemmas: research and teaching, general and specialized knowledge. These became visible as the professors sought to deliver academically rigorous curriculum, in a context structured for efficient processing of students, to students whom they regarded as poorly prepared for college-level study. The faculty managed the dilemmas in various ways, with the most prevalent strategy being defensive teaching (McNeil, 1981). The curriculum was represented as a fixed body of knowledge transmitted to passive students.;The professors' defensive teaching exacerbated two classroom dilemmas: breadth and depth, rigor and relevance. The interdisciplinary format, which promised breadth and depth through inquiry into a problem from multiple disciplinary perspectives, provided neither breadth nor depth. The professors emphasized delivery of specialized knowledge, rather than engaging students in inquiry. The curriculum also alternated between rigor and relevance in ways that were disorienting to students (Page, 1999). The outcome of these dilemmas was curriculum that was not usable for the students (Boix Mansilla and Duraising, 2007; Wills, 2001). |
