ABSTRACT
Departments have written documents on all kinds of policies. Increasingly, they document the history and development of the curriculum. When I first started teaching, the chair gave me the titles of the courses she wanted me to teach. She also offered to send me the syllabi of other teachers, so I could see how the courses had been taught. That was it. There was no discussion of how those syllabi addressed the knowledge base or the skill set associated with that course title or the classroom environment. When the syllabi arrived, they consisted of the contact information for the instructor, details on the method for computing the final grade, and the schedule of the readings. Were the description of the course content; the course goals; the criteria for grading; the attendance, make-up and style-sheet policies; and descriptions of the test and writing assignments delivered in class or passed out separately? I never found out.
