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Interdisciplinary Approach

• A Multicultural Autobiographies Interdisciplinary Course
  Describes an interdisciplinary course on multicultural autobiographies that integrated psychology and literature, requiring students to examine primary texts using analytical tools from both disciplines. Addresses the outcomes and writing assignments, psychological and literary perspectives on autobiographical texts, the students' responses, and teaching observations.
• Arteacher, 1995-96
  The official publication of the Michigan Art Education Association (MAEA), this journal serves as a forum for its members to express and share ideas, for the promotion of art education at all levels and for all ages. Issues focus on specific themes, have reprints of conference keynote speeches, and feature regular departments, including: elementary, middle school, and high school divisions news; and the "MAEA Directory" of officers.
• Calendars and Thinking Logically
  Presents a mini-lesson and describes the "Calendars and Thinking Logically" curriculum designed to combat the belief that mystical powers are associated with numbers on the calendar and to introduce the complex interplay of physical phenomena, religion, and science in an interdisciplinary way. The curriculum is designed for adolescents and young adults.
• Children's Literature as a Springboard for Music
  Maintains that children's literature is a treasure waiting to be discovered by music educators. Describes how children's literature can enhance student motivation, creativity, and foster multicultural education.
• Collaborative Teaching: Many Joys, Some Surprises, and a Few Worms
  Discusses a professional-development course for educators, team-taught by three faculty members that combined the content of courses in multicultural education, special education, and human development. Each teacher describes his or her experiences and the issues addressed; student comments are examined; and the requirements for and benefits of effective team teaching are explored.
• Cultural Diversity and Conflict Resolution: An Interdisciplinary Unit for the California Fourth-Grade Classroom
  Proposes an interdisciplinary, fourth-grade conflict resolution curriculum that integrates content area activities that take into consideration the cognitive and moral development of fourth graders. The curriculum focuses on conflict resolution skills, diversity and conflict, and mediation.
• Culture Kits for the Elementary Classroom
  Outlines an instructional unit where students construct culture kits illustrating a specific culture. Culture kits are constructed out of realia and other material including maps, travel brochures, photographs, newspapers, souvenirs, and other items.
• DBAE: The Next Generation
  Examines the development and evolution of discipline-based art education (DBAE) from its inception in the early 1980s to its current practice. Maintains that the movement's success comes from the support and acceptance of educators in the field.
• Ecological Education: A System Rooted in Diversity
  Argues that educating children is a means of planting the seeds of learning. Compares intelligence, its development, and diversity to characteristics and processes in the natural environment.
• Educating for Social Competence: A Conceptual Approach to Social Studies Teaching
  Maintains that the broad arenas of the social sciences bind multiple areas of study together, giving added breadth and depth to each. Identifies the basic tenets of multicultural, global, and civic education.
• Enhancing Multicultural Sensitivity through Teaching Multiculturally in Recreation. Research Update
  This paper addresses the utilization of teaching from a multicultural perspective to enhance multicultural sensitivity and awareness, discussing the inclusion of multicultural teaching in the university recreation curriculum and the delivery of leisure services. The concepts of multiculturalism are presented, explaining how to incorporate them into recreation and leisure curricula.
• Ethnicity, Aging, and Health: An Interdisciplinary Experience
  An interdisciplinary team developed an undergraduate course to teach geriatrics students about ethnicity, health, and aging. Two important aspects of such a course were identified: the dynamics of team learning and multicultural education.
• Finding a Path to History and Culture
  Maintains that music technology growth can assist teachers in implementing interdisciplinary approaches involving history, culture, and music. Presents suggested classroom strategies utilizing CD-ROMs and other interactive media technology.
• Foreign Language and Culture: Some Background and Some Ideas on Teaching
  Educators should combine foreign language study with discovery of another culture. Several postsecondary institutions are adopting Language Across the Curriculum, which allows students to apply their second-language knowledge in various courses or integrate other disciplines into language courses.
• From Metaphoric Landscapes to Social Reform: A Case for Holistic Curricula
  The article discusses two related dilemmas: (1) the tension between the Western view of historical progress and the realities of modern society; and (2) the tension between old and new approaches to teaching and learning about the arts.
