Renewing the Undergraduate Archaeology Curriculum

美国考古学会（SAA），历史考古学会（SHA），美国人类学协会（AAA）和美国考古研究所（AIA）已经承认目前对本科考古学学生的培训方法存在危机。资金短缺和从学术到私人来源的转变，世界范围内遗址破坏和掠夺的急剧增加，后裔和当地社区中出现的政治活动，复杂的新政府监督和监管，技术创新以及科学知识基础的急剧增加，这些都超过了教育工作者的能力，以适应这些变化与他们的教学策略。[See K. a. Pyburn，"改变的国家：学术界围攻下的考古学家"在"教学考古学在21世纪世纪，"编辑S。J. Bender和G. S.史密斯，SAA，2000年。为了解决这一问题，SAA成立了一个跨社会的课程工作队，并为一个由来自全国各地的多样化和忠诚的教育工作者组成的讲习班提供支持。该工作组制定了一套考古学教学的核心原则和指导方针，这些原则和指导方针对考古学学科在世纪的生存至关重要。工作队正在与SAA、SHA、AAA和AIA合作，尽快在整个学科中实施这些指导方针，并更新课程。Smith和Bender（2000）将这些原则概括为管理、多样性、社会相关性、伦理和价值观、沟通、批判性技能和社会科学问题解决。这是一个为期三年的项目，包括在美国八所学术机构设计、测试和评估基于这些原则的新课程的核心方面。它正在编制一整套灵活的教材，适合于取代或重新设计任何高等教育环境中现有的课程。该项目的目标是使推荐的课程内容和经过验证的教学技术尽可能有效地提供给尽可能广泛的教育工作者受众，而不需要花费成本。开发团队的参与者是从那些表现出对教育和研究的承诺的教师中挑选出来的。此外，有被选中的是由原则前景的专业知识的特定领域的代表，代表各种机构类型（社区学院，公立四年制课程，有和没有研究生课程，私立学院），并提供区域多样性。(The这些机构分布在八个不同的州。这些教师开发人员得到了三位教育专家的协助。此外，一个由八名考古学家组成的咨询委员会正在协助课程的编制和评估，每个考古学家专门研究七项原则的一个单独领域。学生评估员也参与了项目的关键阶段，每个参与者首先与国家公认的专家和技术顾问合作，在其所在机构开发两个单独的课程。总体而言，16个不同的课程正在设计，教学和评估。我们估计，在三年计划期间，参与院校约有700至1 200名学生会受影响。此外，课程材料正在提供给美国现有的340个本科课程，提供人类学或考古学课程的本科专业或未成年人。在3年的资助期之后，该项目有可能影响全国所有30，000个申报的本科人类学专业，估计每年有500，000 - 600，000名学生选修本科人类学课程。

Anthropology (81)The Society for American Archaeology (SAA), the Society for Historical Archaeology (SHA), the American Anthropological Association (AAA), and the Archaeological Institute of American (AIA) have acknowledged a crisis in current approaches to the training of undergraduate archaeology students. Funding shortages and shifts from academic to private sources, dramatic increases in site destruction and looting worldwide, emerging political activism among descendant and local communities, complex new government oversight and regulation, technological innovations, and dramatic increases in the scientific knowledge base have outpaced the ability of educators to accommodate these changes with their teaching strategies. [See K. A. Pyburn, "Altered States: Archaeologists under Siege in Academe" in "Teaching Archaeology in the 21st Century," Edited by S. J. Bender and G. S. Smith, SAA, 2000.] To address this issue the SAA established an inter-societal Task Force on Curriculum, and provided support for a workshop made up of a diverse and committed set of educators from across the nation. This Task Force produced a set of core principles and guidelines for teaching archaeology that are crucial to the survival of the discipline of archaeology into the 21st century. The Task Force is working with the SAA, the SHA, the AAA, and the AIA to initiate implementation of these guidelines across the discipline with renovated curricula as rapidly as possible. Smith and Bender (2000) summarized these principles as Stewardship, Diversity, Social Relevance, Ethics and Values, Communication, Critical Skills, and Social Science Problem Solving.This is a three-year project encompassing the design, testing, and evaluation of core aspects of a new curriculum based on these principles at eight academic institutions across the United States. It is engaged in producing a complete set of flexible course materials suitable to replace or redesign extant curricula in any higher educational setting. The project goal is to make recommended course content and proven teaching techniques available as efficiently as possible without cost to the broadest possible audience of educators.Participants on the development team were chosen from faculty who have demonstrated a commitment to both education and research. Further, there were selected to be representatives of particular fields of expertise foregrounded by the principles, to represent a variety of institution types (community colleges, public four year programs with and without graduate programs, and private colleges), and to provide regional diversity. (The institutions are located in eight different states.) These faculty developers are being assisted by three education experts. In addition, an Advisory Board of eight archaeologists, each specializing in a separate area of the seven principles, are assisting with course development and assessment. Student evaluators are also participating in crucial stages of the project.Each participant is first developing two separate courses at their home institution in collaboration with nationally recognized specialists and technical consultants. Overall, 16 different courses are being designed, taught, and evaluated. We have estimated that this project will impact some 700-1200 students in the participating institutions over the three-year course of this project. In addition, course materials are being made available to the 340 existing undergraduate programs in the U.S. offering undergraduate majors or minors in anthropology or coursework in archaeology. Beyond the 3-year grant period, this project has the potential to impact all 30,000 declared undergraduate anthropology majors nationwide, and an estimated 500,000 - 600,000 students who enroll in undergraduate anthropology classes yearly as electives.