A class activity has been designed to help fourth grade students to identify basic insect features as a means of promoting student creativity while making an imaginary insect model. The 5Es (Engage, Explore, Explain, Extend [or Elaborate], and Evaluate) learning cycle teaching model is used. The 5Es approach allows students to work in small…

This study aims to evaluate and analyze strategies, proposals, and ICT tools to promote a paradigm shift in educational supervision that enhances the schools of this century involved not only in teaching-face learning, but e-learning and blended learning. Traditional models of educational supervision do not guarantee adequate supervision of the…

The National Science Education Standards are designed to provide a vision of scientific literacy for "all" students--regardless of age, race, ethnic background, English-language proficiency, socioeconomic status, disability, or giftedness. One of the most powerful strategies in science instruction--which aligns with the Standards--is the use of…

Over-reliance on prescriptive pedagogies, such as explicit instruction, could hamper students with learning difficulties from sense-making and thus limit their acquisition of conceptual understanding. To help them in constructing mathematical knowledge, manipulative and drawing could be used to solve problems in a meaningful context. Using a case…

The learning cycle has been embraced as a teaching approach that is consistent with the goals of the "National Science Education Standards" (National Research Council, 1996). Science teacher educators may be disappointed to find, however, that preservice teachers may fail to grasp this model, even after extensive instruction (e.g., Settlage,…

Gifted students are often described in the literature as being self-regulated, self-directed learners. Ten gifted primary students were interviewed in order to clarify the concept of self-directed learning in students of primary age. The students provided information on their knowledge of self-directed learning, explanations of the self-directed…