This article explores how playing games can be used to teach intangible social interaction across boundaries, in particular within open collaborative innovation. We present an exploratory case study of how students learned from playing a board game in a graduate course of the international and interdisciplinary Innovation and Business master's…

High-stakes standardized tests in reading and limited instructional time are two powerful disincentives for teaching economics in the elementary classroom. In this article, integrating instruction in poetry and economic decision-making is presented as one way to maximize the use of scarce instructional time. Following a brief introduction to the…

Many children get little to no regular physical education during the school day. National recommendations call for schools to offer physical activity as part of planned academic lessons that teach math, language arts, science, and other subjects through movement. The purpose of this study was to analyze the student and teacher perceptions of the…

A Project Based Learning (PBL) methodology was used in the practical laboratories of the Advanced Physical Chemistry department. The project type proposed simulates "real research" focusing on sol-gel synthesis and the application of the obtained sol as a stone consolidant. Students were divided into small groups (2 to 3 students) to…

In this article we describe current educational research underlying a comprehensive model for building a scientific classroom discourse community. We offer a professional development activity for a school-based professional learning community, providing specific science instructional strategies within this interactive teaching model. This design…

In this article, the authors describe how mathematics teachers and art teachers were able to enthusiastically engage seventh- and eighth-grade students in an interdisciplinary activity focused on scaling, proportional reasoning, and measurement by recreating artwork on a famous private collection. Using the artwork from The Barnes Foundation in…

This article describes the results of a three-day professional development workshop for newer teachers (with less than six years of experience) and more experienced teachers trained in design of skills-based, year-long themes with rich interdisciplinary connections at Charles River School (Massachusetts). For the three days, the school was buzzing…

This article focuses on four case study schools that have adopted innovative competence-based curriculum (CBC) projects in Year 7 for a variety of educational and social reasons. The article discusses the issues and challenges posed by the CBC for teachers in the daily life of the classroom. Philosophical ideas about the purpose of education vary…

This project describes a fourth-grade unit that integrated science and language arts using the book "The Capture" as a focal point. During the unit, students engaged in science activities and language arts lessons that focused on owls. Students conducted investigations that helped them develop a deeper understanding of the adaptations of…

How can museums and other informal learning institutions cultivate greater civic engagement among the visiting public around important social issues? This case study of the National Network of Ocean and Climate Change Interpreters' (NNOCCI) professional learning community illustrates how insights from the social sciences can be productively…

As an educator, it is always interesting to learn and employ new and creative ways of thinking and methods in teaching. However, the application of these new ideas in our classrooms needs more examination for better ways of implementation. Since the postmodernist theory and approaches have been practiced in education in the past few decades, the…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the use of a middle school flexible interdisciplinary block schedule would increase eighth-grade students' reading scores, as measured by the Oregon Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (OAKS). A 90-minute middle school flexible interdisciplinary block schedule served as the independent variable and…

Ecological ideas have been manifested in diverse ways in American high schools since the early twentieth century. Core scientific concepts in ecology--the study of the relationship between organisms and their environment--include adaptations, plant succession, ecosystem ecology, and population ecology. This dissertation argues, however, that there…

In the arts-informed teaching and learning spaces, knowledge is potentially produced and shared based on resonance that can involve a whole person. Concerned with educational processes enveloped in relational aesthetics, the authors designed a workshop to reconnect with green awareness, based as much as possible on the methodology that is located…

I report a study that investigated ideas about critical thinking across three disciplines: Philosophy, History and Literary Studies. The findings point to a diversity of understandings and practices, ones that suggest the limitations of a more generic approach. I argue that a more useful conception of critical thinking is as a form of…