Background: It has been claimed that thematic or integrated approaches to curriculum delivery offer a range of advantages over subject-based modes of delivery including improved pupil motivation. Purpose: This study put claims regarding pupil motivation to the test, using the achievement goals framework. This contemporary approach to understanding…

Intended for administrators and policy makers, as well as teachers, this digest examines the current state of humanities instruction and the evolving place of humanities in the high school English classroom. The digest first explores differing definitions of the humanities, and discusses reasons for the decline in emphasis on humanities…

The purpose of this study was threefold: to emphasize a need for humanities education in the secondary school today; to explore various types of programs in humanities education in respect to method of approach, content, teaching, and achievment; and to propose guidelines which may aid others in undertaking or implementing a humanities program in…

Humanities can be simplistically defined as a program, as a set of related or unrelated activities, or as human and humane interaction. The following assumptions are important in establishing humanities programs in the elementary school: programs must be reality oriented; there should be an emphasis on direct participation for the student;…

The humanities curriculum described in this book is designed as a multidisciplinary, integrated approach to learning. Chapter 1 discusses a definition of the humanities; the segmented curriculum; student expectations; teacher training and the importance of the faculty; the humanities and the sciences; organizing a humanities program; advantages of…

This study begins with an effort to place the secondary school humanities education movement in the context of the broad concern of educators with curriculum reform during the past decade. An examination of the instruction programs in secondary school humanities education revealed four major variants: Aesthetic Education, Cultural Epoch, Great…

This brief descriptive guide is a pilot social studies- language arts course at Haviland High School, Haviland, Kansas. The two-hour course is team taught and seeks to combine the junior year of U.S. history and the junior year of English in an interdisciplinary class. The project began in 1990 with the school's designation as a pilot school for…

This bulletin is designed to help teachers integrate the arts and humanities into the social studies curriculum. The volume includes three chapters. Chapter 1, "Learning Through the Arts," features the following sections: (1) "Integration"; (2) "Assessment"; and (3) "References and For Further Reading." Chapter 2, "Using Theater in the Classroom,"…

The National Humanities Faculty (NHF) was established by the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1968 to improve the teaching of the humanities in the American schools. To fulfill its obligation, the NHF conducts a program in which humanists--university professors, creative artists, and others--work with selected schools who have applied for…

As a result of the evaluation that many English and social studies courses inadequately prepare students for today's world, a humanities program was designed to deal with real social, ethical, and educational problems while retaining the essential skills and ideas of the traditional subjects. This syllabus, the first of three sequential humanities…

This study explores the problems of selection, developing, teaching, and evaluating a course that relates music, art, and literature. The specific unit presented deals with relating poetry to music and to painting with Yevgeny Yevtushenko as the central figure. The seven parts of the unit draw on Yevtushenko's poetry and life to develop the…

For his Humanities Curriculum Project (HCP), Stenhouse defined the humanities as the study of human issues of universal concern. Because he viewed curricula as praxiologies (hypothetical strategies for realizing ideas in practice), secondary English teachers using the HCP materials were given general principles which they had to translate into…

This paper describes how the University of Dayton, Ohio, has strengthened teacher education through the creation of two institutional general education initiatives that integrate general and professional education in a coherent learning experience. The first is a CORE program that is open to all students pursuing degree work in the elementary…

As the humanities approach to education expands, the high school English chairman can aid his teachers in developing this approach by suggesting useful teaching methods, praising successful teaching techniques, and permitting teachers to pursue independent methods of instruction. One method is an in-depth study of an historical period (such as the…