Social practices are assumed to play an important role in the evolution of new teaching and learning methods. Teachers internalize knowledge developed in their communities through interactions with peers and experts while solving problems or co-creating materials. However, these social practices and their influence on teachers' adoption of new…

This essay takes up the question of fostering independent student identities and universal student success by exploring Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in the first-year composition classroom. To do so, the author first defines Universal Design for Learning and then attends briefly to contemporary English studies research on UDL. The author…

Although it is helpful to identify a list of concepts to categorize and communicate the big ideas of engineering, it is important to determine how best to incorporate them into instruction. Concept mapping is a well-established learning and assessment tool that can be used by technology and engineering teachers. Maps can trace levels of…

Integrative curriculum has been noted as a best practice toward effective learning. Quality physical educators struggle and search for different ways to integrate other content areas (e.g.., language arts, math, and social studies) into their daily lessons; however, due to budgetary limitations, they must find ways to do so with educationally…

This essay argues for a particular form of student blogging as a powerful tool for generating and sustaining student engagement and conversation. After a brief discussion of pedagogical principles, "hub-and-spoke" blogging is presented as a means to facilitate a more student and discussion-centered classroom. Based upon recent research and the…

Purpose: One bad hiring decision can lead to low student achievement. Research supports that teachers are the most influential factor in student success. As a result, principals' current practice of hiring teachers based on intuition and likeability must change. Given the current high stakes era, principals need reassurance that the teachers they…

This qualitative study aimed to explore teacher curriculum approaches and the strategies attached to each approach because they influence the taught curriculum, teacher development and student learning. The study was therefore grounded in teacher curriculum development, curriculum implementation, teacher development, student cognitive and…

Noting the community college mandate for promoting civic engagement, the author addresses the issue of developing civically engaged community college classrooms in the midst of a decline in civic engagement nationwide. The paper proposes service learning pedagogy as a method for synthesizing classroom based academic knowledge and community based…

The principles of course redesign that were applied to a gateway Cell Biology course at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee are applicable to courses large and small, and to institutions of any size. The challenge was to design a content-rich science course that kept pace with present and future content and at the same time use principles of…

Team-based learning (TBL) may rely on small group interaction more heavily than any other commonly used instructional strategy in postsecondary education. This conclusion is based on three facts: (1) Group work with TBL is central to exposing students to and improving their ability to apply course content; (2) Majority of class time with TBL is…

Text analytics refers to the process of analyzing unstructured data from documented sources, including open-ended surveys, blogs, and other types of web dialog. Text analytics has enveloped the concept of text mining, an analysis approach influenced heavily from data mining. While text mining has been covered extensively in various computer…