This article reports how Kaplan K12 Learning Services Group, a division of Kaplan Inc., has developed a new, standardized college-preparatory curriculum for the Philadelphia school district. The curriculum, which made its debut in the Philadelphia district in 2005, was a critical element in the district leadership's plan to improve secondary…

This article examines debates over teaching Australian history in schools and notes a pervasive anxiety about what "our children" should know. The article sketches some of these debates, and while noting the politics of history teaching both in Australia and abroad, argues that its heavily politicized discourse has been further…

Four elements contribute to a classroom's success or failure as a learning environment: student needs, instructor approach, course content, and institutional setting. This chapter discusses the challenge of aligning these elements in the developmental classroom.

One of the most confrontational issues before American school boards and administrators is the effort by some Christian fundamentalists to have their views on life and its origins taught in science classes as a scientifically valid alternative to biological evolution. The issue continues to plague science education, suggesting that few school…

Online instruction is quickly becoming a trend in university classroom instruction. Many of these classes are established without proper input from students. The purpose of this study was to compare student attitudes and perceptions toward in class and/or online course instruction. This study took place in a university setting in the southeastern…

Advances in technology offer the possibility of new methods for delivering instruction. Learning via the Internet is being heralded by many as the new pedagogical model for training. Recent issues of training, computer, and management magazines all suggest that web-based training (WBT) is the best way to reach geographically dispersed employees…

The explosion of technology as a tool for teaching and learning has provided many opportunities for educators to participate in web-enhanced and web-based electronic classrooms. Further, distributed learning has provided learners with multiple access to course material in postsecondary education. While effective teaching strategies transfer to an…

The attempt to develop the laboratory component of a one-semester quantum chemistry course at Saint Mary's University has led to allowing the students to solve a big problem in quantum chemistry. It is done by subdivision into smaller problems that can be independently tackled by a student with a two-year calculus background.

Based on the American Art Therapy Association Research Committee's interest and support for learning how research is taught, a quantitative and qualitative survey of master's-level programs was conducted. Twenty four of the 44 surveyed programs responded. Twenty three (95.8 per cent) of the respondents required a course of at least three credits,…

Online instruction is a growing method of delivering course content in higher education. However, little research has been conducted regarding the effectiveness of such instruction for pre-service teachers, in both general education and special education, who will teach students with disabilities. In this chapter we briefly review the literature…

The Alpha course is possibly the most widespread and best-known evangelizing initiative of recent times. Billing itself as an introduction into "basic Christianity", Alpha is a programme that has been adopted worldwide by tens of thousands of churches. This paper overviews Alpha's attitude towards one of the most controversial debates in…

Objective: To integrate speaking practice with rhetorical theory. Type of speech: Persuasive. Point value: 100 points (i.e., 30 points based on peer evaluations, 30 points based on individual performance, 40 points based on the group presentation), which is 25% of course grade. Requirements: (a) References: 7-10; (b) Length: 20-30 minutes; (c)…

There exists a natural connection between civic engagement and the public speaking class. Too often, however, this connection remains indirect at best and lost in a sea of uninspired topic selections and convenient source cites at worst. This assignment offers one way to help public speaking students increase their civic awareness and imagination…

Over a three-semester period in a large undergraduate human development course, students were assigned to 5-7 member groups to work together in preparing for an exam in one of the five content units in the course. Their exam performance was tracked over three units: a baseline unit in which students worked only individually, a unit in which they…

The field of styles presents three major controversial issues: styles as value-laden versus value-free, styles as traits versus states, and styles as different constructs versus similar constructs with different labels. We address these issues by proposing an integrative model of styles--the Threefold Model of Intellectual Styles--which divides…