Educators constantly hear the mantras "develop relationships with students" or "add a personal touch"? They know they will be better teachers if they connect with their students, but how can they if their students come from very different backgrounds than they do? How do educators find common ground? The common ground is the…

A teaching team composed of a faculty member (lecture) and a graduate teaching assistant (lab) endeavored to engage students enrolled in several sections of the same organic chemistry course through the use of social media. Students were encouraged to follow both instructors on Twitter and were asked to share aspects of the class using the social…

On October 27, 2018, a gunman killed eleven people attending Shabbat services in the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, PA. For many -- both Jews and non-Jews -- this tragedy served as a wake-up call about the persistence of antisemitism in the United States today. MPA curricula and public affairs research have rarely addressed contemporary…

Scholars have long recognized the Washback effect of English language tests on English teaching inside the classroom. However, the lack of scholarly reports in this area is also nonnegligible. Therefore, the present study intends to review some empirical researches that focus on the washback of some English language tests on different aspects of…

A Mathematics Department Chair plays many roles within the department and within the university as a whole. Facilitating the development and teaching of mathematics services courses requires working with mathematics faculty as well as members of other departments on campus. In this paper, we discuss many issues related to the Department Chair's…

In this article, Anders Öhman discusses Gert J. J. Biesta's concept of the risk of education and what it could mean for the study of literature in the classroom. The article's point of departure is Bakhtin's theory of the utterance. The utterance, for Bakhtin, has to be embodied, that is, it has to be governed by a purpose: it must be uttered by…

The purpose of this position paper is to emphasize the importance that although teachers may not be able to change the what in terms of curriculum, they can change the how in terms of teaching it. This emphasis is based on data that supports how the choices that each educator makes in response to teaching curriculum can have a profound impact not…

This article presents the "modus operandi" of a game, the so-called Game of Shapes, which can be used as an active learning tool to teach Constructivism to introductory International Relations courses. While sharing our own experience of the development and application of the game in a laboratory with International Relations students,…

Authentic learning experiences, including curriculum, are essential for healthy development. For South Dakota students, these experiences include opportunities to foster their connections with local communities, cultures, nature, and lands. This infographic provides teachers with guidance on how to build their understandings and skills, and with…

The emergence of the Family Resemblance Approach (FRA) to nature of science (NOS) has prompted a fresh wave of scholarship embracing this new approach in science education. The FRA provides an ambitious and practical vision for what NOS-enriched science content should aim for and promotes evidence-based practices in science education to support…

In a cultural moment when professors experience a debilitating hesitancy about initiating difficult conversations with undergraduate students, and the imperative of trigger warnings sometimes outweighs the will to navigate controversial materials, the fate of "violent films," as worthy of academic study, hangs precariously in the…

This article describes how a homework task on climate change is being developed as part of a larger project on sustainability issues -- Urban Science. The ultimate aim of this European project is to improve the teaching of scientific enquiry so that students develop the competences to actively contribute to creating sustainable cities, to…

The term "constructivism" is used very widely and somewhat loosely in education. In this article I aim to clarify the term, which can be used in relation to two quite different theories: one related to "how" we learn and the other related to "what" we learn. Being clear about the origins of the two uses can help…

The article maintains that the "Teaching for Understanding" movement successfully achieved one key objective -- developing effective teaching frameworks for understanding the subjects taught in schools. However, it failed with respect to two other core objectives -- constructing a comprehensive educational concept that promotes in-depth,…

The question of content -- that is, knowledge in the curriculum -- has all but disappeared from global policy and academic discourses concerning teaching and teachers. Invoking the work of Michael Young and his colleagues concerning 'bringing knowledge back in', Bildung-centred Didaktik, and Joseph J. Schwab's curriculum thinking, this article…