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Examining the Impact of the Wahlke Report: Surveying the Structure of the Political Science Curricula at Liberal Arts and Sciences Colleges and Universities in the Midwest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2005

John Ishiyama
John Ishiyama
Affiliation:
Truman State University
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Extract

In recent years, sparked by the path-breaking reports issued by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU) in 1991 (Wahlke 1991), the political science profession has paid an increasing amount of attention to the relationship between the structure of the political science major and student learning outcomes. A few studies have recently sought to examine this relationship empirically (Breuning, Parker, and Ishiyama 2001; Ishiyama and Hartlaub 2003; Ishiyama and Breuning 2003). However, these studies have focused largely on using the political science curriculum as an independent variable (i.e., affecting student outcomes) and in most cases have been limited to one or two institutions (with the exception of Ishiyama 2004). No study has broadly and systematically examined variations in curricular design across several institutions, nor has any study examined which factors affect how institutions have structured their majors in the way they have. This paper addresses this dearth by broadly surveying a number of liberal arts and sciences colleges and universities across 10 Midwestern states (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Minnesota, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin) to determine how many political science programs structure their majors in ways according to the recommendations made by the Wahlke report.

Type
The Teacher
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , January 2005 , pp. 71 - 75
Copyright
© 2005 by the American Political Science Association

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References

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