A Comparative Study of the Impact of General Education Curricula Reform on Universities between the US and Japan

本研究的目的是考察日本大学和美国大学通识教育课程的结构。主要研究结果如下：(1)美国大学本科课程由通识教育、专业和选修课三部分组成。其中，通识教育因其作为人文教育的历史传统而被认为是本科教育的核心部分。通识教育的理念具有广泛性和连贯性。由于分配要求和部门制度的原因，通识教育的广度和一致性几乎不可能兼容。尽管如此，美国的课程改革一直在寻求这两种理念的兼容性。(3)通识教育被定位在大学教育的第一阶段，因此一部分被补习教育所取代。这种情况最近成为通识教育的一大负担。(4)通识教育的传统在大学中引发了文化战争。这显示了美国一直被认为是高雅文化的东西。(5)文学士和理科学士学位的不同之处在于，文科教育的概念被视为本科学位的类型。即使是同样的课程，例如计算机科学，文学士学位可能专注于广泛的学习要求，而理科学士学位可能专注于工程领域的研究。在这两年中，已在学术期刊上发表了四篇论文，并出版了一本翻译类书籍。

The aim of this study is to examine the structure of general education curricula in Japanese universities and the US universities. The following findings are obtained.(1) Undergraduate curricula in the US universities are composed of three parts : general education, major, and electives. In them, general education is assumed as the core part of undergraduate education because of its historical tradition as liberal education. Majors are the late comer but have predominant position.(2) The ideas of general education are breadth and coherence. It has been almost impossible to be compatible between breadth and coherence in general education because of distribution requirement and department system. In spite of this, the curriculum reforms in the US have been conducted to seek the compatibility of these two ideas.(3) General education has been positioned in the first stage of university education so a part of it has been exchanged by remedial education. This situation recently becomes a big burden of general education.(4) The tradition of liberal education has caused cultural wars in universities. This shows what has been assumed as high culture in the US.(5) The notion of liberal education is seen in the difference between BA and BS as the type of undergraduate degrees. Even though the same programs of study for instance computer science, the BA is likely to focus on wide range of study requirement and the BS is likely to focus on engineering field of study.During the two years, four papers has been published in scholarly journals and one book which is translation has been published.