Sixty percent of college freshmen entering American colleges and universities were unprepared for college level discussion and analytical skills. Though the many researchers I detailed in the literature review showed how effective the use of controversial or difficult topics in the classroom as a means for civil discourse was for imparting the…

Rural teacher recruitment and retention is a matter of interest for the state of Alabama as policymakers look to understand teacher shortages in rural schools across the state. How teachers are prepared to teach in rural schools is an essential part of rural teacher recruitment and retention. Preservice teachers need exposure to rural contexts as…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore community college student perceptions of taking an online public speaking course within the theoretical construct of the Community of Inquiry model, which describes the manner in which the elements of social presence, teaching presence, and cognitive presence interact to create an educational…

Evolution is controversial among students and religiosity, religious affiliation, understanding of evolution, and demographics are predictors of evolution acceptance. However, quantitative research has not explored the unique impact of student perceived conflict between their religion and evolution as a major factor influencing evolution…

In this paper, the authors draw on interview and observational data generated with Black teachers at a public high school in the Black Belt to describe resistance. This work is situated in prior theorizing about pedagogies of resistance (Jaramillo and Carreon, 2014; Patel, 2016; Love, 2019; Givens, 2021) to describe how teachers resisted through…

The emergence of mobile applications has opened the door to a new kind of information and communication technology tool and educational support which is vital for students' positive learning behaviours. The aims of this study were to examine the effects of three mediators (confirmation, flow, and student engagement) on students' learning…

In the fall of 2015, a new secondary education class, Diversity and Multicultural Education, was introduced at Jacksonville State University in Jacksonville, Alabama, USA. Although many multicultural theorists emphasize the importance of students taking diversity/multicultural education courses in college, there is no real model for creating such…

A personalized and media-rich learning framework called "Knowledge and Curriculum Integration Ecosystem" (KACIE) has been developed and implemented in a junior-level fluid mechanics course in Fall 2016, Spring 2017, Fall 2017, and Spring 2018, in a prominent HBCU. This model shares characteristics of blended instruction as well as a…

Sex education, especially in the southeastern USA, remains steeped in an Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage (AOUM) approach, which sets up barriers to the education of sexually active students. Research confirms that science education has the potential to facilitate discussion of controversial topics, including sex education. Science teachers in the…

This article describes the development, implementation, and assessment of a social media assignment using Pinterest as a tool for student engagement and professional development in two undergraduate social work courses. Twenty-one undergraduate students enrolled in Human Behavior and the Social Environment (HBSE) courses completed the assignment…

A new graduate chemistry course was introduced in the Department of Chemistry at The University of Alabama. The new course, CH584-Literature and Communication in Graduate Chemistry, replaced a second year graduate student literature seminar requirement. Course topics included chemical information resources, critical analysis, scientific writing,…

Across three phases, we investigated college students' perceptions of poor college teaching to develop a typology of poor teaching behaviors. In Phase 1, students generated a list of qualities representative of poor teaching. In Phase 2, another group of students assigned behavioral correspondents to these qualities, resulting in a list of 15 poor…

Prompted by the passage of Alabama House Bill 56, I organized the museum studies course I taught for Auburn University at Montgomery in the 2013 spring semester around an exhibition on immigration. The course offered the opportunity to engage students, faculty, and the community in discussion of an important, timely, and controversial topic.…

Exploring controversial and difficult events and issues with young children can be challenging. The Civil Rights Movement is an abstract, perhaps remote, issue for young children today. However, it is an important part of our country's history and a theme worthy of study. This article suggests ways to use photographs to explore this mature subject…

The purpose of this paper is to take a closer look at the states that have designed strong history standards and note what has made them exceptional so other states might do the same. They include Alabama, California, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, and South Carolina. The report draws on interviews with individuals from each state who sat on…