This practitioner research study examined students at an ethnically and economically diverse high school and the impact of replacing the corporate-produced textbook with teacher-created reading packets and questions that asked students to take a critical stance on historical events in United States history. Using critical theories of education as…

"Big Expectations" discusses the benefits of developing and using big ideas for a diverse set of learners in social studies. Experimenting with both honors and inclusion classrooms at the middle school level, I found that all students are capable of relating to and thinking deeply about the content through the use of big ideas. Although…

This monograph addresses the current needs for science education at all levels of higher education. It proceeds from assumptions that the national debate for scientific understanding matters. It explores science in society and strategies for curricular integration in honors. The hope is that this monograph will further the discussion of science…

This study examines factors that shape four student's perceptions of writing tasks in their science classroom. This qualitative retrospective interview study focuses on four students concurrently enrolled in honors English and honors biology. This research employs a phenomenological perspective on writing, examining whether the writing strategies…

Colleges and universities in the United States are currently in the midst of a debate on how to integrate students' academic and social lives in a manner similar to the centuries old model of Oxford and Cambridge. One of the major initiatives by colleges and universities is the re-establishment of residentially-based learning communities whose use…

Humor through cartoons is an interesting way to engage students in learning course content. The purpose of this study was to document the process of graduate student-made cartoons that portrayed content about principles of designing gifted education programs. Seventeen graduate students enrolled in an introductory gifted education course…

Many disciplines in the social sciences and humanities can offer profound insights into what it means to be human. History, however, encompasses the totality of human experience: economics, politics, philosophy, art, ethics, sociology, science--all of it becomes part of history eventually. Therefore, the opportunities for incorporating…

Research examining service-learning in honors undergraduate education is scarce, and there have been no empirical studies that examine the effect of service-learning participation on honors undergraduates' social dominance orientation (SDO). The current study aimed to determine whether 119 first-year undergraduate honors students experienced…

The Washington State University Honors College course, UH 290, "Science as a Way of Knowing," engages freshmen in scientific inquiry and scholarly literature research. The UH 290 instructor, a learning design consultant, and two librarians collaborated to develop and deliver the course's information literacy curriculum. The team used…

The purpose of this study is to investigate student interactions with simulations, and teacher support of those interactions, within naturalistic high school physics classroom settings. This study focuses on data from two lesson sequences that were conducted in several physics classrooms. The lesson sequences were conducted in a whole class…

When high school honors students were put off by contemporary poetry, the author engaged them by analyzing the poem as an "argument." Using the Toulmin model to establish a warrant, advance a claim, and locate details to support that claim, students were able, by treating a poem as an argument, to increase their understanding of the…

One enduring, and perhaps endearing, characteristic of the National Collegiate Honors Council (NCHC) is its commitment to pluralism. NCHC recognizes that excellent honors educational opportunities can be cultivated across the diverse settings of American higher education from two-year community colleges through large, comprehensive research…

As the leadership classroom is becoming more diverse in the student demographic make-up it is important to establish what the impacts of those differences are on learning leadership. In this paper the essential element of leadership analyzed was critical thinking disposition. Participants were analyzed for differences in critical thinking…

In this article, the author discusses the "Law and Culture" course that he developed to teach in the Butler University Honors Program. The course looks at some landmark periods or events in legal history and explores how those events were the product of their culture, and how they affected their culture. Among the events or periods that the author…

Within Australian universities the results of Honours have traditionally been used as the main entry requirement for a research degree and as a means of ranking for research scholarships. But despite the critical role of Honours, there has been little research about Honours. There is an untested assumption that universities offering Honours…