Hardly a week passes without yet another highly visible court case involving the rights and freedoms of secondary school students. The subject matter of these lawsuits is as varied as the activities of the students who have gone to court to vindicate their legal interests. The outcome of such cases also runs the gamut; some student plaintiffs (and…

In this article, the author describes the design for her advanced oil-painting class. In this class, high-school students created a self-portrait painting and learned a glazing technique. The author also describes the students' evaluation of the class.

In this article, the author describes how she used a commonplace book assignment to help students expand their background knowledge and as a means to formulate mature, informed perspectives regarding issues of importance. In the assignment, the author wanted the students to: (1) investigate issues of the day; (2) develop multiple perspectives…

I describe three activities that allow students to explore the ideas of evolution, natural selection, extinction, mass extinction, and rates of evolutionary change by engaging a simple model using paper, pens, chalk, and a chalkboard. As a culminating activity that supports expository writing in the sciences, the students write an essay on mass…

Online courses appear to be the future if colleges and universities choose to increase enrollments with students who need more flexibility in scheduling. The challenge has been to create a course that is rigorous with the limitations to physical presence of the instructor and the parameters inherent in technological delivery. This article relates…

In "Death in the Classroom", Jeffrey Berman writes about Love and Loss, the course that he designed and taught two years after his wife's death, in which he explored with his students the literature of bereavement. Berman, building on his previous courses that emphasized self-disclosing writing, shows how his students wrote about their…

Lack of class preparation by students is an impediment to establishing an active-learning classroom community. Participation Preparation Assignments encourage students to complete assigned reading and to work with relevant concepts in active ways even before arriving in class. The author presents empirical data (both objective and attitudinal)…

Assigned textbook readings are a common requirement in undergraduate courses, but students often do not complete reading assignments or do not do so until immediately before an exam. This may have detrimental effects on learning and course performance. Regularly scheduled quizzes on reading material may increase completion of reading assignments…

Using a data set specifically tailored to homework research, with a sample of 1275 students from 70 classes in Switzerland, the association between homework and achievement in French as a second language was tested at three levels (class level, between-student level, and within-student level). The strength and direction of the homework-achievement…

Students learn mathematics more effectively and more deeply when reading and writing is directed at learning mathematics. Although reading and writing in mathematics may necessitate more skills and practice to master, the mathematical learning derived from reading and writing mathematics far outweighs the burden it places on teachers and students.…

In this study the discipline of collaborative inquiry is employed to prepare aspiring administrators to lead for equity. Educational leadership students are required to conduct a site-based collaborative inquiry resulting in an Equity Plan signature assignment. As they develop their Equity Plans, emerging leaders also participate in a…

This study suggests that community service learning experiences facilitate the reconstruction of civil engineering student beliefs about both the type of work performed by civil engineers and the broad impact of civil engineering knowledge. Further, the service learning experiences highlight for students 1) the importance of relationships between…

The use of technology such as laptop computers in the classroom has long been recognized as destructive behavior since it diverts a student's attention from course topics. However, it is conceivable that every student will be using some form of technology in the near future. Determining the effects of interactive software on students' learning…

In her new book, Valerie Kinloch, award-winning author of "Harlem on Our Minds", sheds light on the ways urban youth engage in "meaning-making" experiences as a way to assert critical, creative, and highly sophisticated perspectives on teaching, learning, and survival. Kinloch rejects deficit models that have traditionally…

Online education has gained significant popularity in recent years, and this trend is set to continue. One of the reasons for the explosion of online education is the fact that Colleges and Universities need to seek out new delivery methods and to reach out to people who cannot attend College or University. Funding and diversity of courses is also…