Twenty-first-century biology is inherently interdisciplinary. Every aspect of biology, from molecules to organisms to ecosystems, is richly informed by the physical, mathematical, and computational sciences. It is both an exciting and daunting time for biology educators--exciting because of the vast opportunity for important new discoveries that…

The Carnegie Project on the Education Doctorate (CPED)--which the College of Education and Social Services (CESS) at the University of Vermont has actively been involved in since 2007--has invited us to think carefully about our EdD doctoral program and its role in the improvement of schools and society. Although the EdD program in Educational…

Although strong arguments espousing the accolades of arts involvement are evident, the visual and performing arts continue to be underfunded and underused in K-12 schooling and teacher preparation. Valiant efforts from arts advocates have made inroads to reverse this negative trend, yet policies and practices that reflect a commitment to "arts for…

In the last two decades, there have been various calls for reform in teacher education programs to address the needs of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and students with disabilities. Consequently, many teacher education preparation programs are reviewing and redesigning their programs to meet the needs of the…

In the United States and in other countries as well there are a number of government and philanthropic initiatives to help more people, particularly those from low-income backgrounds, enter and succeed in postsecondary education. These initiatives typically involve remedial education (because a significant number of students are academically…

Amid the global economic crisis dominating policy makers' recent attention, the world faces many other equal if not greater long-term challenges that will require concerted and highly skilled policy efforts in coming years. Those interwoven challenges include the mitigation of climate change, the control of emerging diseases, the reduction of…

Earth Systems Science (ESS) is emerging rapidly as a discipline and is being used to replace the older earth science education that has been taught as unrelated disciplines--geology, meteorology, astronomy, and oceanography. ESS is complex and is based on the idea that the earth can be understood as a set of interacting natural and social systems.…

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has reformed its undergraduate curriculum to create connections across disciplines and advance efforts to internationalize its campus. As a result, global issues, experiential learning, study abroad, and international course clusters have become an integral part of a curriculum that emphasizes…

Cross-disciplinary collaboration is being promoted in academic and professional circles as an important strategy for developing new avenues of scholarly inquiry and for generating knowledge that is immediately applicable to the resolution of real-world problems. This move toward cross-disciplinary work has translated into calls for enhanced…

Constituents often criticize business schools for failing to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of how business organizations function. Business schools have responded to the mandate with attempts to integrate discipline-specific functional knowledge into a coherent understanding of the evolving business organization. Successful…

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…

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…

This phenomenological inquiry looked at 28 preservice teachers as they participated in a field-based curricula restructuring initiative that connected the disciplines of creative arts, science, and reading. The preservice teachers offered weekly interdisciplinary lessons to kindergarten and first grade students. A survey, teaching cases, and a…