Darwin's Roadmap to the Curriculum

This book integrates the vast literature in the interdisciplinary field of Evolutionary Studies (EvoS), providing clear examples of how evolutionary concepts relate to all facets of life. It provides chapters dedicated to the processes associated with an EvoS education, including examples of how an interdisciplinary approach to evolutionary theory has been implemented successfully at various colleges and universities and in degree programs. Chapters outline a variety of applications to an evolution education, including improved sustainable development, medical practices, and creative and critical thinking skills. Finally, this book explores controversies surrounding evolution education and provides a roadmap to help shape a positive future for this approach to asking and answering questions. Although Darwin’s theories have famously changed the foundational ideas related to the origins of life, shaping entire disciplines in the biological sciences, across the globe today people are famously misinformed and uneducated about Darwinian principles and ideas. Applications of evolutionary theory outside the traditional areas of biology have been slow to progress. Further, scholars doing such work regularly experience political backlash. But there is hope. A slow but study push to advance the teaching of evolution across academic disciplines has been under way for more than a decade, with the editors of this book sitting at the forefront of this trend. This book is designed to provide a model for ways to ask Darwinian questions across all areas of intellectual inquiry.

2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 84
Author(s):  
Jack TH Wang

In the increasingly competitive global knowledge marketplace, Australian tertiary educators are looking to enrich their program offerings by providing authentic learning experiences for their students. In the biological sciences, this authenticity is best represented by hands-on inquiry and laboratory experimentation, often within the context of research internships. Authentic Large-Scale Undergraduate Research Experiences (ALUREs) aim to broaden the scope of these learning experiences by embedding research into coursework activities accessible by all students within the program. These experiences can promote learning gains in laboratory, analytical, and critical thinking skills, providing students with a transferable skillset applicable to many career paths across the science sector.


Author(s):  
Brandon D. Lundy ◽  
Edwin Njonguo

Conflict management and resolution are processes for dealing with discord or facilitating peaceful and satisfactory cessations to conflict, and even potentially its transformation. Ideas and actions about how disputes are handled within various historical, geographic, political, economic, and cultural contexts and structures come from a range of positions, people, and institutions, with some approaches having empirical, experiential, precedential, authoritative, or intuitive support. The aggregation, analysis, and dissemination of these processes have led to the development of related fields within peace and conflict studies. Identified approaches to conflict management and resolution include, but are not limited to, alternative dispute resolution (negotiation, facilitation, mediation, case analysis, early neutral evaluation, conciliation, and arbitration), peacebuilding, and diplomacy. As an interdisciplinary field, scholarship is drawn from a broad range of academic disciplines, including social psychology, law, economics, and political science. These theories and processes are often systematically designed toward specific ends (e.g., management, analysis, resolution, transformation) and get applied at the individual, community, institutional, regional, state, and/or international levels. Through an analysis of the extant African studies resources focusing on conflict management and resolution, emergent themes fall into two broad categories: applied mechanisms of conflict management and resolution, and conflict issues affecting the continent. The African continent has seen its fair share of violent and intractable conflicts, both intra- and interstate. From the Arab Spring in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya beginning in 2010 to the Niger Delta conflict and Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, Kenyan presidential election violence, or South African water shortages, conflict and the need for its management, analysis, and resolution are abundant. Engagement (not isolation) and active dialogue, collaboration, and conflict sensitivity (i.e., do no harm) are essential keys to studying, managing, resolving, and transforming the diverse range of conflict situations found throughout Africa. External, internal (i.e., indigenous or localized), and hybrid models can open and sustain pathways to peace. Many scholars now argue that conflict management, analysis, and resolution must address root causes, take an interdisciplinary approach, not conflate conflict and violence, use multiscalar perspectives (i.e., individual, group, state, interstate), and employ multicultural sensitivities attuned to cultural contexts and global sources of conflict. Scholars and practitioners must investigate and better understand the origins, causes, resolution, and consequences of conflicts in contemporary Africa in relation to their postcolonial contexts. Concerns include ethnic, religious, political, and environmental conflict factors, as well as demographic pressures. The stakeholder roles in post-conflict reconciliation and reconstruction should also be determined and continually evaluated to ensure effectiveness in African conflicts.


