Competency-based physiology and biochemistry education can benefit from the creative integration of imaginative narratives into traditional teaching methods. This paper proposes an innovative model using a pen and palm analogy to visualize enzyme function theories. The pen (substrate) must fit snugly into the palm (enzyme's active site) for…

In this article, a teaching artist shares their understandings about designing a large-scale interactive intermedial arts experience for children aged five to eight years, and articulates findings about the conditions that promote quality experiences of this kind. When designing interactive arts experiences, a tension exists between providing…

Academic underachievement of students from disadvantaged backgrounds is an ongoing problem for Australian schooling. Schools serving these communities face profound challenges in meeting their students' educational needs. "Creative and Embodied" approaches draw on pedagogical practices inherent in Health and Physical Education and the…

More than fifty years ago, an idea took hold in Georgia. Eventually called the Foxfire Approach, its main idea is centered around a view of a democratic classroom. Following a general sense of John Dewey's pragmatism, Eliot Wigginton invested his energy and skills into his English classroom to propel students to choose worthwhile activities. This…

When wondering, learners express the desire to know what they do not know, as well as what they already know. In the modern languages curriculum, a language learner who uses 'wonder' is driven by curiosity for the language(s); has questions about the place and the people; has a wish to know more about various cultures; and eventually become a…

The article examines how to incorporate issues of social justice and diversity in the honors classroom through critical imagination. Inclusion and diversity are among the five strategic pillars of honors education, but the challenge is to create space for social justice as an academic inquiry. This article describes an honors project where…

The purpose of this research paper is to offer/propose a framework/model of specific imaginative practices, classroom engagement ideas, and implementation pathways that can be adapted across various grade levels within the K-12 (preferably language and literacy) classrooms to utilize the inherent diversity (of lived experiences) amongst the…

For many secondary-level teachers working with adolescent language learners, one of the motivations for choosing English teaching as a profession is a shared love of reading short stories. At its best, entering a narrative is a sensory experience: engaged readers see, hear, and feel the words of a story and imagine themselves within its pages.…

While cultivating "student voice" is more common in the adolescent years, the early years are an ideal and worthy time to listen and honor the voice of young people, before they are "schooled" in more formal practices of discussion and debate. Teachers can actively listen to young people, and support their capacity to be civic…

Based on a three-year project conducted in Australian secondary schools, this paper captures a developing disenchantment with reading in and for subject English. As part of an extended professional learning experience for teachers, students and their English teachers were interviewed and students were asked to draw reading. Paying attention to the…

Taking a lead from recent articles in "The History Teacher," the author placed history, popular culture, and historical literacy at the core of a history course entitled "Enchanted Capitalism: Myths, Monsters, and Markets." Drawing on folklore, literature, popular culture, and economics, the course explored the rise of…

This essay describes an adaptable, multimodal assignment in which students create a comic in lieu of a traditional essay or exam. I outline the theoretical and practical value of this assignment and provide a detailed description of its implementation in two different literature courses: an introduction to the major course and a course on…

Language educators consider student motivation as fundamental in supporting student learning and central to making sound pedagogical decisions in order to help students develop competence in the target language. However, many teachers opt for using simplistic and prescriptive formulas or one-size-fits-all motivational models that claim positive…

In times of rapid change the Arts have been shown to contribute through an array of processes to a range of outcomes that improve social and emotional health. While this observation has caused debates in the field such as, intrinsic versus instrumental value, individuality versus sociality, skill development focus versus broader aesthetic…

This article proposes a theoretical framework for understanding the possibility of Talmudic stories (as well as other narratives and scenes of interactions among two or more characters) to nurture the growth of the moral imagination as it is expressed in two related but distinct ways. At the intersection of work by educators, literary critics, and…