Student preparation for class is an integral part of the college learning experience. In order to incentivize student preparation outside class, professors have employed such techniques as reflection papers, quizzes, and group discussion, to name but a few. This article explores the benefits of using a technique known as "course preparation…

Sample: Fifty-three third and fourth graders from China participated in this study. Method: Participants' working memory (WM) was assessed by the Automated Operation Span task. Then, they solved mental addition problems of different types under low- and high-pressure conditions. Performance was analysed as a function of pressure condition,…

Political bias in the academy is a topic of great controversy. Many conservatives have argued that liberals dominate American campuses and use their classrooms to indoctrinate students or to discriminate against those with differing political beliefs. Liberals have responded by calling studies that purport to demonstrate these claims as flawed or…

In 1991, the APSA Task Force on Political Science recommended elements of a curricular structure that would best promote student learning. The report stated that there should be a capstone experience at the end of the senior year and that the capstone should require students to integrate their whole learning experience in the major. This article…

Background: Although the teacher-student relationship is a well-documented phenomenon, few attempts have been made to identify its predictors. Research has mainly focused on in-service teachers, less is known about characteristics of pre-service teachers in relation to the teacher-student relationship. Aims: The purpose of this study was to…

Background: Most psychologists who study children's reading assume that their hypotheses are relevant to children's success at school. This assumption is rarely tested. Aims: The study's aims were to see whether two successful measures of the processes underlying children's learning to read and write are related to their…

While U.S. schools struggled to reach even an average score on a key international exam for 15-year-olds in 2012, BASIS Tucson North, an economically modest, ethnically diverse charter school in Arizona, outperformed every country in the world, and left even Shanghai, China's academic gem in the dust. With the U.S. frantic about its place in…

In important respects, European ideas of the university have spread across the world. The principal "philosophical" statements on which this idea of the university is based (Humboldt and Newman) assumed the people inhabiting universities--as students--would come from the youth of a social elite. The outward-facing elements of the Bologna…

"Interteach" is a method of guided discussion and feedback developed by Thomas Boyce and Philip Hineline in 2002. This method, primarily used in the psychology classroom, encourages greater student engagement and responsibility for learning by requiring extensive student preparation, peer-to-peer instruction, and peer evaluation. How can…

The federal budget and the rising national debt are crucial concerns in American politics. Yet, they are issues about which average citizens, and particularly young citizens, are presumed to have limited knowledge and very little to say. They are also topics that are not generally seen as engaging to students in introductory political science…

It is generally accepted in the literature that writing assignments, even short ones, increase both student writing ability and comprehension of the material covered in the assignments. As class enrollments increase, particularly at the introductory level, however, instructors often sacrifice writing assignments because of the difficulty in…

Undergraduate Political Science programs often require students to take a quantitative research methods course. Such courses are typically among the most poorly rated. This can be due, in part, to the way in which courses are evaluated. Students are generally asked to provide an overall rating, which, in turn, is widely used by students, faculty,…

It is more than 10 years since Kehl (2002) identified the increasing number of scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) papers being produced by political scientists. As noted by Hamann et al. (2009) and Whitman and Richlin (2007), this trend has developed further with increasing levels of research and publishing activity in political science…

There is a debate in Political Science concerning how best to teach American Government courses. We investigate whether students learn more effectively with texts from the great tradition or from textbooks and other secondary sources. Which medium better guides students toward becoming better citizens? We examine how teaching "The Great…

The central questions addressed in this paper are the following: (1) In the context of the (European Union) EU's goal of severing the link between social class background and higher education participation, what progress has been made in widening access over the past two decades? (2) Has the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) helped EU…