The massification and globalization of higher education, combined with the widespread adoption of processes underpinning accreditation and quality control of university programs, have tended to result in learning contexts that are increasingly narrowly conceived and tightly controlled. Underlying many quality control measures is a "one size…

As an advanced rhetoric and composition doctoral student, I taught Engl 3135: Visual Rhetoric, a three-credit upper-level course offered by the Department of English at Georgia State University. Mary E. Hocks originally designed this course in 2000 to, in her words, "introduce visual information design theories and practices for writers [and]…

This review reports selected literature on theory, research, and practice in disciplinary literacy, primarily reading. The authors consider the ways this literature can be viewed through the lens of Lee S. Shulman's theory of Pedagogical Content Knowledge, which includes: subject matter content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and…

This article describes a newly designed upper division German language course, "Contemporary Germany: Food, Energy Politics," and two sampling methods of assessment for measuring parallel gains in German skills and sustainable development (SD) thinking. Second Language Acquisition (SLA) informed course design, key assignments, and…

An opportunity for teachers to join 80 outstanding biological sciences undergraduates in a series of practical sessions and lectures at the 2010 Gatsby Plant Science Summer School has inspired the development of teaching and learning resources for use in schools. Plant scientists have a crucial role to play in society and it is hoped that the…

The integration of one's curriculum is an approach to education that ignores subject-matter lines of delineation, thus allowing faculty to bring together the separate pieces of a curriculum into a coherent whole that facilitates meaningful associations across subject matter. Before taking on the challenge of curriculum integration, faculty…

No major change in thought or action occurs without mistakes, casualties and growth. This article is designed to examine the implementation of integrated curriculum design from a more critical perspective. While the integrated curriculum innovators were confident about the design and their process, not all of their colleagues were interested in…

In all of the years of training required to be an expert on any topic, teachers too often forget how to learn from the beginning. This is particularly true with regard to teaching and learning dance in U.S. primary and secondary school settings. Many P-12 dance teachers have had at least ten years of formative dance technique instruction in…

In the two decades, since Staff and Educational Development Association was formed, educational development has become a mature and internationally recognised discipline, informed strongly by the scholarship of teaching. Writing about teaching, learning and assessment has helped to describe, distil, analyse and affect practice, and to change the…

Most biochemistry, genetics, cell biology, and molecular biology classes have extensive prerequisite or co-requisite requirements, often including introductory chemistry, introductory biology, and organic chemistry coursework. But what is the function of these prerequisites? While it seems logical that a basic understanding of biological and…

The Consider, Read, Elucidate hypotheses, Analyze and interpret data, Think of the next Experiment (CREATE) strategy for teaching and learning uses intensive analysis of primary literature to improve students' critical-thinking and content integration abilities, as well as their self-rated science attitudes, understanding, and confidence. CREATE…

University Modeling Instruction (UMI) is an approach to curriculum and pedagogy that focuses instruction on engaging students in building, validating, and deploying scientific models. Modeling Instruction has been successfully implemented in both high school and university physics courses. Studies within the physics education research (PER)…

Although research is scant, there is a growing interest in the manifestation of the racial and cultural context on the schooling of biracial students. The purpose of this qualitative research study was to explore the schooling experiences of 10 Black-White biracial students. Specifically, the goals of the study were to (a) identify the factors…

With the "No Child Left Behind Act of 2001" ("NCLB"), signed into law on January 8, 2002, schools nationwide have been challenged to improve student achievement. Several middle and junior high schools in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania were identified as being in need of Corrective Action in 2006 based upon data from the…

All programs of healthcare education face increasing change and daunting challenges to prepare new graduates for the real world of practice as care providers in complex systems. The necessity for change in nursing education is at a critical level, called on from a variety of sources. New nurses must be able to enter practice as competent, safe,…