Hypoactive Sexual Desire Disorder (HSDD), loss of sexual desire for sexual activity, is one of the most common sexual dysfunctions of men and women in the United States. This article presents an overview of this specific sexual dysfunction including incidence, possible causes, treatment options, and the role of the health educator in addressing this topic. The importance of the role of the health educator in prevention and health promotion efforts is explored, such as functioning as part of a...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Interdisciplinary Approach, Health Promotion, Sexuality, Incidence, Etiology, Health...
Integrative curriculum design promises much for middle level teachers who wish to develop classroom programmes that will encourage early adolescents to actively engage in their learning (Beane 1990, 1997). Beane's model is highly responsive to the educational and developmental needs of young people. In contrast, multidisciplinary curriculum design (Jacobs 1989) may result in significant but largely unrecognised drawbacks when it is implemented in the middle grades. This paper critically...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Foreign Countries, Educational Change, Curriculum Design, Laboratory Schools,...
With the dramatic growth of environmental science as an elective in high schools over the last decade, educators have the opportunity to realistically consider the possibility of incorporating environmental science into the core high school curriculum. Environmental science has several characteristics that make it a candidate for the core curriculum. It is: (1) important for students and society; (2) an opportunity for students to experience an applied science; and (3) a particularly engaging...
Topics: ERIC Archive, High Schools, Technology, Secondary School Curriculum, Core Curriculum, Environmental...
This paper is an essay on the state of Australian education that frames new directions for educational research. It outlines three challenges faced by Australian educators: highly spatialised poverty with particularly strong mediating effects on primary school education; the need for intellectual and critical depth in pedagogy, with a focus in the upper primary and middle years; and the need to reinvent senior schooling to address emergent pathways from school to work and civic life. It offers...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Educational Research, Interdisciplinary Approach, Social Sciences, Educational...
Most teachers have attended countless workshops that advocated new teaching methods, materials, or techniques in addressing special student populations. They politely listen as a series of presenters enthusiastically introduce their information in written and verbal form. They return to the classroom, fully intending to use their new skills, but perhaps feeling a bit anxious about their actual applications and ensuing results. This author believes that teachers, like students, must be both...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Academically Gifted, Interdisciplinary Approach, Problem Solving, Teaching Methods,...
A school's curriculum can appear unrelated, fragmented, or somewhat disjointed if not done with an end in mind. This fragmentation or disjointedness often affects students and their views of the experiences being given them in school. Various curriculum-integration techniques, however, can be used to help make the big picture more understandable to students; and these have the added benefit of allowing teachers to focus better on teaching and student learning. In effective...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Teaching Methods, Curriculum Development, Interdisciplinary Approach, Curriculum...
Massachusetts, home to some of the most prestigious institutions of higher education, has also been a leader for decades in the delivery of career and technical education (CTE). Across the state of 351 cities and towns, there are 26 regional CTE school districts and dozens more technical wings in comprehensive high schools. CTE institutions such as Blue Hills Regional Technical School, located in Canton, take students from grades nine through 12 and attract students from the towns in their...
Topics: ERIC Archive, High Schools, Interdisciplinary Approach, Tech Prep, Vocational Education,...
This article analyzes major challenges facing health care today as a basis to suggest a new framework for the professional preparation of health care professions. The long term goal is to produce practitioners who can successfully address these challenges and engage in a complete reconstitution of the current health care system to produce a more effective, efficient and patient-centered organization. The recommended framework is, in large part, based upon the underlying tenets of health...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Health Occupations, Health Education, Allied Health Occupations Education, Holistic...
Politics without history has no roots; history without politics bears no fruits. If one inquires into the content of the relation between politics and history, then one discovers it is defined by symbiotic dependence. Those who are trained in history also take into account the political dimensions of history, and those educated in political science cannot neglect the historical factors inhering in current issues and problems. The fact that politics is part of history and vice versa has always...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Political Science, Politics, Teaching Methods, History Instruction, History,...
Middle school students are naturally curious about their expanding possibilities. This stage of their lives is a time of transition, of figuring out who they are and where they belong in the world. Many students also think that the world they look at through the classroom window is distant and unconnected to the world of chalkboards and pop quizzes they inhabit between the hours of eight and three. Models of middle school education have often included teacher and community expectations...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Middle School Students, Middle Schools, Adolescents, Interdisciplinary Approach,...
