The global education ideology detailed in this essay results in excessive breadth of coverage as well as a lack of rigor in the study of world history and the evaluation of other cultures. In its most concentrated form, it instills a deep skepticism about the political worth of the nation-state and support for a divisive, anti-western form of…

Inquiry has been used to promote activity-oriented learning that reflects scientific investigation, specifically the observation, experimentation, and reasoning used by scientists. Understanding the roles of content and process in school science helps educators better understand and practice inquiry-based instruction. The relationship between…

This study investigated the influence of two different explicit instructional approaches in promoting more informed understandings of nature of science (NOS) among students. Participants, a total of 42 students, comprised two groups in two intact sections of ninth grade. Participants in the two groups were taught environmental science by their…

"American history," writer James Baldwin told a group of teachers in 1963, "is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it" (1963/1996, 227). Children, Baldwin argued, have "the right and necessity to examine everything." In particular, they need to…

A constant challenge facing university faculty and academics is determining how innovative and authentic elements, based on constructivist philosophy, can be manifested effectively in online learning settings. In this article, we describe an educational technology postgraduate course on evaluation that incorporated a scenario whereby assessable…

This manuscript reports the findings from a web-based, issues-centered project created by teacher education students for high school seniors in a government class. The university students compiled web pages that formulated an issue facing the Kansas Legislature and authored questions to be evaluated by the high school government students. The…

Critical thinking enjoys almost universal support, except when applied to controversial topics. Yet it is these topics that are often the most effective initiators of critical thinking exercises that improve students' rational approaches to challenging problems. The use of controversial issues to promote critical thinking requires an institutional…

Creative Problem Solving (CPS), a well-documented methodology for developing creative-thinking skills, has often been the focus of studies that have examined the impact of creativity training. The purpose of the present study was to extend this line of research in two ways. The first objective was to evaluate participants' reactions to specific…

Religion, like Superhero discourse, is a contested topic of question and debate in early childhood education. This article draws on data from a small ethnographic study that took place in a long day care centre in Sydney Australia. The study examined how children negotiated their "identity work" in the context of popular culture. In this…

"Teaching Sociology" recently published several articles dealing with the use of computer-assisted pedagogical techniques. Many authors assess the effectiveness of specific computer-assisted instruction (CAI) forms by examining either student performance or student course evaluation. Typically one group uses some form of CAI while the other does…

Inquiry Into Life Science is a content biology course expressly for the fulfillment of the General Education life science laboratory course requirement of elementary education majors at this university. The course is modeled on the Teaching Standards and Content Standards of the National Science Education Standards [National Research Council.…

By addressing race and class through the stories we tell about service-learning in the classroom and in our scholarship, I argue that we can more effectively negotiate the divide between the university and the community and work toward social change. (Contains 13 notes.)

This article presents research findings investigating the fundamental characteristics in online Spanish instruction (at the university level in the United States) designed to maximize learning outcomes. The researcher collected data to develop a rubric of the fundamental characteristic in online Spanish instruction and then to determine whether…

Given that critical thinking development is an essential part of undergraduate education, and in most cases faculty members accept their role to promote some level of it in their classrooms, this article explores the complicated relationship between faculty perceptions of critical thinking and pedagogical applications. Following a review of the…

The felt-experience exercise is a form of cooperative learning. Participants are placed into dyads in which they interact with one another to realize and deepen their understanding of themselves, their partner, and the course content. Meaning is created through written reflection on personal experience and dialogue with one's partner. The…