This article presents a classroom project that employs various techniques of active learning including role-playing, collaborative group work and writing. The project explores the recent creation of the European Monetary Union (EMU) with special emphasis on the introduction of the euro. The project assumes that the Americas have begun preliminary…

Like any other complex agenda of reform, the notion of teaching for understanding contains areas of uncertainty and ambiguity. This paper uses an hermeneutic research cycle to identify some uncertainties in understanding of teaching for understanding. These areas of uncertainty are discussed in relation to the literature and vignettes from three…

What is a routine question? The focus of this paper is routine questions and time (in years) since a hitherto routine question was last attempted by the solver. The data comes from undergraduate students' work on solving two calculus questions. The data was selected for reporting purposes because it is well documented and because it threw up…

Effective teaching arises when each class accommodates all types of learners. Individual students have different learning styles, and an effective classroom presentation should mix different teaching methods in order to accommodate these individual differences. In order to help Maori students improve their academic performance, cooperative and…

Twenty-five teachers with reputations for artistry in curriculum planning were interviewed about their "curriculum animation" plans or how they ensured their curriculum was brought to life. Their statements indicated that much of their planning is informal and intuitive, and that the criteria they use for their curriculum includes: (1) it is…

This article describes the meaning of empowerment and collaboration, how they can be instituted, and the benefits that can result from them. Empowerment of teachers is a necessary ingredient of school improvement. Administrators who empower teachers grant them "the autonomy to make decisions about curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment." In this…

The process of protein synthesis, translation, is difficult for many students to understand. There are two reasons for this: (1) It is difficult to visualize the process, since the components involved in the process are not observable, and (2) There are many details, often dependent on each other and difficult to grasp independently, that are…

Military service academies face unique challenges integrating research into the undergraduate curriculum. Like other institutions they have worked hard to implement strategies designed to overcome a range of barriers to student participation in research by creating opportunities in the classroom. To promote research exposure for biology students…

Literacy expert Marie Carbo pairs identifying each learner's unique reading style with a wide range of differentiated strategies to help all learners experience greater reading success. Using these research-based methods, both novice and experienced teachers can increase reading achievement with all learners, including those who are at-risk,…

We examined the relationship between learning styles and student type. This research seeks to examine if online students exhibit different learning styles from onsite students; and, if so, what accommodations relating to learning style differences may be made for online students? Students (N = 80) were asked to complete an online survey in order…

Vocational high schools in the Republic of Macedonia are making efforts to add content literacy and learning strategies to their curricula through Secondary Education Activity (SEA). SEA is a collaboration of the government of Macedonia, the International Reading Association, the American Institutes for Research, and the United States Agency for…

Information systems (IS) process modeling using the technique of Data Flow Diagramming (viz., Systems Analysis) can be defined as a complex task for IS designers. This study draws from the domains of educational psychology and organizational behavior in examining the training of novices in conceptual process modeling. Specifically, an experiment…

Helicopter parents, notorious for hovering over their college-age children, may actually help students thrive, according to this year's National Survey of Student Engagement. Students whose parents intervene on their behalf--38 percent of freshmen and 29 percent of seniors--are more active in and satisfied with college, says the monstrous annual…

By examining American University's Washington Semester Program (AUWSP), this project analyzes the impact of intensive undergraduate experiential and active learning on subsequent student academic performance. In this article, we discuss the differences between traditional, active, and experiential learning methods to better understand the…

One of the most important questions I ask as both a cultural anthropologist and a university teacher is: How do people come to know what they think they know? In this article, I adopt a narrative approach to processes of learning and discovery in two very different locales, an indigenous society in the South Pacific, and a senior seminar on…