Environmental Education (EE) is described as a process of moving individuals toward stewardship and ultimately a union view of the relationship of people with nature. This document presents a general tenet of EE and explores some prevalent precepts that can be a guide to fully incorporating EE into all teaching settings. The percepts are explored…

During the last two decades learning communities, which are felt to have benefits that extend beyond students to faculty and the institution, have expanded to include many different models. This digest reviews five major higher education learning community models currently in existence: (1) Linked courses, which link cohorts of students taking two…

Curriculum integration has long been proposed as a way of organizing the "common learnings" or life skills considered essential for all citizens in a democracy. Curriculum is organized around real-life problems and issues significant to both young people and adults, applying pertinent content and skills from many subject areas or…

A growing number of education reformers are justifying their reform strategies by pointing to the findings of developmental brain research, theories of information processing, and the needs dictated by today's information-rich world. They advocate integrative education, which places students in a holistic context. This digest describes the…

This ERIC Digest discusses heritage education in terms of: (1) what it is; (2) why it belongs in the core curriculum; (3) how it relates to social studies education; and (4) the qualities of exemplary heritage education programs. Heritage education is defined as an approach to teaching and learning about history and culture that uses information…

This digest describes an interdisciplinary approach to instruction based on the relationship between reading, writing, and arithmetic. Questions related to which language learning strategies apply to mathematics, the perspectives of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) regarding this approach, the impact of reading on…

While national trends in liberal arts course offerings in community colleges have been charted for many years, trends in non-liberal courses have not been similarly mapped. In an effort to gain a better understanding of the entire community college curriculum, the Center for the Study of Community Colleges (CSCC), in Los Angeles, California,…

This digest contains an abridgment of a section of a chapter on "Environmental Education Research Related to Issue Awareness" from the 1984 National Commission for Environmental Education Research (NCEER) Report. The paper was prepared by Randall Wiesenmeyer, Maureen Murrin, and Audrey Tomera. Only the section of the paper dealing with…

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…

This information digest provides an overview of some areas of agreement between the fields of gifted education and middle school education, some areas of tension, and some promising directions that could engage educators in mutual planning of appropriate services for all middle school students, including the gifted. Shared beliefs include the…

Proponents of writing across the curriculum are quick to clarify that writing to learn is not the same as learning to write; but as flip sides of a single coin, the two support one another. Across-the-curriculum writing finds its merit in removing students from their passivity. Cross-curricular writing activities fall into two groups--expressive…

This digest discusses Language Across the Curriculum (LAC), an approach to teaching language that works with faculty in other content areas to identify the specific vocabulary and genres that students need in order to function effectively in another language in their respective disciplines. LAC also draws from the content-based approach to…

The controversial field of semiotics has been criticized for its "unwillingness to respect boundaries" and its "conviction that everything is a sign." The central concerns of this wide-ranging field, however, can be defined, and its implications for teaching can be outlined. Semiotics is the study of signs (symbols, icons, and…

Traditionally, humanities instruction at two-year colleges has been identified with transfer education. Since enrollments are decreasing in humanities classes, the future viability of the humanities curriculum will depend on providing humanities instruction to vocational students. This fact sheet discusses some obstacles to changing the humanities…

This digest defines interdisciplinary courses, presents the benefits and challenges of offering them in the community college, and describes six existing interdisciplinary courses at community colleges around the country. Interdisciplinary courses are characterized by the following: they tend to be highly innovative; they incorporate concepts and…