This chapter describes various models for organizing the undergraduate political science major. 1 Though debate and discussion of the proper goals and structure of the political science curriculum go back to the founding of the discipline (Ishiyama, Breuning and Lopez 2006), the present review focuses on activities in the USA since the 1980s to reform the major. Curriculum reform efforts in political science have taken place in the midst of reform waves in higher education. The circumstances surrounding the last reform effort sponsored by the American Political Science Association (APSA), the 1991 'Wahlke Report' on liberal education and the political science major (Association of American Colleges 1990; Wahlke 1991), are illustrative. After several years of studies criticizing academic majors as loosely organized collections of distribution requirements and faddish electives (Association of American Colleges 1985; Zemsky 1989), the Association of American Colleges (AAC) called on disciplinary associations to formulate recommendations to 'strengthen study-in-depth' (Association of American Colleges 1990). In response, APSA appointed a task force with John Wahlke from the University of Arizona as chair. Sharing AAC's view that depth of understanding cannot be reached 'merely by cumulative exposure to more and more subject matter', the authors of the political science report set out to design a model that featured sequential learning, 'building on blocks of knowledge that lead to more sophisticated understanding. .. leaps of imagination. .. and efforts at synthesis' (Association of American Colleges 1990, p. 131). Following a similar process, three distinct curricular frameworks in the discipline have developed since the Wahlke Report. The drive for greater student civic and political engagement began with the service-learning movement of the late 1980s and 1990s (Battistoni and Hudson 1997). Outcomes-based curricula grew as part of the assessment movement, which evolved from external demands for accountability (National Commission on Excellence in Education 1983; National Governors Association 1986) and increased interest in student learning within the academy (Study Group on Conditions of Excellence in Education 1984; McClellan 2009). More recently, the successor to AAC, the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), spearheaded the use of 'high-impact practices' (HIPs) as a means to broaden and deepen student attainment of 'essential learning outcomes' (Kuh 2008). Despite the array of curricular models with high potential for increasing student learning, the political science curriculum at most institutions remains organized by distribution requirements. After describing the four alternatives to the distribution model and their status in the discipline, the final section of this chapter will address the question of why the political science curriculum appears impervious to change.

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Like many colleges and universities. Elizabethtown College has adopted a writing-across-the-curriculum program that attempts to establish writing as a principal means of communication and as a tool for the development of intellectual skills. Set to begin in Fall 1990 as part of a new core curriculum, the program requires that each core course provide writing assignments that “emphasize the process of writing or rewriting in response to critical evaluation by faculty and/or peers.” A major stimulus to the development of the program was an NEH Summer Seminar on Writing Across the Humanities, conducted on campus in 1985 by faculty in the College's Professional Writing Program.The Department of Political Science, with four professors, has been an active promoter and participant in the campus writing program. Most of our own less formal conclusions about the role of writing in learning are congruent with those of the Harvard Assessment Seminars. We, too, find that close faculty-student interaction in assignments spread out sequentially provides the writer with directive and suggestive comments in a less threatening and more encouraging way. Such consultation leads to a higher quality final product and student mastery of more skills in style, organization, and analysis of substance. Two assignments that have worked particularly well for us at the introductory level are the foreign policy issue brief in the international relations course and the issue analysis project in American national government.

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