Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) significantly enhance the outcomes of students who participate. Unfortunately, students may face barriers to engaging in UREs, which creates challenges for students' development of essential research skills that may not be covered thoroughly in laboratory classes. Overall, there is a need for a curriculum…

This Innovative Practices piece details the design of a scaffolded project in a public health course that paired a narrative inquiry assignment with an empirical health literature review assignment to highlight both the positivist and constructivist epistemologies of critical health research in public health. The authors discuss and reflect on the…

This article shares an example of a course in Combinatorics, taught at Adelphi University in Fall 2012, designed with a primary goal of engaging students in pursuing mathematics as mathematicians do. The course went beyond usual applications of inquiry-based learning in that students were also charged with the responsibility of posing the…

Problem-based learning (PBL) is well suited for courses in the history of medicine, where multiple perspectives exist and information has to be gleaned from different sources. A student, an archivist, and a teacher offer three perspectives about a senior level course where students explored the antecedents and consequences of medical technology.…

Research-based learning in a teaching environment is an effective way to help bring the excitement and experience of independent bench research to a large number of students. The program described here is the second of a two-semester biochemistry laboratory series. Here, students are empowered to design, execute and analyze their own experiments…

Describes the program in a summer institute for 25 junior high school science teachers. Innovations used in the program included lecture-demonstrations, small group discussions, open-ended laboratories, and viewing physics films. Problems that arose are reviewed. The method of evaluating the teachers is described. (LC)

This paper outlines a three semester hour undergraduate, core course in Scientific Inquiry that increases student knowledge and advances student skills in understanding science as knowledge, process, and human enterprise. This course was developed as a bridge between science and the humanities and a bridge for entry-level students in the…

The experience of teaching both detached and participant observation methods in a graduate level competency based counseling course is described. An evaluation indicated that the course increased students' awareness of basic issues in psychological inquiry and helped them develop skills and attitudes necessary for social and cultural…

Describes the addition of a microcomputer component to a Tulane University (Louisiana) undergraduate history course on the Salem witchcraft trials. Discusses the use of a statistical package and a data set to analyze and display data and the enhancement of the active learning approach by introducing students to quantitative methods of historical…

The guide outlines an interdisciplinary social science course for grades 7-12. The overall curriculum goal is that students learn the skills, values and concepts essential to citizenship in a democratic society. Teaching activities suggested include class discussions, role playing, debate, mapwork, written reports, group and individual research,…

The guide outlines units of study for grade 9 in political science and economics. The major objective of the curriculum is to help the student become a useful citizen and develop the thinking process in solving the many problems of society. Students are presented with information through the use of readings, some of which are from primary sources,…

In recent years, the science teaching community and curriculum developers have emphasised the importance of teaching inquiry and teaching science as inquiry. One way of developing learners' skills for planning and carrying out scientific research is by allowing them to perform independent research, guided by a teacher. It was recently discovered…