Creative thinking is sometimes neglected by schools. Introducing philosophy in schools represents a commitment to balancing the development of logical and creative thinking, currently exercised only orally. In the present study, the focus is on writing. Firstly, the value of authentic pupil writings is underscored. The pupils and students studied…

Complex and adaptive challenges threaten human well-being and sustainability. However, our leadership graduates often lack the capacity and or commitment to address these challenges in a meaningful way. This paper details a five-year study exploring the impact of an interdisciplinary undergraduate course on the development of global capacities,…

The goal of this analysis was to obtain local citation behavior data on undergraduates researching history, political science, and sociology papers. The study found that students cited books and journals even with the availability of web sources; however, usage varied by subject. References to specific websites' domains also varied across subject…

Findings of the Writing Research Unit at the University of London Institute suggest that writing curricula in British secondary schools do not foster independent thinking or individual personality development. (JH)

Describes a teaching method which can be used in college level sociology classes to improve student writing. The teacher provides students with concrete examples of well-written work by other students in the class to compare with their own. The example clearly illustrates what the teacher expects from the students. (AM)

Describes the Los Angeles Urbanscape Tour, in which the city of Los Angeles provides 11th graders with a living laboratory of the principles studied in-depth in their literature and social studies classrooms. Describes writing assignments which grew out of the tour. (SR)

Describes a project in which students combined personal narratives, drawings, and Japanese woodblock prints. Includes three examples of students' stories and prints. (SR)

The first in-class assignment for the English section of a Biology/English cluster provides students with an opportunity to observe, record, and organize data that are immediately available. The students first describe the hand with which they are not writing and then reorganize their observations into a brief paragraph. Next they read aloud and…

This paper discusses summer seminars on teaching writing that members of the Applied Writing Program at Ithaca College offered to their colleagues in other disciplines. These seminars grew out of the conviction that every teacher who assigns papers is, to some degree, teaching writing, and many of those teachers, unsure of the limits of their…

Suggesting that instructors approach literature from a multidisciplinary life-based stance, this paper presents syllabi, pedagogical techniques, and a student essay which illustrates a life-based approach to literary themes. The first section of the paper deals with creative curricular re-packaging of great literature in which traditional course…

This paper argues that film courses are useful because they sensitize students both to the artistic qualities of film expression and to equivalent qualities in other forms of expression. The objectives of a film course at Michigan State University are: to develop the students' knowledge of the film medium and through that knowledge develop a…

Reviews studies of native-language writing programs and argues that the teaching of writing in the disciplines should be left to the teachers of those disciplines; English-as-a-second-language composition teachers should focus on general principles of inquiry and rhetoric, with emphasis on writing from sources. (Author/CB)

Describes a two-day interdisciplinary field trip for a group of 63 ninth graders that was followed up in the classroom with related units in history, art, biology, English, and drama. Describes how the students were challenged to use nature to discover who they were, observing closely and then letting go in order to think and connect. (SR)

Columbus (Georgia) College's Challenge Squared program consists of three 2-week enrichment day camps for gifted students in grades 5 through 10. In past years, students have worked with an artist to create local history murals and have written and produced video plays in cooperation with a media specialist. Most recently, students were involved in…

Discusses "Private Eye," an approach to teaching which focuses on developing students as artists, writers, and scientists. Describes how this approach uses the jewelers loupe to examine everyday objects 5 or 10 times bigger, thus altering students' way of viewing the world through the change of scale and through analogy-provoking questions. (SR)