Despite psychology's position within the National Council for the Social Studies' definition of social studies, the American Psychological Association is advocating the rebranding of psychology as a science course. This study interviews six high school psychology teachers and employs a Foucauldian framework to understand different perspectives on…

Teaching controversial issues poses challenges for teacher candidates, stemming from apprehensions about potential backlash and gaps in content and pedagogical knowledge. The prevailing emphasis on tested subjects such as mathematics and reading/writing in elementary school education often sidelines social studies and science, limiting…

Purpose: Using Johansson-Sköldberg "et al."'s (2013) descriptions of design discourses, this study aims to analyze teacher interviews, research notes and teacher and student artifacts to determine if engagement in design practices led to changes in the teacher's thinking. Design/methodology/approach: This article presents results from a…

Curriculum based on open educational resources (OER) -- materials that are free for educators and students to use, customize, and share -- represent a small portion of all K-12 recent adoptions, at slightly over 5%. OER are concentrated in Mathematics, where 14% of adoption decisions were OER (compared to 4% for English Language Arts, 2% for…

With lots of examples and color images, this resource is both a foundational text and a practical guidebook for bringing contemporary art into elementary and middle school classrooms as a way to make learning joyful and meaningful for all learners. Marshall shows how asking questions and posing problems spark curiosity and encourage learners to…

The concept of project-based learning (PBL) has garnered wide support among a number of K-12 education policy advocates and funders. This working paper builds on and updates a seminal literature review of PBL published in 2000. Focused primarily on articles and studies that have emerged in the 17 years since then, the working paper discusses the…

The author proposes that today's existing, world-wide curriculum--based on offering roughly the same math, language arts, science, and social studies to all--is not what is required for the future, and is hurting rather than helping the world's students. Math, language arts, science, and social studies, he argues, are really "proxies"…

The purpose of this study was to explore outcomes of a GIS/GPS integration process: to (a) examine student responses to GIS and GPS inclusion in their curriculum, (b) determine whether a relationship exists between inclusion of GIS into existing K-12 curriculum and student achievement, (c) examine the effectiveness of GIS professional development…

Urges that energy concepts be taught in an interdisciplinary manner from kindergarten through the twelfth grade. Describes a materials development program, the Project for an Energy-Enriched Curriculum, which offers a broad-based curriculum emphasizing general energy concepts, availability of energy resources, and information on how various uses…

Two new curriculum development projects, interdisciplinary in nature, are described in this article. Exploring Human Nature, the Educational Development Center project, is a social studies course for high school students which integrates biological science into its program. Conversely, the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study course, Human…

A debate in the House of Representatives concerning the acceptability of a social science course developed with National Science Foundation (NSF) funding culminated in passage of an amendment to the annual NSF budget requiring prior congressional review of all grant proposals. Several senators said they would oppose the amendment. (SD)

Since the nation's schools can play a major role in encouraging energy conservation, an energy curriculum should cover four objectives: (1) generating an awareness of energy conserns, (2) fostering the development of responsible energy use habits, (3) preparing students for energy-related careers, and (4) creating an understanding of international…

Cites examples from medical research, medical ethics and genetic counseling to point for the need of a secondary school course in values clarification in bioethics. (CP)

Reported are the proceedings of a conference of leaders in energy education held at Land Between the Lakes near Brandon Springs, Tennessee. Classroom teachers, curriculum coordinators, university faculty, and education specialists from business and government participated. A "Conference Consensus" paper, the text of the keynote speech, a…