• From Metaphoric Landscapes to Social Reform: A Case for Holistic Curricula
  Discusses two related dilemmas: (1) the tension between the Western view of historical progress and the realities of modern society; and (2) the tension between old and new approaches to teaching and learning about the arts. Argues that the end result of implementing the Goals 2000 program might diminish the teaching of the arts as discrete subjects.
• Global Education in the Middle School Curriculum: An Interdisciplinary Perspective
  Discusses connections between global education and interdisciplinary teaching and learning, cooperative learning, active learning, and authentic assessment at the middle school level. Considers differences between multicultural education and the broader scope of global education to include international events and interactions among cultures throughout the world.
• Ibn al-Haytham: An Answer to Multicultural Science Teaching?
  Describes the major contributions to optics of Ibn al-Haytham, prolific Arab scientist. Recent partial translation of his "Book of Optics" enables an accounting of his work and provides the opportunity to connect this historical personage and his contributions to the current debates on multicultural science teaching.
• In Pursuit of the Multicultural Curriculum: Preparing Students for a Diverse Society
  Recognizing and celebrating diversity while building an inclusive sense of classroom or school community is a challenging endeavor. A successful model encompasses four basic principles: cultural validation and acceptance are inseparable; each school needs its own plan; sophisticated skills are essential; and curriculum sources and communication methods matter.
• Integrating the Arts: Renaissance and Reformation in Arts Education
  Asserts that the general educational curriculum tends to be fragmented and compartmentalized and that this situation would be improved by curriculum integration. Argues that an interdisciplinary arts approach would require new teacher attitudes and instructional strategies.
• Integrating the Arts: Renaissance and Reformation in Arts Education
  Author asserts that the general educational curriculum tends to be fragmented and compartmentalized and that this situation would be improved by curriculum integration; argues that an interdisciplinary arts approach would require new teacher attitudes and instructional strategies. (CFR).
• Is There a Place for Cultural Studies in Colleges of Education?
  Describes the diverse assumptions and practices defined under the banner of cultural studies, suggesting how the field might have important consequences for individuals concerned with reforming schools and colleges of education. The paper addresses how progressive educators might contribute, examining how the field could be included in the larger discourse of social reconstruction.
• Japan Studies Association Journal, 1998
  This journal presents new perspectives and materials on Japan that are engaging, relatively jargon-free, and shaped so that their usefulness in a college classroom is readily apparent. The journal represents an example of the potential for genuine scholarship that lies within interdisciplinary studies.
• Japan Studies through the Lenses of Different Disciplines: First Yearbook of the Japan Studies Association. [Papers from the Japan Studies Association Annual Conference (San Diego, California, 1995)]
  This yearbook presents new perspectives and materials on Japan that are engaging, relatively jargon-free, and shaped so that their usefulness in a college classroom is readily apparent. The yearbook represents an example of the potential for genuine scholarship that lies within interdisciplinary studies.
• Making Connections between Multicultural and Global Education: Teacher Educators and Teacher Education Programs
  This publication is the product of an ongoing study of how teacher educators in the United States and Canada are bridging the gap between multicultural and global education to prepare teachers for diversity, equity, and interconnectedness in the local community, the nation, and the world.
• Making the Paths: Constructing Multicultural Texts and Critical-Narrative Discourse in Literature-History Classes. Report Series 7.8
  Developing students' ability to use multicultural perspectives and knowledge to think about literature, history, and society is emerging as an important part of a pluralistic approach to education.
• National Standards for History. Basic Edition.
  This revised guide is intended for teachers to aid in development of history curriculum in the schools and explains what students should know and be able to do in each of the grade levels. The book addresses two types of standards: (1) historical thinking skills; and (2) historical understandings.
• Project Bridge: Preparing African-American Teachers To Work with Young Children with Disabilities and Their Families. Final Report
  This final report describes the activities and outcomes of a federally funded project that was designed to prepare African-American students at the graduate level as teachers in Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE), who would be capable of meeting the special education needs of young children with disabilities, ages birth through five, and their families.
• Religious Music and Multicultural Education
  Discusses religious music as an extraordinarily rich resource supplementing multicultural education. Considers the divisive and problematic nature of some religious music, exemplified by a trio of Jewish students refusal to sing "St.
