OBJECTIVE:

The objective of the history component of a core curriculum is to increase students' knowledge of how historians discover, describe, and explain the behaviors and interactions among individuals, groups, institutions, events, and ideas. Such knowledge will better equip students to understand themselves and the roles they play in addressing the issues facing humanity.

 
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REQUIREMENTS:

1. New courses approved for the core curriculum must be non-advanced courses except for substantiated reasons justified and approved on a course by course basis.
    
2. The request must show how the course intends to meet the exemplary educational objectives, as set forth by the Coordinating Board. This shall be done by including a syllabus that addresses the appropriate objectives.
    
3. To meet Coordinating Board requirements that core courses be evaluated, requests for new core courses must present processes and procedures for evaluating course effectiveness in regard to appropriate objectives and must delineate how the evaluations will be employed in course development.
   
   Relevant guidelines derived from the CB's Criteria for Evaluation of Core Curricula appear below:
   
   1. How is the course consistent with the appropriate elements of the core curriculum component areas, intellectual competencies, and perspectives as expressed in "Core Curriculum: Assumptions and Defining Characteristics" adopted by the Board?
   2. How are the institution's educational goals and the exemplary educational objectives of the core curriculum recommended by the Board being achieved?
   3. What processes and procedures are being used to evaluate the course and its contribution to the core curriculum?
   4. How will the evaluation results be utilized to improve the course and its contribution to the core curriculum?
       

 
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EXEMPLARY EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES:

1. To examine social institutions and processes across a range of historical periods, social structures, and cultures.
    
2. To use and critique alternative explanatory systems or theories.
    
3. To analyze the effects of historical, social, political, economic, cultural, and global forces on the area under study.
    
4. To comprehend the origins and evolution of U.S. and Texas political systems, with a focus on the growth of political institutions, the constitutions of the U.S. and Texas, federalism, civil liberties, and civil and human rights.
    
5. To understand the evolution and current role of the U.S. in the world.
    
6. To differentiate and analyze historical evidence (documentary and statistical) and differing points of view.
    
7. To recognize and apply reasonable criteria for the acceptability of historical evidence and social research.
    
8. To recognize and assume one's responsibility as a citizen in a democratic society by learning to think for oneself, by engaging in public discourse, and by obtaining information through the news media and other appropriate information sources about politics and public policy.
    

 
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