In this article, the author recalls the life of playwright, artist, and educator Sterling Houston. Sterling was a teaching artist in a much more global sense. He taught everyone who encountered him how to connect across difference--across race, class, ideology, age, gender, and sexual orientation. He had a talent for gently pushing aside the fears…

In this article, the author presents the biography of Maria Montessori, who pioneered early childhood education and introduced a new method of pedagogy. The innovations in education that Montessori introduced were enough to reserve a place for her in the history books. Montessori was ahead of her time in many aspects of her life. The decisions…

The Dow's losses over this year's first 12 days of trading erased nearly all of last year's gains; the pace of new home-building was, in January, reportedly at its lowest in 16 years; and recession rumblings, too, are making themselves heard. In 2007, though the economy was hardly soaring, readers would not have felt much was amiss. The year saw…

Background/Context: Montessori education has flourished as an alternative approach to schooling for a hundred years. In the century since the first Montessori school opened in the slums of Rome, the movement has undergone sustained growth while simultaneously enduring efforts to modify the method in order to reach a wider audience. Despite…

When teachers in elementary and middle school classrooms portray history as an immutable sequence of certain facts, dates, and events, young learners tend to view the past, and by extension the future, as something fixed and inevitable. Learning about the past through investigating biographies can help counter this tendency by teaching students to…

Analogical reasoning is integral to everyday living. The diversity associated with a coral reef provides a familiar model for initiating discussions focusing on cultural diversity and gender of past and present scientists with non-western science endeavors. These concepts are strengthened through the use of scientific biographical and historical…

This paper tells the remarkable and compelling story of Leonard Covello, a ground breaking progressive educator who worked tirelessly to shape public education in New York City during the first half of the 20th century. Covello was the founding principal of Benjamin Franklin High School (BFHS) in East Harlem in the 1930s. The author invites…

This qualitative research project highlights the experience of ten Latina/o students in the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). The youth interviewed attended a range of types of high schools; including schools categorized as general education high schools, college preparatory schools, magnet schools and one alternative school. The author conducted life…

The perception that engineers and scientists are intelligent Caucasian men who are socially inept and absent-minded people is prevalent among students of all levels, from elementary school to college. While the media may, by chance or choice, promote this image, the reality is that most engineers are men. These stereotypical images of engineers…

Portfolio assessment as developed in Europe presents a learner-empowering alternative to computer-based testing. The authors present the European Language Portfolio (ELP) and its American adaptations, LinguaFolio and the Global Language Portfolio, as tools to be used with the Common European Framework of Reference for languages and the American…

This article explores the implications for teacher education and continuous professional development (CPD) of enquiry-based learning, by drawing specifically on data collected during a four-year curriculum development and research project, Enquiring Minds (2005-9). Within the partnership approach to curriculum design endorsed by the project,…

Monk and Osborne ("Sci Educ" 81:405-424, 1997) provide a rigorous justification for why history and philosophy of science should be incorporated as an integral component of instruction and a model for how history of science should be used to promote learning of and about science. In the following essay we critique how history of science is used on…

Individual recommendation plans (IRP) for student teaching practice were co-constructed with two methods students based on the select application of National Science Teachers Association's National Standards for Science Teacher Preparation. Methods students completed a resume, an interview on pedagogical preferences, and a learning styles survey…

In an integrated science/language arts/technology unit called "How Scientists Learn," students researched famous scientists from the past and cutting-edge modern-day scientists. Using biography trade books and the internet, students collected and recorded data on charts, summarized important information, and inferred meaning from text. Then they…

Presents a biographical sketch of Ezekiel C. Makunike, the head of the African Literature Centre in Zambia which has trained about 500 journalists and artists from throughout Africa since its opening in 1959. (TO)