Author(s):  
Annette Johnson ◽  
Cassandra McKay-Jackson ◽  
Giesela Grumbach

Critical Service Learning Toolkit offers a strengths-based, interdisciplinary approach to promoting social competence while enhancing emotional and academic skill development. Designed as a user-friendly guide to carrying out successful CSL projects, this Toolkit provides practitioners with step-by-step assistance in planning, implementing, and evaluating Critical Service Learning (CSL) projects in elementary and high schools. CSL trains youth to become active and conscientious citizens through engagement and leadership experiences that meet real needs in the community. This approach is unique in that it places the youth/student at the center of the process. Prioritizing social and emotional learning (SEL) and school engagement, CSL changes the role of the school-based, counseling professional into that of a facilitator who encourages skill-building, reflection, and civic engagement. Cultivating self-awareness, social-consciousness, and critical-thinking skills, brainstorming and community web mapping activities serve as the cornerstone of CSL and allow youth to become comfortable articulating concerns about their communities. By extending learning beyond the classroom and into the community, CSL enhances what is taught throughout the school curriculum, at all levels, and fosters a sense of civic responsibility and social agency.


XLinguae ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 30-51
Author(s):  
Svetlana Hanusova ◽  
Olga Dontcheva-Navratilova ◽  
Marie Lahodova Valisova ◽  
Marketa Matulova

The paper presents the research study of academic writing of Czech university students in an English Language Teacher Education study program. The authors apply an interdisciplinary approach integrating the perspectives of linguistics and language pedagogy in the evaluation of the design of the Academic Writing course and its impact on the development of students’ academic writing skills. Adopting a process genre approach (Badger, White, 2000) to writing instruction as a key design principle, our study combines the genre analysis framework (Swales, 1990) and the intercultural rhetoric perspective (Connor, 2004) to design an innovated academic writing course for graduate students focusing on developing critical thinking skills and context-aware writing. The course, informed by an analysis of the academic writing needs of the students, aimed at familiarizing them with the rhetorical structure of academic texts with a focus on the genre of the Master’s thesis and at introducing them to the academic writing conventions in the area of soft sciences. Piloted in 2019, the course was implemented as a blended course, where the contact sessions were complemented by online support in VLE Moodle. Apart from analyses of written texts, classroom writing, and homework tasks, it also included discourse editing tasks and peerreviewing with peer-reviewer feedback and teacher feedback. We believe that our research findings will shed light on the potential of academic writing courses based on the process-genre approach to contribute to the enhancement of the quality of English academic texts by non-native academic writers, and specifically Czech graduate students.


2015 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgina Kleege ◽  
Scott Wallin

<span>Audio description is the process of translating visual information into words for people who are blind or have low vision. Typically such description has focused on films, museum exhibitions, images and video on the internet, and live theater. Because it allows people with visual impairments to experience a variety of cultural and educational texts that would otherwise be inaccessible, audio description is a mandated aspect of disability inclusion, although it remains markedly underdeveloped and underutilized in our classrooms and in society in general. Along with increasing awareness of disability, audio description pushes students to practice close reading of visual material, deepen their analysis, and engage in critical discussions around the methodology, standards and values, language, and role of interpretation in a variety of academic disciplines. We outline a few pedagogical interventions that can be customized to different contexts to develop students' writing and critical thinking skills through guided description of visual material.</span>


2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-54
Author(s):  
Tri Ulfa ◽  
Erni Munastiwi

This study aims to determine at critical thinking skills at the elementary school (SD) in Industrial Revolution 4.0. The focus lies on the critical thinking skills of students in Social Sciences (IPS) subjects. The research was conducted by means of literature review related to critical thinking of learning Social Sciences (IPS) for the elementary school level (SD / MI). Sources of data are collected through scientific journals, books, or final projects and analyzed descriptively qualitatively. Results obtained from children coping with problems with reciprocal interactions in an educational setting. Social Sciences (IPS) is a combination of social sciences and humanities. Learning Social Sciences (IPS) at the SD / MI level is carried out with an interdisciplinary approach. Thus, it can be denied that learning Social Sciences (IPS) at the elementary school level (SD / MI) makes students develop into individuals who are easily adaptable and support students critical thinking patterns so that they can coexist with both local and global communities.


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