Conceived of as a response to the 2007 MLA Report on the state of foreign language teaching and learning in the United States, this article takes up some of the report's recommendations and puts them into practice. The first part of the article offers a response to current debates concerning foreign language programs and lays the conceptual…

Higher education student leadership development programs have grown exponentially since the 1990's. Over this time, research has indicated that student leadership development programs are beneficial; however, the research on what makes these programs effective has not kept pace. The subjects of this study included students enrolled in three…

The church music degree program at Charleston Southern University, based on a European traditional/classical sacred music degree model, has been attracting fewer and fewer students. The last two students pursuing this degree were graduated in May, 2011. Prior to their graduation, the administration encouraged the music department to investigate…

This dissertation examines theories of emotion in politically contentious discourse in order to better understand the implications for teachers and students in composition classrooms where critical pedagogical practices lead to contentious political work. I suggest that partly as a result of the social and political turn in composition studies,…

With the passing of legislation like the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) and an increased focus on continuous improvement in public education, professional development has progressed from a passive form of learning for educators to a process in which educators are interacting, collaborating, and learning through various methods. This study…

In 2011 the author taught, for the first time, the well-established unit CCA3101/4101 Environmental Humanities in the School of Communications and Arts at ECU (Edith Cowan University) in Western Australia. The unit has a 20-year history through associate professor Rod Giblett and parallels the development of the environmental humanities as a field…

East Timor has reached independence in 2002, after two periods of colonialism and after severe violence, especially following 1999. As a result, the country was almost destroyed, and lost its qualified workforce in all sectors, including education. To ensure national independence it is necessary to reconstruct and build the basic infrastructures…

Students experience a variety of challenges as they move from one level in school to the next. In this session, we consider and discuss two central questions related to students' progressions through their mathematical experience, particularly at transitions roughly characterized as elementary to middle school, middle school to high school, and…

We have applied the "practical paradigm" in teaching problem solving to secondary school students. The key feature of the practical paradigm is the use of a practical worksheet to guide the students' processes in problem solving. In this paper, we report the diffusion of the practical paradigm to university level courses for prospective…

In this paper, we assess students' performance in Elements of Statistics, one of the popular courses in general education, using data from UWF (University of West Florida) for fall 2008, fall 2009, and fall 2010 semesters. We analyze associations between students' performance in the course and several performance related factors including: college…

At the heart of competency education is the assumption that by maintaining a laser focus on learning, allowing time to be a variable, and powerful competencies to set the bar, an education system can be created that produces high achievement for students from all income levels and across all racial and ethnic communities. However, the transition…

A language course has two components: (1) the course content; and (2) the presentation of that content. This article deals with the presentation component. Its main thesis is this: Since the ultimate goal of language learning is communication, classroom presentation should, from the outset, be directed toward the development of communication…

"Rethinking Columbus," the book the author co-edited with Bob Peterson, had been banned in the schools of Tucson, Arizona, as part of that state's suppression of the Mexican American Studies program. The state superintendent of schools, John Huppenthal, had found the acclaimed Tucson program out of compliance with House Bill 2281, which…

Ten years ago, the author wrote a short piece entitled "Mathematics and numeracy--Is there a difference?". In mathematics, many put an emphasis on the content concepts and skills contained typically in strands such as Algebra, Number, Geometry, etc. Others argued that "mathematics" was about the "search for pattern" and that the key elements of…

For several years now, many have been agonizing over the sorry state of American higher education--indeed, of the entire educational system. Numerous causes have been cited for this state of affairs from poor high school preparation to inadequate governmental financial aid policies to postsecondary grade inflation. The most recent culprit "du…