Teaching

NEW ORLEANS -- It is no secret that these are hard times for anthropology. The discipline claims little more than one-half of 1 percent of undergraduate degrees conferred, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Threat by two engineering professors at Ryerson U. revives debate over how to respond to rude students.

Shit happens.

That's reality, according to Daniel Petersen, who has taught philosophy for 21 years at Hawaii Community College and the University of Hawaii at Hilo. And it's a reality he shared -- in those words -- with his students. Now he says he is sharing that reality in the collapse of his teaching career, which he attributes to the aftermath of a complaint from the father of a student over a few instances of profanity in his class at the community college.

Guiding undergraduate students can be personally rewarding and support good teaching, a panel of historians notes. So why is it left to chance?

Colleges experiment with metacognition as a means to change behaviors and improve performance.

Researchers find that institutional identity trumps policy when it comes to whether professors think their institutions value teaching.

Lynn University in Florida finds a way to answer general critiques of academic quality: a return to a retooled core curriculum.

While many college faculty members and administrators are focused on budget cuts or research agendas, Parker J. Palmer and Arthur Zajonc have issued a call to return to what they think matters the most: teaching, and teaching in an "integrative" way that moves past individual disciplines. Their appeal comes in a new book, The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal (Jossey-Bass).

Valdosta State University police charge a professor after he shut a student's computer during class.

New guidelines for teaching writing seek to build "habits of mind" instead of touting specific methods.