A Study On Interdisciplinary Education At American Universities And Colleges

The cultivation mode of talents in Chinese universities is deeply affected by the former Soviet Union. Since the 80’s, the university undergraduate education in China has changed a lot. For example, many colleges and universities has broadened the range of the program to strengthen the learning of basic knowledge. Many colleges and universities has tried to educate them according to their aptitude and postponed the time of the program choice.But for a long time, the undergraduate education in our country is overly dependent on one single discipline program. Many Chinese colleges and universities put much more emphasis on the academic knowledge studying, do not pay attention to the students’ problem-solving ability and hands-on ability and so on. These drawbacks of the cultivation mode of talents in Chinese universities have still not been fundamentally reversed. And interdisciplinary education using multi-disciplinary cross and fusion changes the traditional cultivation mode of talents. So interdisciplinary education can solve some drawbacks of the traditional cultivation mode and can cultivate more practical, versatile and creative talents.Interdisciplinary education at the American university began in the early 20th century and has been normalized until today. Therefore, American colleges and universities has accumulated rich experience about interdisciplinary education. Firstly, this dissertation analyzes the basic situation of the American interdisciplinary education from the aspects of history and current situation. And then this dissertation elaborates the objectives, organization form, curriculum, teaching, evaluation of interdisciplinary education taking one of the oldest programs that is American Studies as a case. Finally, from the case study this dissertation tries to summarize some characteristics of interdisciplinary education at American university in order to obtain a more profound understanding of the nature of interdisciplinary education. This dissertation can provide valuable reference for the implementation and perfection of interdisciplinary education of China’s universities and can also provide some meaningful implication for the innovation of the mode of talents cultivation and the development of talents cultivation quality.This dissertation is divided into three parts.The introduction mainly includes the research origin, concept definition, research objective, research content, research methods, research significance and the related literature review.The first part introduces the basic situation, including the development motivation of interdisciplinary education at American university and the specific development process of American interdisciplinary education and American Studies. The development of interdisciplinary education at American university is mainly due to the influences of of the changes of the knowledge production mode, the solvent of the complex social problems such as cultural safety issues, environmental issues, terrorism, the demands for the labor market and student’s lifelong development and career development. Interdisciplinary education at American university started at the beginning of the 20th century, almost the same time with the rise of the discipline-major education. And its original development is based on interdisciplinary general education reform movement launched by some famous colleges and universities in the United States. By the 1920s and 50s, because of the stimulus of World War and economic crisis, the U.S. government and many foundations funded a lot interdisciplinary researching activities and actively supported the interdisciplinary education and research such as American Studies and Area Studies to serve the cold war. In the 1970s, American university used interdisciplinary education as the core of new education experiment reform movement, which caused that the interdisciplinary education developed rapidly at that time. By the new 21st century, in the background of economic globalization and under the stimulus of solving complex social problems, interdisciplinary education at the university of the United States develops more rapidly. American studies as the earliest interdisciplinary program lays the foundation of system and culture for the development of other interdisciplinary programs. American studies mainly experiences two development periods which are the period of the cross of literature and history and the period of the cross of the humanities and social science.The second part is the case study of American studies, which is discussed mainly from cultivation objectives, organization form, curriculum and teaching and other aspects. The education aim of American studies program mainly inherits the training objectives of general/liberal education, and has its own characteristics such as that it requires students to have the ability of integrating interdisciplinary knowledge and the ability of analyzing interdisciplinary problems. The organization form of American studies mainly includes several types such as the attachment to the related department and college, the dependent program across different department, the independent interdisciplinary department or program, the independent interdisciplinary research center and so on. From the perspective of the evolution of the entire history, the organization form of American studies develops from depending on the department of history or literature to the final independent department. But these different organization forms complement each other and develop together. Each kind has its own advantages and disadvantages. The analysis of the curriculum plan of American studies mainly includes the interdisciplinary courses and the whole course system. There are different kinds of interdisciplinary courses, which have different functions and show the characteristic of integrating various branches of knowledge by the certain problem or theme. The Curriculum system decided by the certain organization form is divided into two categories. One is mainly composed of subject curriculum and the other is mainly composed of integrated curriculum. The teaching of American Studies attaches great importance to students’ability, pays more attention to the discussion-based approach, puts emphasis on process evaluation, etc.The third part is the generalization of interdisciplinary education at American university, mainly in respect of American Studies, coupled with other interdisciplinary education categories. The train objective of interdisciplinary education at American university focus on the wholeness of a person. The organization form is diverse, complementary and dynamic.The curriculum plan shows the characteristics of integration, openness and individuality. The teaching of interdisciplinary education at American university is based on research and exploration.