Content analysis is a valuable research tool for social scientists that unfortunately can prove challenging to teach to undergraduate students. Published classroom exercises designed to teach content analysis have thus far been predominantly envisioned as lengthy projects for upper-level courses. A brief and engaging exercise may be more…

While Shulman argues that an important component of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) is teachers' understanding of the alternative conceptions commonly held by students, relatively little is known about what students believe about many topics in the school curriculum. This paper focuses on a content area typically featured in Geography…

Presents the animated television series "The Simpsons" as a tool to reach undergraduate students by using popular culture to teach sociology. Discusses "The Simpsons" and sociology, provides a sample of the sociological themes embedded within the show, and how to use "The Simpsons." Provides information gleaned from…

Although the nature of the relationship of music on students' emotional development remains an issue for continued research, my overall purpose is to provide adults with research-based methods to help children become better consumers of hip-hop music. First, I identify research-based recommendations to prepare adults as facilitators of children's…

This report on a curriculum project incorporating the study of the humanities and mass media is presented in four chapters. The first chapter is an overview and describes the three components of the curriculum project: (1) a new course entitled "Television as Popular Culture," (2) a team-taught course on media theory entitled "The Electric Media,"…

Examines global perspective of university students studying Russian regarding the country of Russia and its people, while also investigating the development of cultural consciousness of high school students who had been exposed to information about Russia and the former Soviet Union through social studies courses. (CMK)