Getting Down to Basics in Western Civilization: It's about Time

Facilitating Student Learning Through Contextualization

“…Furthermore, contextualization is an important component of learning communities involving developmental education and college English courses (Fallon, Lahar, & Susman, 2009;Tai & Rochford, 2007;Weiss et al, 2010) as well as workplace literacy (Mikulecky & Lloyd, 1997). Regardless of the term used, all of these applications center on the practice of systematically connecting basic skills instruction to a specific content that is meaningful and useful to students.…”

“…Numerous terms are used in the literature for contextualization, both of basic skills and other areas, including contextual teaching and learning (Baker et al, 2009; Johnson, 2002), contextualized instruction (Parr, Edwards, & Leising, 2008; Wisely, 2009), content area literacy (McKenna & Robinson, 2009), embedded instruction (Simpson et al, 1997), writing-to-learn (Klein, 1999; McDermott, 2010), integrative curriculum (Dowden, 2007), situated cognition (Hattie, Biggs, & Purdie, 1996; Stone, Alfeld, Pearson, Lewis, & Jensen, 2006), problem-based learning (Gijbels, Dochy, Van den Bossche, & Segers, 2005), theme-based instruction (Dirkx & Prenger, 1997), anchored instruction (Bottge, Rueda, Serlin, Hung, & Jung, 2007), curriculum integration (Badway & Grubb, 1997), academic-occupation integration (Bragg, Reger, & Thomas, 1997; Grubb & Kraskouskas, 1992; Perin, 2001; Prentice, 2001), work-based learning (Raelin, 2008), and functional context education (Sticht, 2005). Furthermore, contextualization is an important component of learning communities involving developmental education and college English courses (Fallon, Lahar, & Susman, 2009; Tai & Rochford, 2007; Weiss et al, 2010) as well as workplace literacy (Mikulecky & Lloyd, 1997). Regardless of the term used, all of these applications center on the practice of systematically connecting basic skills instruction to a specific content that is meaningful and useful to students.…”

Community College Practices for U.S.-Educated Language-Minority Students: A Resource-Oriented Framework

“…Program administrators found that enrollment was highest when ESL writing and reading courses were linked with a core course requirement, such as World Civilization, rather than with an elective (Lay, Carro, Tien, Niemann, & Leong, 1999). 6 Students in linked noncredit ESL reading/writing and credit-bearing history courses at the college were seen as successful based on course-passing rates and ACT scores (Tai & Rochford, 2007), but evaluating such a claim is difficult in light of the limited data provided.…”