There is a long tradition in the research about how to design classroom assignments to foster cognitive learning. However, especially since the COVID19 crisis, an affective turnaround that focuses on strengthening personality and personal development has increasingly broken new ground in teaching and learning. The resulting question is whether…

Reflective practice supports critical thinking and assessment skills through analyzing one's own life experiences, and the role of reflection in learning has been long recognized. However, drawbacks of many reflective practice assignments are their broad scope and lengthy written requirements. I propose that the reflection process is robust enough…

Given urgent need for culturally competent early childhood educators and the strategic encouragement by colleges for students to travel internationally, this analysis focuses on the question: What is the relationship between international experiences and preservice early childhood educators' cultural competence? More specifically, three questions…

This quasi-experimental, nonequivalent control group study compared the impact of Ennis's (1989) mixed instructional methodology to the immersion methodology on the development of critical thinking in a multicultural, undergraduate senior-year learning community. A convenience sample of students (n =171) were selected from four sections of a…

Recreation professionals use outdoor programs in rustic settings to promote the intellectual, physical, emotional, and professional development of their students. One important aspect of personal growth is to develop the ability to think critically about one's own learning, and journaling is one approach for achieving this goal. Outdoor programs…

Discusses teaching methods which may be used to help students become more sensitive to life outside their own spheres and routines; illustrated. (SW)

Argues in favor of teaching thesis and the forms of exposition by means of assignments such as personal narrative, autobiography, and observation out of direct experience. Describes one such assignment. (RL)

A personal account of an English instructor's experiences with poetry therapy--the use of poetry to help people get in touch with, and begin dealing with, their problems and feelings--is provided in this paper. Among the topics dealt with are the following: the scope of poetry therapy, the instructor's early dissatisfactions with traditional…