In the 1990s, fueled by the momentum of the inclusive schools movement, where students with disabilities were being encouraged to participate in their neighborhood schools and adults with disabilities were self-advocating for a chance at community independence, the collaboration model among professionals burgeoned as best practice for serving individuals with disabilities. However, although the concept of collaboration was recognized as a best practice initiative, most service providers were...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Student Attitudes, Disabilities, Cooperation, College Faculty, Teacher Collaboration,...
In this article, the authors present a case study of preservice teachers engaged in service-learning in an after-school program while concurrently enrolled in science and language arts methods courses. Two interdisciplinary education faculty worked collaboratively to connect language arts and science methods content with service-learning experiences. Preservice teachers provided a service to elementary school students by developing and teaching integrated, inquiry-based lessons. The...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Preservice Teachers, Methods Courses, Language Arts, After School Programs, Service...
Effective substance abuse prevention programs help students develop knowledge as well as psychosocial competencies that can help them resist or delay the initiation of alcohol, tobacco and other drug (ATOD) use. This paper describes the integration process used in a five-year project, Adoption of Drug Abuse Prevention Training (ADAPT), to study the effectiveness of two methods of drug prevention programming, based on Botvin's Life Skills Training (LST) program. Botvin's standard LST program was...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Junior High Schools, Prevention, Drinking, Interdisciplinary Approach, Drug Abuse,...
Background: University-community partnerships can support schools in implementing evidence-based responses to youth obesity trends. An inter-organizational partnership was established to implement and evaluate the Healthy Choices Collaborative Intervention (HCCI). HCCI combines an interdisciplinary curriculum, before/after school activities, and the School Health Index to promote physical activity, reduce television viewing, and increase fruit and vegetable consumption among middle school...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Television Viewing, Obesity, Middle Schools, Intervention, Health Education, Physical...
World dilemmas such as poverty, immigration, globalization, technology, transportation, and transnational endeavors define the notion of "global village" in the same way that multicultural populations currently in all nations are described. No longer are nations as homogeneous as they were even a decade ago. In classroom settings the study of international education is similar to teaching with a multicultural perspective in terms of an emphasis on inclusiveness of diverse populations...
Topics: ERIC Archive, International Education, Global Approach, Educational Change, Foreign Countries,...
Ecomaps are diagrams that depict an individual or a family within a societal context, demonstrating the energy, supports, and resources necessary to maintain specific relationships. Genograms are family trees that identify emotional relationships and intergenerational family patterns. When combined, practitioners can synthesize the information to demystify the intricate web of social systems and the tension and strain between families and other systems such as schools. For the purposes of this...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Nontraditional Education, Social Systems, Family Life, Family Counseling, Social...
Physical education departments are composed of diverse academic disciplines that may include physical education teacher education, exercise science, and athletic training programs. The complexity of each program and its individual demands often cause faculty and students to become disengaged from those outside of their own major and the happenings within a department. To help promote student and faculty engagement across interdepartmental disciplines, a physical education department implemented...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Physical Education, Athletics, Health Education, Competition, Physical Education...
The tradition of using giant puppets in dance rituals is widespread throughout Africa. Huge puppets can communicate spiritual and moral authority, which is all the more easily accepted because it is delivered with a sense of playfulness. Giant puppets also create unique movement possibilities. This potent combination of symbolic meaning and choreographic challenge make the use of puppets a valuable tool for teaching African dance, and for creating a sense of unity in an educational setting....
Topics: ERIC Archive, Puppetry, Dance Education, Interdisciplinary Approach, Foreign Countries, Cultural...
Adventure racing is a multidisciplinary endurance test completed in teams. There seem to be many benefits in using an adventure race as part of a physical education curriculum. The races can also be linked to many national physical education standards. Adventure Racing C.O.R.E. uses the basic ideas of adventure racing and can be done at any school without the risk or expensive equipment that adventure racing often requires. Students compete in small teams to complete a predetermined course that...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Physical Education, Interdisciplinary Approach, Team Sports, Track and Field,...
The incidence of bulimia nervosa has increased significantly in the second half of the twentieth century and its occurrence is more than twice that of anorexia nervosa. Due to its complex nature, successful treatment requires an interdisciplinary approach with nutritional, psychological, medical, pharmacological and dental therapies. Despite bulimia nervosa's growing incidence, many health care professionals fail to detect the condition in their patients. In addition, professionals lack...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Intervention, Needs Assessment, Incidence, Focus Groups, Eating Disorders,...