• Salary-Trend Study of Faculty in Multi/Interdisciplinary Studies for the Years 1996-97 and 1999-00
  This report is part of an annual national survey that examines salaries of full-time teaching faculty in 54 selected academic disciplines. Data for the study were collected from a total of 296 public and 390 private four-year institutions from the baseline year of 1996-97 to the trend year of 1999-2000.
• Salary-Trend Study of Faculty in Multi/Interdisciplinary Studies for the Years 1997-98 and 2000-01
  This report is part of an annual national survey that examines salaries of full-time teaching faculty in 54 selected disciplines. Data for the study as a whole were collected from 305 public and 403 private institutions for the baseline year of 1997-1998 and the trend year of 1999-2000.
• Science Activities To Develop Transcultural Understandings
  Details an instructional approach to understanding another culture through the use of kits that enables children to learn at their own pace. This approach focuses on similarities among and between cultures and allows students to explore a variety of science concepts and understandings.
• Seeing a World in a Grain of Sand: Science Teaching in Multicultural Context
  Describes the Imagining Nature Project at Deakin University in Australia, and the Native Eyes Project at the Institute of American Indian Art in New Mexico. Both projects entail the teaching of science and technology to non-science majors of highly diverse cultural origin.
• Shifting the Role of the Arts in Education
  SUAVE (Socios Unidos para Artes Via Educacion--United Community for Arts in Education) is an arts-integrated approach to teaching in multicultural and multilingual settings. A unique professional development project for San Diego-area teachers, SUAVE helps teachers develop ways to integrate the arts into mathematics, science, language arts, and social sciences.
• Strength through Cultural Diversity: Developing and Teaching a Diversity Course
  Describes the design of an interdisciplinary course intended to develop college students' skills in functioning both personally and professionally in a multicultural society. Concepts addressed include the systems and characteristics of culture; individual, familial, community, and cross-cultural dimensions of diversity; differences and similarities between cultures; and conflict and negotiation.
• Teaching to Transform: From Volatility to Solidarity in an Interdisciplinary Family Studies Classroom
  Describes a transformative experience in an interdisciplinary course on multicultural families and the xenophobia they experience. The course was created in collaboration with students in order to achieve a more authentic teaching-learning experience.
• The Fin Art of Science
  Describes how Japanese fish printing brings interdisciplinary science and culture to the classroom. Presents an activity on fish printing that provides students with a tactile, concrete experience and explores what fish feel like and how their scales are arranged.
• The Language and Literacy Spectrum, 1996. A Journal of the New York State Reading Association
  Sharing concerns and interests of New York State educators in the improvement of literacy, this annual journal raises educational issues such as current thoughts about literacy instruction, educators' roles, literacy in its many forms, college-community literacy partnerships, and recommended reading materials.
• The Vanishing Indian Reappears in the College Curriculum
  The first Native American studies programs, created in the rising political consciousness of the late 1960s and early 1970s, arose from a rejection of traditional curricula and challenged stereotypes of Indians and their history. During the 1980s, Native studies programs became vehicles to recruit and retain American Indian students, reflecting concerns over minority attrition rates and affirmative action.
• Toward an Integrative Multicultural Learning Environment
  Describes the role of integrative curriculum reform in fostering multicultural education in Brown Barge Middle School, in Pensacola, Florida. Examines the efforts of one team of teachers to create a multicultural curriculum, noting factors in their success.
• Tribal Rhythms: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Multicultural Education
  Describes the "Tribal Rhythms" (registered) program, a process that uses the themes of "tribe" and the Arts to build community and engage participants in culture-making activities that enable them to build a "tribe." Discusses the use of the program in Boston, Massachusetts, elementary schools. (SLD).
• Tumacacori National Historical Park: Making History Come Alive. "Encounters" Fourth Grade Teachers' Guide.
  This 9-unit curriculum guide for 4th grade includes activities relating to the cultural and environmental history of southern Arizona, specifically the area known as the Pimeria Alta. The guide was designed by a group of teachers to be thematic and sequential, and to deal with the encounters of various cultures that are the history of the Santa Cruz Valley.
• Ways that Work: Putting Social Studies Standards into Practice
  This book presents a collection of ideas about how social studies and language arts can be combined to promote learning and to create an active, informed citizenship for the 21st century.