An initiation ceremony which marks the passage from adolescence to adulthood in an African village is the topic of this learning module for elementary and secondary students. A reading is adapted from the autobiography of a Guinean youth who participated in the initiation experience with other boys in his village at the age of 12 years. A lesson…

This selective listing of books for children in grades K-8 is organized by the following categories: American history, culture, and life; world history and culture; biographies and autobiographical accounts; folktales, myths and legends and storytelling; poetry and rhyme; contemporary interests and controversies; and understanding oneself and…

Twenty-five undergraduate preservice teachers in the literacy block (a six credit hour block of reading and language arts methods courses) at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln wrote their literacy autobiographies to fulfill one of the course requirements. These autobiographies help students' develop insights into their literacy past and present.…

Thomas Wildcat Alford, born of parents of the Absentee Shawnee tribe of Indians in 1860, relates the story of his life and of his tribe during the period from which the influence of the white race first began to be felt, up to when the so-called civilization of the white man superceded almost to annihilation the old tribal mode of life. The book…

An interracial team of teachers and regional consultants worked together revising this ten-year-old book on the teaching of black literature. The first section discusses black literature in terms of its discovery, tradition, and affective aspects; outlines goals and objectives for the course; presents a historical survey of black American writers;…

Investigates a variety of instructional strategies and teaching methods used in a graduate level multicultural education class. These included autobiographical analysis, role playing, and dialog journals, as well as, more traditional methods such as guest speakers and lectures. Discusses how the insights gained could be used in future research.…

The purpose of this study was to examine the personal conceptualizations of pre-service music education students by focusing on how they talked about learning to teach music in the context of cultural diversity, and to probe the relationships among these conceptualizations prior to, during, and after an immersion internship experience in a…

This book is an autobiographical effort to understand life as a person and as a high school English teacher, and how those two lives have intertwined. The text examines how the author, trained in certain ways, thinks of herself as a professional person. In addition to the subject of the teaching of reading and writing, the author explores how her…

This study examines the K-12 mathematical experiences of U.S. university students via an expressive writing assignment: a mathematical autobiography essay. The essays of 67 college students, out of over 300 enrolled in 16 sections of a college liberal arts mathematics course, were analyzed using constant-comparative methods. Two categories of…

Maintains that personal and family history assignments in an Asian American history course allow for an effective balance between scholarly inquiry and personal discovery. Describes the experiences and reactions of several undergraduate classes that used this approach. Discusses the benefits and problems inherent in studying oral histories and…

It's that time of year again and "Adults Learning" has once more asked some of the outstanding authors who have contributed to the journal over the past 12 months to nominate their best and most valuable reads of 2004. The authors are: (1) Judith Summers; (2) Thomas Sticht; (3) Alison Wolf; (4) Tom Schuller; (5) Linden West; (6) Brian…

This book relates the experiences of Abbie Morgan, who with her husband Ed, moved to the Alaskan village of Kulukak in 1931. Abbie accepted an assignment from the United States government to be the village teacher while her husband was appointed to provide health care for the village population and monitor the area's reindeer herd. The village of…

This book presents 13 stories of Native American college students struggling for survival on several planes--intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual--and striving for success in their own terms in a cultural setting not their own. Although all the students attended Dartmouth College and graduated, the salient common theme of the stories is…

This nine-chapter book, written in Europe by a French-speaking Swiss educator, explores the rationale for using educational biography approaches in adult education and presents examples that illustrate various uses of these life history activities. Chapter 1 provides an introduction and overview of educational biography, and Chapter 2 describes…

This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 29 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) science fiction in elementary school science education; (2) the portrayal of black characters in children's literature; (3) UFOs and their correlates as a…