Little is known about how online learning may be used to disseminate health information rapidly and widely to large university populations if there is an infectious disease outbreak. During the SARS outbreak in Singapore in 2003, a six-lesson elearning module on SARS was developed for a large university population of 32,000 students. The module was developed within 2 months by 12 academic staff from medicine, economics, basic science, health promotion, microbiology, epidemiology and public...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Communicable Diseases, Health Education, College Students, Information Dissemination,...
Recognizing the public benefits of higher education and the arts, the American Assembly of Columbia University convened a 2004 conference called "The Creative Campus," from which emerged recommendations about better integrating arts offerings on campus into the curriculum, serving the surrounding community and preparing students for the demands of arts careers. In this article, the author contends that the "creative campus" must be thought of at a more profound level than as...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Higher Education, Creativity, Intellectual Freedom, Group Activities, Campuses,...
In this article, the author discusses how it is time for higher education to think seriously about alternatives to the traditional undergraduate "major," which, in the large majority of cases, tends to be focused on just a single field of inquiry. The author observes that the current idea of a major (or minor) subject may have made more sense in a less complex and interconnected world in which the perspective and method of one discipline could be applied to a fairly confined and...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Majors (Students), Problem Based Learning, Teaching Methods, Interdisciplinary...
In today's competitive college market, "interdisciplinary studies" are a major selling point for colleges and universities. Yet, on closer examination, it is apparent that the academic structure and place of the majority of interdisciplinary programs, departments, and centers are not substantially different from the academic disciplines, departments, and divisions they were originally designed to challenge. The shift to university-as-service-industry has led to a need for increased...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Interdisciplinary Approach, Intellectual Disciplines, Educational History, Liberal...
We detail the research, development and initial outcomes of an intervention process to promote capability building in designing for e-learning at a dual mode university in the UK. The process, called CARPE DIEM, was built on a pilot study and became a Higher Education Academy "Pathfinder" project named ADELIE. We report on the model workshop, its deployment, research and development over a 12-month period with a variety of subject groups working in small teams with learning...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Foreign Countries, Research and Development, Virtual Classrooms, Models, Curriculum...
This article makes the case that authentic music learning need not be sacrificed nor compromised in any way when the music teacher designs and teaches curricula and units of study that integrate music learning with learning in other academic subjects, including other fine and performing arts subjects. The author argues that music teachers may think they are losing instructional time in the service of other subjects when, in fact, if music teachers understand the cognitive connections and shared...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Units of Study, Music Education, Music Teachers, Instructional Design, Curriculum...
This article investigates a potential way ahead for music education in the 21st century. Drawing on material from the case study of a Manchester-based composer in northern England, it argues that those within formal education should examine more carefully the musical values and practices of artists and composers working with "technologically-enriched" contexts. It describes the need for the reconsideration of the role of technology in music education along with expanding the aims of...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Music Education, Technology Uses in Education, Information Technology, Case Studies,...
This article describes a school-wide arts education project that incorporates an interdisciplinary approach involving an Australian university, the Singapore Ministry of Education, the Singapore National Arts Council, a community music association, and a local primary school. The Project engages young school children with Nanyin music, an ancient musical art form from China, and works with practicing Nanyin musicians and their musical practices. The Project integrates music into the regular...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Music Education, Interdisciplinary Approach, Musicians, Foreign Countries,...
This paper presents a four-year longitudinal case study of a nine-year-old student when he was diagnosed with leukemia. Cognitive, neuropsychological, and affective functioning both pre and post chemotherapy treatment were assessed. Full neuropsychological evaluation revealed difficulties with processing speed, concentration, and organization following treatment. Psycho-educational interventions developed through interdisciplinary team collaboration resulted in significant reductions in these...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Medical Services, Interdisciplinary Approach, Cancer, Children, Case Studies,...
This paper examines the progress of one state in implementing the middle school concept. Results of a survey distributed in 1990 were compared to results of a similar survey distributed in the spring of 2004. Progress or the lack thereof has been noted. Implications from this survey can serve to heighten awareness and continue to improve the quality of middle level education. (Contains 1 figure and 10 tables.)
Topics: ERIC Archive, Middle Schools, Comparative Analysis, Educational Quality, Educational Improvement,...
