Students often hold strong attitudes regarding topics they encounter during their studies, and many instructors feel that these attitudes can have strong effects on students' performance. We characterized students' attitudes toward evolution and investigated the influence of students' attitudes (pre-course and post-course) regarding evolution on…

This article presents technology tips and ideas for music educators. To keep current with music technology, you will need to spend time with it regularly, just like you would practice a musical instrument or voice. Basic office software programs can help you with administrative tasks and duties. Your computers are important tools for your program,…

In response to the growing concern of the marginalization of social studies education, members of the North Carolina Professors of Social Studies Education (NCPSSE) organization began a longitudinal study in 2003 to examine elementary social studies education. This study is part of a statewide initiative among six universities in the North…

Few are challenged to create a general education curriculum for a new college, applying best practices while achieving articulation and accreditation of the program.

This chapter offers tips and additional books, films, television shows, Web sites, and other media resources for teaching and training.

More than a decade ago, community colleges across the nation mobilized legions of faculty to craft critical thinking initiatives on their campus. Were these initiatives simply the latest educational fad, or did the implementation provoke substantive, lasting changes not only in what we teach but in how we teach?

Critical thinking is foundational to the effective teaching of any subject, and it must be at the heart of any professional development program. This chapter presents a long-term professional development model based on a substantive concept of critical thinking, and ties critical thinking to the concept of the Learning College.

Critical Literacy, a special approach to teaching critical thinking, has survived and thrived at Montgomery College in the face of a shifting political and pedagogical climate, thanks to programmatic adaptability and alertness to opportunities.

The use of Symbolic Mathematics Engines (SMEs) in chemical education as a part of the Division of Computers in Chemistry was discussed by a panel of educators at the Symbolic Calculation in Chemistry symposium in Philadelphia in 2004. The panelists agreed that many more topics in chemistry are amenable to SME's exploration and that symbolic…

"Match Game" is a simple game designed through which students could learn the names of all lab equipment and glassware that they would encounter during the school year. The game leads into a student-based discussion during which they carefully think about proper uses for each piece of labware.

Second-grade students were divided into groups subjected to three programs namely, Direct Instruction, Open Court and literature based program, in order to determine the effectiveness of the three programs. The results indicated that the Open Court and Direct Instruction programs did not improve the children's reading.

Elaine O'Connor teaches at Clark Elementary School and is creating a literacy program that provides the children with nearly daily opportunities to read and write. Her program focuses on two values, the drafts that provide writers with an opportunity to think, and the response to writers, which focuses on what they know of the content.

Means of organizing a genre study within a reader's workshop to invite students into fantasy worlds is discussed by the teachers of fourth grade. The students can naturally get into critical reading by identifying the characteristics of fantasy.

Children listen, act out and recite nursery rhymes and thus learn about rhyming words, absorb the rhythm of English language, and begin to develop speech sound awareness in an interactive and fun way, which can further enhance reading achievement. Encouraging children to dramatize the rhymes leads to role plays which uses basic vocabulary sight…

Literacy games are just another strategy in the ultimate goal to increase reading and overall student academic performance. Activities such as the Fall reading game, which focuses on the Fall season, which encourage reluctant readers to take the beginning steps toward developing the skills they would need to become accomplished readers are…