According to Tinto (1993), more students leave college than graduate, especially at the community college level. Much of the blame for this attrition has been attributed to a lack of adequate preparation for college-level courses. Consequently, many colleges must provide remedial programs despite the objections of opponents of remediation who…

Personal epistemologies, individuals' beliefs about the nature of knowledge and how one comes to know, can facilitate and constrain cognition, motivation, and learning (Pintrich, 2002). They are especially relevant in teacher education because preservice teachers will become responsible for the knowledge and knowing of others. This study…

Mixed methods research conducted across three semesters in introductory college geology classes (n=187, 190, 138) attempted to ascertain whether integrated study of petrified wood could serve as a portal to improved student geobiological understanding of fossilization, geologic time, and evolution. The Petrified Wood Survey[TM] was administered as…

Background/Context: Responding to the challenges of the demographic imperative and calls for greater program coherence, social justice teacher education programs aim to integrate social justice in the professional preparation of teachers. Such programs intend to improve the preparation of teachers to teach students from diverse backgrounds, and in…

To enhance student performance, prevent attrition, and build a learning community, two courses were linked together by requiring concurrent enrollment. "Writing Effectively," an upper-division composition course, was linked with "Abnormal Psychology," an upper-division clinical psychology course, requiring concurrent enrollment in both. In short,…

This article presents an innovative approach to diversity education. The approach is multidisciplinary, and it was developed by blending the expertise of anthropological research with the pedagogical skills developed by education specialists. To institutionalize this approach, a unique university-level collaboration occurred between students and…

The authors explore the extent to which a mature professional development school (PDS) partnership at Kansas State University (KSU) helps link the disparate parts of the social studies education community. The authors initially identify and describe the divisions or "gulfs" that commonly plague social studies education, such as the gulfs…

Just upstairs from an exhibit on African culture at the American Museum of Natural History, Robert V. Steiner sits in front of his laptop computer and clicks on an "interactive animation" that illustrates the concept of frames of reference. On the screen, a glowing basketball bounces up and down against a black background. After watching…

A broadened view of scientific literacy for general education revision is detailed, including the history, philosophy, and sociology of science and science and technology studies. We provide a case study from an interdisciplinary college, argue for the integration of science studies into general education curricula, and discuss barriers to success.

Initiatives to integrate engineering design within the field of technology education are increasingly evident. The National Science Foundation has encouraged and funded opportunities for technology educators and engineers to work collaboratively. However, perspectives regarding the role engineering should play within the discipline of technology…

To help students grasp the intimate connections that exist between mathematics and its applications in other disciplines a library of interactive learning modules was developed. This library covers the mathematical areas normally studied by undergraduate students and is used in science courses at all levels. Moreover, the library is designed not…

We present an approach for integrating instruction of scientific writing and reading into undergraduate science courses, inspired by the pedagogical theory of cognitive apprenticeship. We demonstrate its implementation and describe a study of students' feedback that enabled us to elicit students' difficulties and fine-tune the next application…

Business educators and colleagues in the liberal arts have not found the ideal bridge, from the student's perspective, that provides a meaningful connection between the two domains. Over the years, challenges to effectively bridge the divide between liberal arts and business have come from leaders in education, the professional business community,…

If a person teaches a history course required of business or other non-history majors he or she may be confronted with student complaints that the subject is boring and of no use to them in the pursuit of their professional objectives. Because they do not know how to deal with history course material and are used to much smaller, denser reading…

Fifteen application-oriented chemical tutorials were developed out of which thirteen are currently in use in the general chemistry lab rotary curriculum for chemistry students at Washington University from 1998 to 2000. The central philosophy of the tutorial that the students learn to combine information from variety of sources like science…