Interdisciplinary teaming in middle schools has increased dramatically over the past few decades (McEwin, Dickinson & Jensen, 2003); nevertheless, students have rarely been consulted as important sources of insight into this practice (Dickinson & Erb, 1997) of two or more teachers sharing the responsibility for instruction, curriculum, and assessment of a common group of students (NMSA, 1995). The purpose of this study was to describe and analyze young adolescents' perceptions of...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Middle Schools, Student Attitudes, Early Adolescents, Teaching Methods,...
Drawing upon five years of experience with an interdisciplinary initiative, colleagues in biology, literary studies, and physics offer a framework by which to understand the nature and value of interdisciplinary work. Effective interdisciplinary exchange depends on a dynamic and mutual interplay that challenges normally unexamined disciplinary assumptions. Effective interdisciplinary exchange can not only reinvigorate the disciplines but also engage them more effectively in a common...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Interdisciplinary Approach, Figurative Language, Interaction, Dalke, Anne, Grobstein,...
This paper applies Paul Grobstein's theory of science as story telling and story revising to history. The purpose of drawing such links is to show that in our current age when disciplinary borders are becoming increasingly blurred, what may be effective research practice for one discipline, may have some useful insights for another. It argues that what Grobstein advocates for science makes just as much sense for history and that historians have long recognised in their own discipline many of...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Story Telling, Methods, Cultural Context, Historians, Global Approach,...
At a time of increasing interest and advocacy in integrated and policy-oriented research, this paper offers an empirically-based view of the intellectual and practical challenges of undertaking such research. It analyses the experience of a long-standing university research and postgraduate training centre from 1973-2004: the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies at The Australian National University. The paper discusses staff development issues, cross-disciplinary understanding,...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Higher Education, Foreign Countries, Interdisciplinary Approach, Sustainable...
This "case study" examines the shaping of a research interest. It turns on the Partition of the South Asian subcontinent in 1947, leading to the Independence and establishment of the sovereign states of Pakistan and India. The Partition was a climax within a pattern of recurrent violence in the name of Hindus and Muslims for several generations before 1947, a pattern that recurs at lower intensity continually. This study explores the emerging of an interest in the social origins of...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Case Studies, Social Sciences, Foreign Countries, Social Change, World History, Non...
This essay focuses on a 4th year course, titled "Search/Research/Resolution," that the author has developed at the Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD), Toronto. First taught in 2002, the course is held over a fourteen week semester each fall, with one three hour class per week. It is offered within the photography area at OCAD in recognition of photography's lengthy history as a form of "evidence." The course endeavours to contextualize this role of photography, which...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Photography, Art Education, Research, Interdisciplinary Approach, College...
This survey paper explores the interdisciplinary literature of performance theory and critical performative pedagogy in an attempt to consider metaphorical applications of performance to pedagogy. This exploration involves looking at teaching as performance in the broadest cultural sense of the word--interested more in "efficacy of communication and mutual empathetic understanding"--than in the more commonly-held economic, technological and political senses of performance which are...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Figurative Language, Critical Theory, Concept Formation, Concept Teaching, Teaching...
An apparent conflict between preferences for hierarchical as opposed to distributed organizations is evident in arguments about disciplinary and interdisciplinary organization. It characterizes as well a wide array of other arenas ranging from the biological to the political. In this article, parallels between biological, neurobiological, and social observations are explored in an effort to outline a general approach that may be useful in thinking about interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Interdisciplinary Approach, Brain, Story Telling, Social Organizations, Vertical...
Using contemporary insights from feminist critical theory and the literary device of synecdoche, we argue that transdisciplinary knowledge is productive because it maximizes serendipity. We draw on student learning experiences in a course on "Gender and Science" to illustrate how the dichotomous frameworks and part-whole correspondences that are predominant in much disciplinary discourse must be dismantled for innovative intellectual work to take place. In such a process, disciplinary...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Critical Theory, Literary Devices, Feminism, Cognitive Structures, Epistemology,...
Finding solutions to complex health problems, such as obesity, violence, and climate change, will require radical changes in cross-disciplinary education, research, and practice. The fundamental determinants of health include many interrelated factors such as poverty, culture, education, environment, and government policies. However, traditional public health training has tended to focus more narrowly on diseases and risk factors, and has not adequately leveraged the rich contributions of...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Interdisciplinary Approach, Research Methodology, Social Problems, Models, Graduate...
