Renewing the Undergraduate Archaeology Curriculum

人类学(81)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)承认，目前培养考古学本科生的方法存在危机。资金短缺和从学术来源向私人来源的转变，世界范围内遗址破坏和抢劫的急剧增加，后代和当地社区中新出现的政治激进主义，复杂的新政府监督和监管，技术创新，以及科学知识库的急剧增长，这些都超过了教育工作者用他们的教学策略适应这些变化的能力。[参见K·A·皮伯恩，《改变的国家：被围困在学院中的考古学家》，见S.J.Bender和G.S.Smith编辑的《在21世纪教授考古学》，SAA，2000。]为解决这一问题，SAA成立了一个跨社会的课程工作组，并为一个由来自全国各地的多样化和忠于职守的教育工作者组成的讲习班提供支持。该工作组为考古学教学制定了一套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21世纪的生存至关重要。特别工作组正在与SAA、SHA、AAA和AIA合作，通过更新课程，尽快在该学科范围内实施这些指导方针。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，涵盖了美国八个学术机构基于这些原则的新课程的核心方面的设计、测试和评估。它致力于制作一整套灵活的课程材料，适合在任何高等教育环境中取代或重新设计现有的课程。该项目的目标是尽可能有效地将推荐的课程内容和经过验证的教学技术提供给最广泛的教育工作者。开发团队的参与者是从表现出对教育和研究的承诺的教职员工中挑选出来的。此外，还选出了原则突出的特定专门领域的代表，代表各种机构类型(社区学院、有或没有研究生课程的公立四年制课程，以及私立学院)，并提供区域多样性。(这些机构位于八个不同的州。)这些教员开发人员得到了三名教育专家的帮助。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开发和评估，每个人都专门研究七项原则中的一个单独领域。学生评估员也参与了该项目的关键阶段。每个参与者首先与国家公认的专家和技术顾问合作，在他们的母校开发两门独立的课程。总体而言，正在设计、教授和评估16门不同的课程。我们估计，在这项计划的三年期间，参与计划的院校约有700至1200名学生会受到影响。此外，课程材料正在向美国现有的340个本科课程提供，这些课程提供人类学或考古学课程的本科生或辅修生。除了3年的资助期外，这个项目有可能影响到全国所有3万个已申报的人类学本科专业，以及每年作为选修课报名参加人类学本科课程的大约50万至60万名学生。

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.