A South African university's community development program attempted to integrate Checkland's soft-systems method into Kolb's learning-cycle theory. Evaluation revealed shortcomings in the curriculum design, including the assumption of learner autonomy, necessity of assessing students individually, and difficulty of allowing learners to construct…

Describes a discipline-specific communication course for engineering students offered by a Canadian university. Suggests that a pedagogical approach based on North American theories of genre and theories of situated learning can be used to design communication courses tailored to the needs of any discipline under certain conditions. Lists three…

Presents a brief overview of dynamical systems. Gives examples from dynamical systems and where they fit into the current curriculum. Points out that these examples are accessible to undergraduate freshmen and sophomore students, add continuity to the standard curriculum, and are worth including in classes. (MM)

After a study identified inconsistencies between cognitive research findings and accounting teaching methods, accounting instructors in Scottish colleges implemented a cognitive approach with 49 students. Compared to 31 controls, these students were better able to adapt what they had learned to complete nonroutine tasks. (Contains 44 references.)…

Presents nine responses of professors and communication professionals to the ethical, economic, and enduring issues of journalism and mass communication education. Considers their responses to the state of journalism and mass communication education and reevaluates educational assumptions and practices. (SG)

Argues for a richer, more varied English Instruction experience for "vocational track" students. Suggests several methods for creating a more powerful vocational/English curriculum. Concludes that it is not the place of any teacher or school to decide what kinds of literacy students will or will not need or want in their futures. (SG)

Considers reasons that teachers and students alike do not read for pleasure. Lists three steps to address this: defining the teacher's reading philosophy; defining students' reading philosophies; and fusing reading research and curricular expectations. Describes how the author focuses her curriculum to accommodate more reading. (SG)

"Back to Prosperity. A Competitive Agenda for Renewing Pennsylvania" was a shot across the bow for the state. The report's findings and the work of Richard Florida and the Social Impact of the Arts Project--taken together with the rich intellectual movement of music education during the latter half of the twentieth century and the…

Initial teacher education programmes, in order to comply with the requirements for teacher registration, are usually expected to introduce student teachers to the mandated curriculum. Often this is done uncritically, so students tend to accept rather than examine the underlying epistemological model which partitions knowledge into distinct…

This reaction to the papers in this PME Special Issue of "Educational Studies in Mathematics" draws a wider perspective on the issues addressed and some of the constructs used in research in Realistic Mathematics Education (RME). In particular, it tries to show that while the problems addressed existed within the world-wide arena of…

In the first decades of the IT revolution, disproportionate amounts of intellectual energy and financial investment were expended in building out the technology foundations. As a result, campuses now rely heavily on technology and Web resources that, though radically altering the academic landscape, have remained centered on the build-out of core…

The classroom experience contains an infinite number of variables that cannot realistically be related to in any manageable teacher's manual. When manuals aim at being "practical", what is produced is often something that looks like practicality, but is not. Curriculum-writing needs a new approach, intended to educate teacher rather than students.…

This article provides new information about how compacting can be effective with first grade high ability students in a rural Alabama school district. Curriculum compacting was designed to eliminate already-mastered content and to provide students with enrichment activities in the time saved. The study, which replicated some aspects of the…

Both the special education and gifted education literature call for a differentiated curriculum to cater for the wide range of student differences in any classroom. Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences was integrated with the revised Bloom's taxonomy to provide a planning tool for curriculum differentiation. Teachers' progress in using the…

Using his thirty years of international experience with future-focused Outcomes-Based Education designs and models as a foundation, Dr. Spady describes a five-step process for translating the familiar twelve SAQA "Critical Outcomes" into a compelling life-performance framework of "exit outcomes" that directly empowers learners and genuinely…