It is commonly accepted in the academy that developing a critical thinking capacity and related capabilities will make students more effective thinkers and writers, and that these are desirable traits for graduates to have no matter what path they take after graduation. While most academics agree that critical thinking is an essential component of…

Journal clubs are widely used as an educational tool in graduate life science programs. In journal clubs, students are assigned to read specific journal articles to achieve a broad knowledge in their field of study and to gain competence in reading and assessing scientific publications. However, students often show low motivation to read assigned…

In various conversations regarding how to teach language and literacy to adolescent English Learners (ELs), students' voices are often lost. This article privileges those voices by surveying ELs in Texas high schools regarding what, why, and how they want to read and write in and out of school. The authors surveyed the students before and after an…

English Language Arts has historically been tied to the civic purposes of schools, and this qualitative study of a social design-based project (Gutierrez & Vossoughi, 2010) examines the intersection of language and literacy learning and youth civic engagement, a problem space I call "Civics English." In this dissertation, I describe…

Synthesizing theory from literacy scholars with strategies derived from classroom inquiry projects, "Rethinking Reading in College" argues for more--and more systematic--attention to the role of reading comprehension in college as a necessary step in addressing the inequities in student achievement that otherwise increase over time.…

This paper draws on Bakhtin's (1981) notions of discourse and ideological becoming to investigate how adolescents' experiences with young adult literature and other texts might inform their thinking around issues of social justice. We engaged in a number of activities with the young adolescent participants: thought maps, illustrations of poignant…

In a Food Processing-Unit Operations course, students learn the basic equipment that comprises unit operations and techniques commonly used in the food industry to prepare, process, and preserve a variety of food products. Due to the complexity of these operations, students frequently struggle with applying food processing principles to predict…

Can a class assignment covering the reading help students do better in an introductory chemistry class for nonmajors? Two sections of the same course have been compared where one section had a reading assignment that "forced" the students to interact with the text while the other class had the typical homework, quiz assignments, and…

Background: Parental involvement in early childhood is foundational to a child's later academic achievement (Heckman, 2007). Parent-child book reading is frequently recommended as a way to build a child's early cognitive skills. Evidence suggests that mother-child reading time increases children's vocabulary and reading skills (Price & Kalil,…

The rising cost of textbooks is a barrier to higher education for many students. Open textbooks are one potential solution, though few open textbooks exist for agriculture and natural science disciplines. Here, I present a case study examining my selection of assigned reading material for a college course on soil and water conservation. Potential…

The study evaluated reading habit among students in Ekiti State Secondary Schools. The study specifically examined the frequency and time of reading among Junior Secondary School students in Ekiti State, the extent students read, how teachers' attitudes affect their students reading habits, and ways reading habit can be improved. The descriptive…

Instructors expect students to read before class to engage them in using higher-order thinking skills that are critical to performing in group work and engaging in discussions. As many instructors are aware, however, for various reasons many students don't read the assigned textbook. In this study, science news articles were used as prereadings to…

Faculty at Bethany College, Kansas found that when engaging with controversial topics like social justice, students needed lower-stakes spaces to think--and history and writing, together, provided these needed spaces. When taught in combination, these two subject areas prompted engagement and self-reflection, and the interdisciplinary synergy…

Teachers of literature often have students read works of fiction to learn important truths about the world. But, it is not clear how looking at a work of fiction can tell us about the actual world. This article examines whether and how this can be done.

A collaborative learning module for teaching protein mass spectrometry has been developed to overcome common obstacles to incorporating the modern topic of biological mass spectrometry into the undergraduate chemistry curriculum. Protein mass spectrometry data is provided to eliminate the need for expensive instrumentation, and an instructor's…