Calls for reforms in the ways we teach science at all levels, and in all disciplines, are wide spread. The effectiveness of the changes being called for, employment of student-centered, active learning pedagogy, is now well supported by evidence. The relevant data have come from a number of different disciplines that include the learning sciences,…

The ND Annual Conference--Teaching of Psychology: Ideas and Innovations was held on March 7-8, 2008 at the Crowne Plaza in White Plains, New York. The conference was sponsored by the Psychology Department of Farmingdale State College. The conference featured Dr. Douglas Bernstein from the University of South Florida, Tampa as the keynote speaker.…

This monograph is a companion piece to "Teaching and Learning in Honors." The authors in this monograph are dedicated to exploring the sometimes magical, sometimes ordinary, sometimes rewarding, sometimes challenging connections between good teaching and deep, lasting learning. Questions regarding students' learning, pedagogical…

In 1996, Paul Deering, now a National Middle School Association West Region Trustee and University of Hawaii professor, established the Masters Degree in Education with a Middle Level Emphasis Program (MLMED) at the University of Hawaii. The MLMED is a two-year program that focuses on five standards that encompass the research-based middle level…

Tomlinson and Germundson compare teaching well to playing jazz well. Excellent teaching involves a blend of techniques and theory; expressiveness; syncopation; call and response, and, frequently, improvisation. Weaving in analogies to jazz, the authors delineate four elements of such teaching: curriculum that helps students connect to big ideas,…

This paper explores the extent to which students and teachers are able to acknowledge the strengths and weaknesses of a shift in the approach to teaching and learning from a traditional, teacher-centred perspective towards project- and learner-centred education. It reports on a case study aimed at exploring students' and teachers' perceptions of a…

This article describes a mathematics and literature interdisciplinary project for preservice elementary teachers that was implemented in several urban middle school classrooms. This project, based on the novel Chasing Vermeer by Balliett (2004), involved a dramatization of one of the chapters from the book and a follow-up mathematical exploration.

This book highlights ways in which science instruction benefits from the perspectives of teachers committed to whole language. The introductory chapter starts from a viewpoint outside the classroom and seeks to identify overall patterns while the remaining chapters build from experiences in individual classrooms. This book assumes that teachers…

This document describes a two-year integrated biology and chemistry curriculum for ninth and tenth grade students. The first chapter outlines the rationale for integrating biology and chemistry and presents the topic sequence for the integrated curriculum. Chapter 2 discusses the developmental, cognitive, and philosophical issues that form the…

This book breaks new ground in that its purpose is to "mainstream" teaching about the environment in higher education. Despite the holistic nature of the content, the book is structured-with two exceptions-around disciplinary chapters. The opening chapter, "Reinventing Higher Education," and the final chapter, "Reinventing the Classroom: Connected…

This unit is designed to introduce students to individuals who have been important in U.S. history and who contributed to society. Students are asked to research, study, and portray an important person from one of the following fields: leaders, sports figures, humanitarians/philanthropists, industrialist/business figures, entertainment,…

This document presents the proceedings of a conference devoted to the development of teaching materials on the heritage of Vermont to be used in Vermont's classrooms. The following articles are included: "Everybody Has to be Somewhere, Sometime" (S. Hand); "A Vermont Geography: The Dynamic Map of the State" (S. Farrow);…

This curriculum guide is designed to provide high school teachers of English, social studies, and Latin with the necessary background and investigative methods for teaching Roman culture through Roman literature and teaching Roman literature in its cultural context. The family is used as the focus of the guide because it is believed that an…

This practicum introduces a program that increases the exposure time to music in the elementary classroom by integrating U.S. music with the teaching of U.S. history. A pretest and posttest were employed to identify increases or decreases in students' abilities to identify U.S. music and its relationship to specific lifestyles or periods of U.S.…

Rhetoric and mathematics have much in common that can help explain the composing process. Common elements of rhetoric and mathematics important to the teaching of writing are (1) relationships between syntax and semantics, (2) practices of representation, and (3) focus on problem solving. Recent emphasis on "repair processes" in mathematics is…