This article describes the Faculty Cooperative Curricular Activities (FCCA) model developed and implemented in the Recreation Management program at Appalachian State University. FCCA's are experiential learning activities or assignments in two or more separate courses where the assignment is shared to build upon a common construct/concept. These…

Leadership educators looking to successfully create and implement an interdisciplinary leadership minor can often find themselves overwhelmed and apprehensive. Little exists to help guide our way as we attempt what often is an initial academic beachhead on campus. This paper explores the creation, implementation, and outcomes of a…

This paper follows Kennesaw State's University's (KSU) faculty journey in developing a new integrated core curriculum for their Management majors that will empower the students and meet the needs of today's employers. Curriculums must change to stay current. Depending on the amount of change, this can be a huge undertaking for a department…

Research indicates that the social and emotional well being of students impacts academic outcomes; however, due to a limited amount of class time, the counseling core curriculum that addresses these needs often takes a back seat to academic learning. This article proposes a paradigm shift where teachers and school counselors collaborate to…

The purpose of this paper is to share how physical education (PE) offers a unique place of interdisciplinary connections, contributing to coherence in the general education (GE) experience, and to demonstrate the overall value of PE, serving as a rationale for its inclusion in a GE program. A definition of GE is provided, followed by an historical…

Now that the Common Core standards are coming to just about every school, what every school leader needs is a straightforward explanation that lays out the benefits of the Common Core in plain English, provides a succinct overview, and gets everyone thinking about how to transition to this promising new paradigm. This handy, inexpensive booklet…

Close Reading Exemplars pull together several key shifts within the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in a single methodological approach towards reading texts. Close Reading Exemplars focus on investigating complex texts (Anchor Reading Standard 10) via text dependent questions that rely on evidence and inferences to answer them (Anchor Reading…

We present a new approach for the organization of schools, which we call the flexible scheduling paradigm (FSP). FSP improves student learning by dynamically redeploying teachers and other pedagogical resources to provide students with customized learning conditions over shorter time periods called "mini-terms" instead of semesters or years. By…

What constitutes an informational text covers a broad swath of different types of texts. Biographies & memoirs, speeches, opinion pieces & argumentative essays, and historical, scientific or technical accounts of a non-narrative nature are all included in what the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) envisions as informational text. Also included…

The initiative to revise Texas Christian University's (TCU) general education curriculum was one of the outcomes of an institutional strategic planning process in 2000, the Commission on the Future of TCU. Coincident with this planning process, TCU developed a new institutional mission statement that focused on preparing students for becoming…

As the new English Language Arts Common Core State Standards take hold across the United States, the need grows for pre-service and in-service teachers to be ready to develop curriculum and instruction that addresses their requirements. This timely, thoughtful, and comprehensive text directly meets this need. It delineates a literacy practices and…

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a small-group pedagogical technique widely used in fields such as business, medicine, engineering, and architecture. In PBL, pre-written cases are used to teach core course content. PBL advocates state that course material is more likely to be retained and applied when presented as cases reflecting "real life"…

Recent moves in Australia to institute a national curriculum emanated from federal governments of ostensibly different political persuasions in the period from 2003, building on developments that go back over 25 years. This article traces continuities and new developments, meditating on two questions: whether the current moves are politically…

One shortcoming of the academic curriculum is its tendency to emphasize the integrity of the separate subjects and to neglect, even ignore, connections between and among subjects as well as between students' academic experiences and those beyond school. Unfortunately, evidence indicates that recent high school students, who have completed more…