Although evolution has long been considered a controversial issue, little effort has been made to ensure that instructional approaches address the controversial nature of the issue. A framework for understanding the nature of controversy and some defining characteristics of controversial issues are provided. In light of this framework evolution is…

The high prices of textbooks, which are approaching $1,000 per year for an average student, have those students and their professors crying for mercy. Flat World Knowledge, a new digital-textbook publisher, has the answer to this problem. Starting next year, the publisher will offer online, peer-reviewed, interactive, user-editable textbooks, free…

A teacher faces hostility from certain colleagues who view his decision to attend a controversial lecture as tantamount to the repudiation of the principle of inclusive education and the rights of students with disabilities. The teacher sees the proposed boycott of the lecture as a form of censorship threatening freedom of inquiry and critical…

The current study examines the implications of literary teaching material in a national diversified society in which the governmental educational policy separates between two national educational systems, and controls both of these separate systems. We set out to examine whether, in such realty, teachers are willing to teach texts, not formally…

This article explores secondary preservice teachers' attitudes toward the use of teacher self-disclosure as a tool for citizenship education. Based on the notion that teacher self-disclosure may function as citizenship curriculum, this study addressed critical issues of teachers' sharing their knowledge about religions (including their own) and…

Students are making an increased use of the Web as a source for solving information problems for academic assignments. To extend current research about search behavior during navigation on the Web, this study examined whether students are able to spontaneously reflect, from an epistemic perspective, on the information accessed, and whether their…

Americans are often perceived as holding extremely negative views of governmental bureaucrats. Phrases like bureaucratic waste and unresponsive bureaucracy fill the mainstream media and taint the image of bureaucrats. Beginning in basic high school civics classes, students are taught to respect the lawmaking process, the executive power of the…

The issue whether creationist accounts of the origins of life should be taught in science education alongside or even instead Darwin's theory of evolution is controversial in many countries. In 2002 there was a controversy around teaching creationism in science classes at a secondary school in England. The research presented in this paper uses…

Intersectionality takes into account how inequalities of race, gender, class, and sexuality "intersect," or work in combined ways, in the lives of Black women and other women of color. As a holistic teaching approach, it also has relevance for all people, male and female, straight and gay, rich and poor, and along the various continuums…

This article is about missed opportunities for promoting learning and growth in our increasingly diverse classrooms and the fundamental affective and social questions we need to address if we are to teach about diversity effectively. It is about the need to develop trust within diverse groups, so that students can learn from each others'…

This study assessed the capacity of a major Problem-Based Learning (PBL) Assignment to improve students' content knowledge surrounding relevant course concepts in two sections of "The Politics of Welfare Reform," a 200-level class offered at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth. The hypothesis was that performance on the PBL assignment, which…

How can teachers effectively use documentary film to teach history, and toward what goals? This article addresses these important questions by: (1) exploring what we know about secondary teachers' practices with documentary film and secondary students' beliefs about documentary film as a source of knowledge about the past, (2) proposing a…

Thomas Kuhn, in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions," posited that science does not progress by the steady accumulation of knowledge, but rather by a system of competition among paradigms. They vie for supremacy through greater parsimony, explanatory power, and popularity among the community of scientists (Kuhn, 1962). The current…

Last summer, Governor Bobby Jindal signed the Louisiana Science Education Act into law. Although the name of the bill sounds innocuous, it is backed by the intelligent-design movement and will no doubt lead to yet another court case on teaching evolution and creationism in school and college classrooms. After all, courts and classrooms have served…

"Middlesex" is a book about undiagnosed hermaphrodite coming to terms with his/her socially determined sexuality and his/her choice of sexuality. The protagonist and narrator of the novel, Calliope Stephanides, is raised as a girl because he/she presented feminine genitalia at birth. When Calliope realizes he/she is a hermaphrodite--a realization…