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From the bestselling author of What the Best College Teachers Do, the story of a new breed of amazingly innovative courses that inspire students and improve learningDecades of research have produced profound insights into how student learning and motivation can be unleashed—and it's not through technology or even the best of lectures. In Super Courses, education expert and bestselling author Ken Bain tells the fascinating story of enterprising college, graduate school, and high school teachers who are using evidence-based approaches to spark deeper levels of learning, critical thinking, and creativity—whether teaching online, in class, or in the field.Visiting schools across the United States as well as in China and Singapore, Bain, working with his longtime collaborator, Marsha Marshall Bain, uncovers super courses throughout the humanities and sciences. At the University of Virginia, undergrads contemplate the big questions that drove Tolstoy—by working with juveniles at a maximum-security correctional facility. Harvard physics students learn about the universe not through lectures but from their peers in a class where even reading is a social event. And students at a Dallas high school use dance to develop growth mindsets—and many of them go on to top colleges, including Juilliard. Bain defines these as super courses because they all use powerful researched-based elements to build a “natural critical learning environment” that fosters intrinsic motivation, self-directed learning, and self-reflective reasoning. Complete with sample syllabi, the book shows teachers how they can build their own super courses.The story of a hugely important breakthrough in education, Super Courses reveals how these classes can help students reach their full potential, equip them to lead happy and productive lives, and meet the world's complex challenges.

This book presents an innovative Multidimensional Curriculum Model (MdCM) that develops future thinking literacy among all ages and levels of school students. It combines theory and practice and is highly applicable for policy makers, curriculum coordinators, lecturers at colleges of education, graduate students, and teachers, who are challenged daily to provide meaningful and up-to-date learning. It will aid teachers to prepare learners for the fast-changing world and equip them with skills that will help them control their futures. It combines latest teaching strategies of transdisciplinarity, phenomenon-based, project based, and problem-based learning, in a unique manner so as to develop 21st century skills. More specifically, it aims at developing higher order thinking skills and processes referred to as scientific, creative, and future thinking. It covers core and non-core-curriculum domains, multi and transdisciplinary teaching, as well as designing curricula for the gifted, the able and students at risk. It applies the latest theories on constructivism and carefully selected tools authentically and relevantly to create interest and challenge, addressing learning from personal, global, and time perspectives. Each chapter highlights a strategy or thinking tool, commencing with theory, followed by a unit description and lesson plans. The chapters each end with a final product named the future scenario. This scenario, written by students projecting themselves into the future, is based on accumulated knowledge, summarizes their learning, and illustrates future thinking literacy.

This landmark text was one of the first to introduce and analyze contemporary concepts of curriculum that emerged from the Reconceptualization of curriculum studies in the 1970s and 1980s. This new edition brings readers up to date on the major research themes (postmodernism,ecological, hermeneutics, aesthetics and arts-based research, race, class, gender, sexuality, and classroom practices) within the historical development of the field from the 1950s to the present. Like the previous editions, it is unique in providing a comprehensive overview in a relatively short and highly accessible text. Provocative and powerful narratives (both biography and autoethnography) throughout invite readers to engage the complex theories in a personal conversation. School-based examples allow readers to make connections to schools and society, teacher education, and professional development of teachers. Changes in the Third Edition New Glossary - brief summaries in the text direct readers to the Companion Website to read the entire entries New analysis of the current accountability movement in schools including the charter school movement. More international references clearly connected to international contexts More narratives invite readers to engage the complex theories in a personal conversation Companion Website–new for this edition

This book brings together some of the newest work in curriculum studies to explore central questions that swirl inside (and out) of the field: What counts as curriculum research? What procedures are considered legitimate for the production of knowledge? What forms shape the making of explanations? What constitutes proof? It forefronts work by curriculum theorists who are interested in looking at educational problems from a vantage point that questions current models of research--one that suggests adopting'lines of flight'or multiplicities that offer promise to disentangle curriculum theory from traditional research hierarchies and methods-driven dependence on formalities. In Expanding Curriculum Theory: Dis/positions and Lines of Flight: •The essays are connected by their shared concern for combining alternative methodologies, such as textual analysis, discourse theory, hermeneutics, and post-structuralism with perspectives on race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. •Disciplinary boundaries are blurred as curriculum theory is interwoven with cultural studies, political theory, psychoanalysis, dance, technology, and other fields. •To assist readers in understanding the various essays, as well as comparing, contrasting, and connecting them with each other, each chapter opens with a'Thinking Beyond'section. The questions posed are designed to make the text engaging and pedagogically friendly. By doing all this within an overall poststructural framework that encourages and demonstrates creativity, multidisciplinarity, and new lines of flight, this volume makes a unique contribution to expanding curriculum theory. It is a stimulating text for students, faculty, and researchers in the field.