Four studies into characteristics and instructional needs of students with learning disabilities are summarized in this article. These studies are also reviewed in the wider context of mathematics intervention research in special education. These studies generally rely on qualitative methodology, and they are best understood in light of a…

In the fall of 2016, the "Harvard Educational Review" ("HER") published "Cross-Pollinating Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy and Universal Design for Learning: Toward an Inclusive Pedagogy that Accounts for Dis/Ability" by Federico R. Waitoller, assistant professor in the Department of Special Education at the University…

If a liberal arts education should prepare our students to participate in a meaningful way in democracy, what does that mean for how we design our courses across disciplines? In this paper, I first address the question: who should teach democratic skills? Using an upper-level course in Canadian politics, I then illustrate how to explicitly…

An essential difficulty in solving practical problems that are not like the ones a student has solved before is discerning the core of the problem. It is claimed that discernment has to be trained by variation--by varying the context of the assignments in which students have to identify and grasp their "underlying form". A decisive…

Reviews the general education curriculum today and offers suggestions for using the author's curriculum model. (Author/WD)

For perspective on the interdisciplinary challenge in higher education, it is important to understand the concept and origins of the "discipline." Disciplines are convenient but artificial constructs, and while academia may be divided into them, the world is not. A sense of the balance and connection between them is vital. (MSE)

The push for academic electives has grown over the years for many reasons. The pressure for high test scores has forced schools to focus on literacy and core content areas. The competition for entrance to four-year universities has grown, too. However, in the race to improve academic offerings and raise test scores, some schools have neglected to…

Integrating critical thinking and reasoning skills with content in the humanities and the social science curricula at the postsecondary level invites students to become co-participants in discovering and constructing knowledge as members of a learning "community." Readers of the research literature on critical thinking confront many…

A curriculum design that focuses on the human sciences, the disciplines that concern themselves with the social and individual activities that are distinctively human, would be a better approach than the current separation of the humanities and social sciences. (MSE)

This article focuses on reasons for using foreign language experience programs (FLEX) with middle school students. Specific sections provide a description of an interdisciplinary FLEX program and discuss the goals, objectives, and roots of exploratory programs; uses of the exploratory approach; a multidimensional curriculum; and a "grass…

Multiculturalism (like crossculturalism and transculturalism) is an emergent, interdisciplinary concept--one that is rife with images. The metaphoric language of "why" (embrace multiculturalism) is filled with arguments for or against multiculturalism paired with problems and burdens, coupled with disease, and most frequently, troped as…

Interdisciplinary work has an important role to play in undergraduate study, but only as part of a larger pattern in which the disciplines as such must occupy a central position, since they supply the forms and structures that support a heritage of learning. (Author)

A discussion of liberal studies in the pharmacy curriculum argues that integration throughout the baccalaureate program is needed, and teaching methods and goals, not course content, are primary factors in building coherent curriculum. Strategies used at Albany College of Pharmacy to avoid separation of the curricula are offered as illustration.…

Notes increased interest among media instructors in the broader liberal arts mission and their role in it. Explores efforts to connect journalism and mass communication studies with the rest of the curriculum. Explains a "linchpin series" which connects mass communication topics directly to various other fields. Provides examples. (SG)

It is argued in this paper that the interdisciplinary course provides a setting for viewing the ordered relationships that exist among disciplines. The necessity of this approach is pointed out as it reflects the need for a highly disarticulated curriculum to address and find solutions to the complex problems facing the world community. A…