This interdisciplinary scientific inquiry lesson specifically utilizes the 5E learning cycle to engage high school students in an investigation on size-dependent properties of matter. In particular, this inquiry lesson focuses on a biologically relevant phenomenon, namely accessibility to a pharmaceutical drug with respect to the size of the pill.…

Scientific literacy should be promoted through the teaching of science from Grade R and for this to happen, teachers need to understand what science should be taught and how it should be taught. This interpretive, qualitative study explores the degree to which four foundation phase teachers interpret the life skills programme with regard to the…

An interdisciplinary subject, liberal studies, was introduced as a compulsory and core subject into the New Senior Secondary Curriculum in Hong Kong in 2009 with the purpose of expanding students' knowledge base and increasing their social awareness through investigation into a variety of issues. However, transforming curricular innovations into…

Students in senior pre-university education encounter difficulties in the application of mathematics into physics. This paper presents the outcome of an explorative qualitative study of teachers' beliefs about improving the transfer of algebraic skills from mathematics into physics. We interviewed 10 mathematics and 10 physics teachers using a…

The inclusion of engineering practices poses a challenge for many science teachers trying to meet the expectations of the Next Generation Science Standards because they lack formal training in engineering. This, however, may provide an opportunity for science teacher educators striving to improve the use of learner-centered teaching practices by…

The importance of music education in American schools is well established, with 93% of Americans agreeing that music should be a part of a well-rounded education (Harris, 2005). Students preparing to teach in the elementary classroom (elementary education majors) in American colleges and universities typically take a music class (sometimes two) as…

This qualitative study reports the concerns of faculty in one food science department as they integrate communication competencies into their classes. The results of the study prioritized self-reports from faculty regarding the challenges they experienced while integrating communication activities into their classes; the nature of the concerns and…

In the ten years since the Modern Language Association published their report, "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" (2007) dissatisfaction with the "two-tiered configuration" of US foreign language departments has become increasingly vocal. While the target of the criticism is often the…

We present a longitudinal study of what graduates take away from a cross-disciplinary graduate-level New Product Development (NPD) course at UC Berkeley over a 15-year period from 1996-2010. We designed and deployed a longitudinal survey and interviewed a segment of our NPD alumni population to better understand how well our course prepared these…

This paper presents the findings of an interview study (phase one of a three-phase doctoral research project) that attempted to establish practitioners' and parents' views of why parent-child group music making activities are offered in interdisciplinary Children's Centres in England for the 0-3 years age range. These settings are community hubs…

A new, interdisciplinary high school geoarchaeology curriculum unit, titled "Living with Volcanoes," was created and tested in two pilot lessons with 30 high school students total studying geography and classical civilization in northern England. Students were highly engaged during the curriculum unit and showed positive learning gains…

Catholic higher education aims to educate students about the Catholic Social Tradition, yet few resources exist to articulate specific learning goals and assess such learning. This article presents the process used by a multi-university team to validate a rubric intended to strengthen curricular and co-curricular student learning about the…

This paper documents the perceptions and experiences of faculty members in the midst of statewide reform efforts in Virginia and North Carolina to integrate developmental reading and writing courses. Using interview and focus group data from 161 faculty and administrators in both states (combined) as well as three detailed case studies of faculty…

This paper explores the ways students perceive the transfer of learned knowledge to new situations -- often a surprisingly difficult prospect. The novel aspect compared to the traditional transfer studies is that the learning phase is not a part of the experiment itself. The intention was only to activate acquired knowledge relevant to the…

Nineteen students whose first language is not English (English Language Learners, ELL) participated in an action research study that focused on the marriage of an art education curriculum and literacy practice. The study introduced students to the consistent use of language in art education as a means to discuss, inform, explain, and demonstrate…