美国研究型大学本科教育的变革与创新

Reform and Innovation of Undergraduate Education in American Research Universities

20世纪80年代以后,美国研究型大学针对本科教育中存在的问题和危机,采取了一系列变革措施:注重知识的广博,加强基础性课程,强调文理并重渗透,实施跨学科教育;在人才培养目标、课程计划设置和学生培养方案中,充分体现国际化教育的内涵;强化教学要素和教学环节,通过力行教授授课、坚持以学生为主体、组织探索性学习、重视和加强教学研究,着力提升教学品质,从而有效地加强和改进了本科教育。美国研究型大学本科教育的变革、探索和创新,为我国研究型大学重新审视本科教育的地位和使命,以及建设具有世界先进水平的一流大学提供了借鉴。

Research universities in the United States have worldwide prestige for their first-class graduate education. But they received more and more criticism for their undergraduate education in the 1980's from the society, the public and the academic communities. They faced both criticism and expectations under the circumstances. Having undergone ceaseless exploration, reform and innovation, they have managed to resolve the conflicts and crises that appeared in the process of development. They have achieved a lot in many fields to improve the quality of their undergraduate education.Recognizing the principle that knowledge is an integrated whole and strengthening the features of being extensive and basic in curriculums, they condensed the classification of majors, deferred the dividing of majors and adopted flexible measures in schooling management to furnish students with a broad and solid base of knowledge. Emphasizing on the overlapping and merging of liberal arts, science and engineering, they boosted students' mastery of knowledge in all kinds of professional fields, which facilitated students' adapting to the integration of science, technology and production as well as the increasingly intimate relations between natural sciences and social sciences. Highlighting interdisciplinary majors and the training of students in interdisciplinary studies and researches, American research universities made great efforts to develop students' creativity and motivate their potential for innovation.Further measures include: promoting students' consciousness of internationalization and globalization, improving students' competitive and cooperative abilities in the international arena, and giving the goal of developing distinctive characteristics of internationalization; offering more courses on other cultures and international issues, increasing the content of internationalization in the planning of curriculum and trying to embody the idea of internationalization in all courses; recruiting and dispatching international students to internationalize the composition of students as well as the methods of learning; staffing undergraduate education with more professors to create special opportunities for students; implementing the educational idea of ″to be students-oriented ″, giving incentive to students, and helping students develop their own abilities, which would make students feel responsible for their own intellectual development; organizing inquiring studies for students to transform them into active learners; giving emphasis to researches on teaching to make the reform and practice of undergraduate education more motivated and effective.In short, American research universities have undergone drastic reform and innovation with down-to-earth spirit, strengthening and enhancing undergraduate education. In turn, this has laid down a solid foundation for the sustainable development of graduate education and research. They have provided rich experiences for Chinese research-oriented universities to reflect on the standing and mission of their own undergraduate education, their appropriate handling of the relationship between undergraduate education, graduate education and researches, and their construction of world-class universities.