Bridging disciplines have much to teach regarding how to combine analytical tools to tackle problems and questions that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries. This article explores interdisciplinary aspects of two long established bridging disciplines--geography and anthropology--in order to consider what the relatively young undertaking labeled "interdisciplinary studies" can learn from their long existence. It considers the fallacy of nomothetic claim as well as the fruitful...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Interdisciplinary Approach, Anthropology, Geography, Intellectual Disciplines, Higher...
In this article we attempt to complicate traditional--and, we argue, limited and exclusionary--definitions of interdisciplinarity as the bringing into dialogue of established disciplines without questioning the parameters and practices of those disciplines. We propose that interdisciplinarity instead might mean teaching and learning among, between, and in the midst of those of innate or learned capacities--not only college faculty but also students and staff. To illustrate this more radical...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Definitions, College Faculty, Intellectual Disciplines, Epistemology,...
This essay uses the concept of the constellation to characterize the relations among interdisciplinarity, cultural memory, and comparative literature. To do so entails: (a) reviewing the paradoxical interdisciplinarity of comparative literature, (b) tracing its establishment at a liberal arts college (Bryn Mawr College, USA), and (c) describing a course on "The Cultural Politics of Memory" that tested the limits of scholarship and testimony. The discussion includes an account of an...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Pantomime, Preservation, Archives, Foreign Countries, Liberal Arts, Ethnicity,...
This article addresses the interrelated questions of why it is important to teach students about the nature of interdisciplinarity and how this material might be best communicated to students. It is important to define for students what is meant by disciplines and interdisciplinarity. Having distinguished interdisciplinarity from the disciplinary approach, the advantages and disadvantages of each can be discussed. It is useful to discuss the history of both disciplines and interdisciplinarity....
Topics: ERIC Archive, Interdisciplinary Approach, Teaching Methods, Integrated Curriculum, Intellectual...
This article traces the roots of the author's doctoral work to his pre-doctoral experiences in varied spheres of practice. The research choices made are thus inevitably influenced by these experiences. These include the selection of an interdisciplinary domain to locate his doctoral work, the choice of a "boundary object" as the unit of analysis, and the formulation of a methodological mix that reflected the multidimensionality of the research topic. These choices also reflect the...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Reflective Teaching, Researchers, Experimenter Characteristics, Research Methodology,...
Before 1950, history of science did not exist as an independent academic branch, but was instead pursued by practitioners across various humanities and scientific disciplines. After professionalization, traces of its prehistory as a cross-disciplinary area of interest bound to an interdisciplinary, educational philosophy have remained. This essay outlines the development of history of science as an interdisciplinary academic field, and argues that it constitutes an obvious choice for inclusion...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Educational Philosophy, Higher Education, College Science, Interdisciplinary...
This article describes the experiences of a former astronomer who is making the transition to astronomy education research as an international graduate student in the United States. The article describes the author's encounters with education research, its methodologies, and his changing research interests as he progresses through the graduate program. It also describes his experiences with the busy life of a graduate student in American academia and his experiences as an international student.
Topics: ERIC Archive, Foreign Students, Graduate Students, Astronomy, Educational Research, Research...
I explore in this essay an ethically grounded method for structuring a program of study. Rather than attempt to delimit a discipline or to reinforce disciplinarity, I suggest a means of creatively narrowing the scope of research, namely by focusing on inner necessity and conscience. The art of rhetoric as self-discipline is an extension of inner necessity and a framework in which scholars may come to integrate the more rational and more artistic, more public and more private elements of their...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Rhetoric, Interdisciplinary Approach, Research, Philosophy, Religious Factors,...
University innovations relevant to sustainability education do not always come labelled as such. Inspiration can potentially be drawn from a wide range of fields and initiatives. During a 2005 study tour of Canada, seven universities were visited to investigate such programs, focussing on those that comprise more than one subject and that are intended for an undergraduate audience. In this paper, an exploratory study is undertaken of the collected interviews, field notes and documents to...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Educational Innovation, Foreign Countries, Sustainable Development, Undergraduate...
This article describes River Summer, an interdisciplinary, field project on the Hudson River. Using cognitive data, the team aimed to design an experience that fostered an environment implementing strategies that improve learning. The participants, 40 faculty members from 24 institutions who acted as teachers, students, or both, boarded the Seawolf, the vessel on which the course was situated. River's objectives included lessons for analyzing various aspects of and promoting awareness for the...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Teaching Methods, Earth Science, Metacognition, Learning Processes, Cultural Context,...