The blackboard, a useful teaching tool in nineteenth-century England, was transformed into a teaching necessity in the decades following 1870, when the Education Acts made school free and mandatory for all children. The resulting huge population of schoolchildren inspired the development of teaching techniques appropriate for large-group learning.…

The aim of this article is to show the importance of literacy practices in the implementation of education policy, using as an example the system of student assessment in adult literacy education. The author reports on an ethnographic study of the practice of planning learning and recording progress through the use of individual learning plans…

Based on the Kellian view of constructive alternativism (that the meanings of any idea are not fixed, but vary from individual to individual), this paper describes a technique for exploring school children's conceptions of common physical phenomena to allow science educators (1) to appreciate the alternative conceptions of their students and (2)…

Describes observations of two British primary school classrooms and how teaching conditions set up or preclude gender specific reading attitudes. (HTH)

A study was made of children beginning school, to learn more about their response to school and how to help them adapt to it. Participants in the study's year-long first phase were 36 teachers from two very different local education authorities (LEA) and 92 children who started school in 1985-86. Teachers identified activities and organization in…