A group of faculty members, identified through their interest in democratic classroom practices, were surveyed to discover learner-centered educational techniques appropriate for content-laden courses. Respondents from a variety of academic disciplines and instructional levels provided examples and critiques of efficacy. These practices ranged…

In the four decades since the creation of this journal, historians in North America have seen a steady increase in the materials available to assist them in more effectively sharing the fruits of their discipline with their students. In the 1990s this effort was given a new intensity by the introduction into academia of the concept of a…

This chapter discusses the development and implementation of the Kansas Study of Instructional Costs and Productivity, which collects and reports data on community college instructional costs and faculty workloads. The project provides data for both intra- and inter-institutional comparisons about how much community college faculty teach and the…

This chapter outlines the understanding gained when working with faculty to learn about assessment, to develop a plan, and to support them as they carry out and interpret their assessments. (Contains 1 table and 1 exhibit.)

Teaching is a critical consideration in investigations of primary school leadership and not just as an outcome variable. Factoring in instruction as an explanatory variable in scholarship on school leadership involves moving away from views of teaching as a monolithic or unitary practice. When it comes to leadership in primary schools, the subject…

The changing academic priorities of universities are often discussed but little investigated by social scientists: What accounts for the striking expansions and contractions in disciplinary fields over time? Focusing specifically on the natural sciences, this article articulates a global-institutional argument that holds that deep shifts in…

This article is part of a broader study on research capacity development (RCD) of individuals within three research units in South African universities. The complex and wide-ranging nature of research capacity means that development of capacity is a long-term, multifaceted and multilayered process. The ability to do research is more than the sum…

At present, value management (VM) is struggling to survive amidst other management fads. The problem is that it is still not recognized as a professional or academic discipline. There is no sound academic base and a lack of understanding by the public, owners and corporate organizations. The future survival of VM is therefore always being…

Since academic sociology's birth in this country, sociologists have not been shy about publicly praising and ridiculing the discipline. Though sociologists have been the primary participants in the seemingly endless debates about sociology's proper subject matter, methods, and purpose, there is another group that has also struggled over the past…

Knowledge management continues to evolve as a discipline, yet even basic features that define a discipline have to be established. Developing a shared understanding of core concepts, such as the meaning of "knowledge", has been elusive in this field. In the absence of reaching a universal definition, surrogates for knowledge are adopted because of…

This paper gives an overview of some of the problems facing the higher education mathematics community, and some examples of methods that departments of mathematics and related disciplines can use to try to deal with the problems. This is relevant to mathematics teachers and related staff at both sides of the school and university interface.

The present study builds on earlier work by Meyer and Land (2003) which introduced the generative notion of "threshold concepts" within (and across) disciplines, in the sense of transforming the internal view of subject matter or part thereof. In this earlier work such concepts were further linked to forms of knowledge that are "troublesome",…

Transdisciplinarity has been a veritable mantra, especially in the humanities and social sciences, for twenty years or more. Yet academic structures and research application requirements still struggle to come to grips with cross-boundary research and teaching. Making universities more trans-discipline-friendly is a tricky task, however. As Wendy…

The recently promulgated IT model curriculum contains IT fundamentals (ITF) as one of its knowledge areas. It is intended to give students a broad understanding of (1) the IT profession and the skills that students must develop to become successful IT professionals and (2) the academic discipline of IT and its relationship to other disciplines.…

After 1945, the words "anti-fascist education" appeared much less frequently in the western zones of occupied Germany than in the Soviet zone, but the concerns expressed by the phrase were shared by all occupying powers: How could education help prevent a resurgence of Nazism? For the American and British occupation authorities, and to a…