{"id":164,"date":"2008-03-31T11:35:15","date_gmt":"2008-03-31T16:35:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/03\/31\/electives-and-transference-interference\/"},"modified":"2008-03-31T11:35:15","modified_gmt":"2008-03-31T16:35:15","slug":"electives-and-transference-interference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/03\/31\/electives-and-transference-interference\/","title":{"rendered":"Electives and Transference Interference"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Gerald Graff’s Clueless in Academe<\/em>, the author describes the cognitive and societal obstacles that interfere with students and teachers at institutions of higher education.\u00a0 Graff covers a great deal of material, including the tension between scholarly jargon and the vernacular, but his discussion of compartmentalization is particularly insightful.\u00a0 For reference purposes, most of this exploration takes place on page 68.<\/p>\n

The entire credit system is a double-edged sword.\u00a0 On the one hand, it theoretically affords students the freedom to choose courses of interest.\u00a0 On the other hand, these mix-and-match patterns of coursework don’t often yield the general body of knowledge that an institution’s mission statement advocates.\u00a0 Every student’s experience is unique, which poses some interesting issues.\u00a0 Consider my background.\u00a0 As an undergraduate math-major-turned-English-major, my academic transcript is rather odd.\u00a0 While the number of math courses is predictably excessive, it is the overflow of non-American literature and history courses that is particularly striking.\u00a0 Most of my coursework involved a study of French and Russian history.\u00a0 As for literature courses, only several courses in Shakespeare would count as “traditional” literature classes.\u00a0 The reason behind these choices had to do with scheduling and finding the “right” teachers.\u00a0 As a result, I’ve managed to be one of the few English majors that have never read Hemingway.\u00a0 What does this mean?<\/p>\n

More importantly, this issue brings up the tendency of students, including myself, to compartmentalize knowledge in each course.\u00a0 When learning physics, I did not apply it to any “real world” examples that were outside of class.\u00a0 Application or transference<\/em> was something that I assumed would happen later through some magical process involving experience.\u00a0 This flawed assumption on my part and the inaction on the part of the education system to foster interdisciplinary thinking created a gap in my understanding.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s no wonder that many students score highly on tests and in course assignments but are unable to solve problems on their first applied job.\u00a0 The gap between knowledge and application appears to be growing.<\/p>\n

Measuring, or assessing, transference between courses and fields is an extremely difficult task, yet scholars and successful professionals often cite the ability to link concepts across seemingly unrelated fields as a key ingredient in innovation and progress.\u00a0 It would seem that interdisciplinary studies would best be suited to accomplish this goal.\u00a0 Unfortunately, institutional barriers quickly emerge to thwart such an undertaking.\u00a0 For example, budgetary concerns question the rationality behind paying two teachers to teach a single class.\u00a0\u00a0 This doubling in the budget at a time when money is tight (when isn’t it?) has prevented team teaching from becoming a reality.\u00a0 Not surprisingly, compartmentalizing has become the norm.<\/p>\n

Graff’s discussion of the criticisms of the elective system dating back over one hundred years is particular disheartening. \u00a0After such a long period of experimentation and analysis, the need for a significant change or modification would appear obvious.\u00a0 However, the credit\/elective system is tied to a series of interests, laws, regulations, legal precedents, and budgetary mandates that maintain the status quo.\u00a0 The only realistic opportunity for addressing transference appears to remain inside the classroom.\u00a0 Perhaps reforming the curriculum to include cross-disciplinary evaluations and activities are the only short-term solution.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Gerald Graff’s Clueless in Academe, the author describes the cognitive and societal obstacles that interfere with students and teachers at institutions of higher education.\u00a0 Graff covers a great deal of material, including the tension between scholarly jargon and the vernacular, but his discussion of compartmentalization is particularly insightful.\u00a0 For reference purposes, most of this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2008\/610\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}