This communication reports how bioscience students are encouraged to benefit from city and regional community-based resources through use of a guidebook and student-managed learning. Positive outcomes of the module are that bioscience students take their learning experience beyond the classroom, they engage with wider community resources, and they…

Self-regulated learning (SRL) encourages students to learn using metacognition, strategic action, and motivation. This nontraditional approach to education relies on the student's active role in learning and the instructor's facilitatory role in teaching. This article provides a comprehensive analysis of an SRL instructional model the author…

Once adapted to the context of the classroom, the tenets of successful counterinsurgency offer teachers a potent intellectual framework for conceptualizing teachers' efforts to build effective active learning communities together with their students. In this article, the author describes a counterinsurgency analogy that shares essential features…

Higher education has been actively encouraged to find more effective and flexible delivery models to provide all students with access to quality learning experiences yet also meet institutional imperatives for efficiency and accountability. Blended learning, commonly defined as an integration of traditional face-to-face and online approaches to…

Problem-based learning, or PBL, is a student-centered instructional approach that is derived from constructivist epistemology. It is based upon ill-structured real-world problems with the goal of strengthening and developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills in learners. Initially utilized in medical schools to strengthen diagnostic…

This paper describes a study into the implementation within two Spanish primary schools of an inquiry-based curricular project entitled "Exploring Our World" (ages 6-12). Taking the form of two case studies, it offers a description of the two participating schools and the development of the project within them. Particular attention is…

It is commonly believed that learning styles are not really concerned with "what" learners learn, but rather "how" they prefer to learn and it is also an important factor for students' academic achievement and attitudes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the learning styles of pre-service teachers enrolled at…

What does it mean to provide community-based health education that respects adults of diverse cultures and ways of being in the world? How does one nurture meaningful learning opportunities that awaken possibilities as a catalyst for understanding, conversation, and action? In this article, nurturing place, sharing power, heart listening, talking…

In June 2009, the U.S. Department of Education released a meta-analysis of online learning studies that detailed strong support for online learning. The authors of this report, however, cautioned that online students' increased interaction--as well as differences in curriculum and pedagogy--did not allow a direct comparison between online and…

In this paper, we maintain that sociologists should deliberately teach social responsibility as a means of fulfilling the promise that C. Wright Mills envisioned. A key aspect of the sociological imagination includes a sense of social responsibility, but that aspect is best learned through a combination of experience and academic knowledge.…

A simulation of the foreign policy decision-making process, as described in this article, can assist an instructor in linking students' abstract understanding of complex political events, circumstances, and decision making to the real-world interplay of the multiple factors involved in decision making. It is this type of active learning that helps…

The purpose of this article is to present Questioning as Thinking (QAT), a metacognitive framework that helps teachers and students focus on performance. QAT combines components of three widely-used strategies: Think-Alouds, Question Answer Relationships (QAR), and Self-Questioning. Together, these three strategies give students and teachers the…

This study investigated the degree that social interdependence predicted the achievement of 26 cooperative learning groups. Social interdependence was assessed in terms of postgraduate students' individual orientation (that is, cooperative, competitive, and individualistic). Participants were 84 postgraduate students enrolled in an…

This article describes three creative arts exercises designed to promote belonging, connectedness, and wellness among adolescents with and without disabilities. The scenarios are multifaceted and based on utilization of creative visual and performing arts. Creative outlets may help groups be more effective and meaningful for participants,…

The author has been a theater artist in Chicago and Elgin public schools for over 10 years, and for the last four she has been leading professional development workshops for teaching artists and classroom teachers both in the United States and abroad. Teachers all over the world have asked her the same questions: "How do you get new teachers…