A new initiative to incorporate diversity issues into the common engineering curriculum at the University of Wollongong (UoW) in Australia is outlined and the effect on student awareness quantified. The diversity issues were illustrated in the example of women in engineering, seeing that the numbers of women in engineering have dropped drastically…

Preliminary report of the results of a project to introduce peer instruction into a multi-section first semester calculus course taught largely by novice instructors. This paper summarizes the instructional approaches instructors chose to use, and the subsequent results of student performance on common exams throughout the course of the term.…

Quality of e-learning systems is one of the important topics that the researchers are investigating in the last years. This paper refines the concept of quality of e-learning systems and proposes a new framework, called TICS (Technology, Interaction, Content, Services), which focuses on the most important aspects to be considered when designing or…

We have concluded that teaching undergraduate students to use spreadsheet software to analyze, interpret, and communicate spreadsheet data through a graph is an information technology exercise in whole brain thinking. In investigating why our students have difficulty constructing proper graphs, we have discovered that graphing requires two…

In this book excerpt the authors briefly note the typical developmental features of babies ages birth to four months, four to eight months, eight to twelve months, and twelve to eighteen months. They make suggestions for interactions supporting play during each stage.

Larger class sizes are often the solution to the greater enrollments and fewer resources that many colleges and universities face today. These large classes present special challenges to courses that were typically and most effectively taught in small, interactive and open settings. A "Classroom Response System" (CRS), an instructional tool that…

The term "sexual health" is often used in sexuality education without any concrete, operational definition, and students are left to ascertain the meaning for themselves. In the absence of a clear definition, students may adopt diverse or narrow understandings of this vague term, without learning the full scope of everything that sexual health…

In this article, the author describes a social studies class activity that uses primary sources to develop a soap opera based on the American Civil War. In the soap opera activity, students can watch historical characters as they grow, develop, and change. Not only do people in the soap opera develop over a long period, but their accumulated…

Children in two first-grade classes and their teachers decided to take an imaginary trip to Washington D.C. For three weeks, the first graders spent their afternoons on the project, and their simulated flight was the culminating activity of a unit on Washington, D.C. In this article, the author discusses several details of the activity,…

Nearly every school in Hong Kong claims to provide ethics/religious education as part of the curriculum, but teachers find it difficult to teach values and attitudes without having students find ethics/religious lessons boring. While much has been said about how students learn, it remains that it is the teacher s task to provide the relevant…

This article describes a psychoeducational group for ethnic minority residents in a predominantly White adolescent residential treatment center. Group process and development are discussed, and a sample 10-week group is described as a way to provide an example of the application of the Association for Specialists in Group Work's "Principles for…

Incidental counseling occurs when school staff members respond to students in ways strikingly similar to counseling. Incidental counseling is offered as a simple and effective way for school counselors to engage in systemic change. Two case examples from real school settings form the context for a discussion of how school counselors can begin to…

The main question addressed in this article is how, in light of the multiethnic composition of its population, Dutch education is and should be educating its citizens. Popular politicians and mainstream media advocate discipline-oriented approaches. The authors argue that citizenship education seems to be taking a one-sided turn in Dutch…

This article describes how Japanese curriculum treats fractions. Several questions are raised concerning the way fractions are typically taught in North America. (Contains 1 table and 8 figures.)

If one were to search for classroom strategies for English Language Learners (ELLs), it would not take much time to find many different types of activities that are all useful with ELLs. Additionally, if one were to search for social studies strategies to use with native English speakers, he or she would have little difficulty in finding a variety…