Placing Women in the Liberal Arts: Stages of Curriculum Transformation

Abstract

Research on women has created a new body of knowledge that is reshaping our understanding of the traditional curriculum. The scholarship about women's experience produced in the last two decades has entered the curriculum primarily through women's studies courses. But what happens next? In the last five years, informed administrators and women's studies teachers have undertaken to transform traditional courses throughout the curriculum. Marilyn Schuster and Susan Van Dyne present a paradigm describing how teachers and students experience the process of curricular change. Their analysis suggests that teachers may move through a sequence of stages and try a variety of strategies in order to represent women and minorities,and thus a fuller range of human experience, in their courses.