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The chapter offers a case-study grounded in a professional development program for middle- and high-school teachers of history and/or social studies. The featured program supported American history teachers integrating the study of Picturing America images into academic subjects. Employing a dynamic Seattle-area academic and teaching partnership with the Seattle Art Museum, the Goodlad Institute for Educational Renewal, and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the project elaborated on Picturing America’s democracy theme. This theme, combined with visual thinking methods of exploring artworks, helped teacher link Picturing America’s masterpieces to their history curriculum, content standards, and individual responsibilities to promote informed civic participation. The program made innovative use of the Picturing America images to explore such historical concepts as freedom, equality, and inclusion. The purpose of the initiative was to enhance teaching innovation and curriculum and to help participants become influential teacher-leaders who can advocate for greater curricular emphasis on the combination of art and civic concepts. A signature feature of this effort was the focus on dissent as a lens through which to view key curricular concepts such as liberty, community, and informed citizenship.

This essay explores an instructional application of Wikipedia within the context of an undergraduate capstone course in historical studies, entitled “Revisiting the Weather Underground.” I wanted student research writing to find a wider audience than the classroom, so devised an assignment which called upon students in this senior seminar to research, write, and publish (via Wikipedia) biographies of individuals associated with this antiwar, anti-imperialist organization. Course membership included both traditional-aged college students and returning students. None had prior experience with social history, biography, publishing, or writing/editing on Wikipedia. Despite the fact that all participants (and I include myself here) had a steep learning curve when it came to the technology necessary to address a reading public through Wikipedia, the students rose to the challenge. The use of Wikipedia as venue shaped the manner in which students thought about their biographical subjects (some of whom could conceivably – and do, in fact – read and respond to the biographies), their subject matter (the Weather Underground), their audience (which included Wikipedia readers and editors internationally), their responsibilities as researchers to be accountable for their characterizations of others’ life stories, their accountability in sourcing information, and their sense of authorship (which all needed to learn to share with strangers encountered through Wikipedia). In reflecting on the assignment, students valued the experience as authentic scholarly communication and lasting historical learning. The featured assignment demanded close partnerships among students, faculty, librarians, educational technologists, and Wikipedia editors/administrators, and served also to dramatize the perils and possibilities of shared inquiry.

This chapter discusses successful practices within inquiry-based learning in the humanities and arts. The focus remains on an example of interdisciplinary inquiry conducted in an American Studies core course taught at the undergraduate level: “Memory and Dissent in American Culture: Remembering Nat Turner.” This chapter addresses the course design and in particular, its casebook assignment sequence, devoting central attention to the manner in which the casebook model supports students in becoming more adept and autonomous in framing responses to questions of their own devising.

This chapter provides an introduction to how the inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach is being used by colleges and universities around the world to strengthen the interconnections between teaching, learning, and research within the arts, humanities, and social sciences. This chapter provides a synthesis and analysis of all the chapters in the volume, which present a range of perspectives, case studies, and empirical research on how IBL is being used across a range of courses across a range of institutions within the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The chapter argues that the IBL approach has great potential to enhance and transform teaching and learning. Given the growing demands placed on education to meet a diverse range of complex political, economic, and social problems and personal needs, this chapter argues that education should serve as an incubator where students are part of a learning community and where they are encouraged to grow cognitively, emotionally, and socially by taking increasing responsibility for their own learning.

Liliana Alzate-Pérez is a fifth semester student in the Bachelor's in English-Spanish Education (Licenciatura Inglés-Español) at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana in Medellín, Colombia. She serves as a Research Assistant at the Research Group on Pedagogies and Didactics of Subject Knowledge (Pedagogías y Didácticas de los Saberes). She has helped with data collection and analysis procedures on two research studies: An exploratory study about teacher education policies in Medellín and a study regarding school violence. She is also a member of the Student Research Group on Second Language (SRG-L2), currently drafting a project about impact of teacher education programs. In addition, she works at a partnership project between UPB and local newspaper El Colombiano for the inclusion of the newspaper as a pedagogical tool. She has also been teaching a biology preparation course for the Colombian ICFES High School standardized test at UPB High School for four years. Her first research presentation was about her study (along with Mr. Gómez-Yepes) on teacher education practices in the new curricular proposal at the Faculty of Education at a research symposium at UPB. Her primary research interest is in the field of teacher education, specifically in the area of teacher education policies. Additional research interests include issues of technology and literacy in the high school setting, working in the inclusion of different educational needs in the curriculum, and the development of creative strategies for teaching improvement.

The chapters in this volume focus on how university partnerships for pre-service and teacher development apply novel ideas to improve teacher quality in global communities. The purpose of these programs is to improve education systems for all participants. Case studies in this volume present a broad and in-depth review of partnerships that apply novel ideas to transform organizations. This chapter provides an overview to this volume by discussing important elements of teacher quality by defining teacher quality characteristics, shared collaboration, and providing ideas for professional development agendas.