Effectively engaging individuals with developmental disabilities is essential to Extension's diversity and inclusion mandate. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that over 6 million individuals have developmental disabilities. We in Extension have the potential to include a proportionate number of individuals with…

This paper describes the creation of an evaluative tool that aims to measure the degree to which constructivism is facilitated within the teaching materials created for older beginning piano students (twelve to seventeen years of age). Literature exploring the published teaching materials available for teaching piano includes content analysis,…

Most people have struggled with reading in one situation or another, depending on their appreciation for the content, their prior experiences, and the texts. This department column shares ways for educators to help literacy learners unlock their potential with instruction anchored in their skills, knowledge, ways of learning, interests, and…

Context: Subject matter is presented to athletic training students in the classroom using various modes of media. The specific type of mode and when to use it should be considered to maximize learning effectiveness. Other factors to consider in this process include a student's knowledge base and the complexity of material. Objective: To introduce…

The action research method of appreciative inquiry (AI) was employed to develop a teaching tool. This exercise involves students' reflections on a course, noting when they learned the most. The AI process of appreciating, envisioning, dialoging, and innovating is used to help students reflect on how they learn. Instructors of all types of courses…

This column focuses on promoting learning through assessment. In 1999, a group of researchers from Indiana University and Purdue University decided to investigate data about students' ideas in science by inviting National Science Teachers Association members to participate in a research study about children's conceptions of animals. Published in…

Stavros Demetriadis is currently an Assistant Professor with the Department of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh) in Greece. He also earned his Bachelor's degree in Physics and a Master Diploma in Electronic Physics from AUTh. He became interested in information and communications technologies when he was a high school…

Raising consciousness about the environment and learning ways to care for our planet are important for all citizens of the world. Young children are particularly receptive to learning new concepts; thus the preschool years are an ideal time to teach lessons about the environment. It is often the case that the information learned when children are…

Despite an enormous diversity of institutional types and our historic commitment to access, there is a numbing sameness across our campuses when it comes to the actual practice of teaching and learning. Different colleges recruit different students, serve different audiences, and teach different bodies of knowledge. But they do it all using the…

The establishment of the "three-dimension-in-one" objectives in the new curriculums has changed the "knowledge-centered" objective model in the traditional teaching syllabuses. This change will cause the transformation of knowledge learning ideology, i.e. from stressing the explicit knowledge acquisition to concerning the value of tacit knowledge.…

This booklet, part of the "Getting to Grips with..." series, gives teachers and trainers in vocational education and training some easily digestible information about learning styles. It provides practical tips on how to identify students' learning styles, and how to respond to individuals and groups based on their preferred methods of…

A metacognitive model was proposed as an explanatory framework for spontaneous strategy use. A study in which hyperactive children transferred newly acquired strategies following self-control training and attributional retraining served as an illustration of how components in the model can be used to better understand "spontaneity." (Author/LMO)

The Teacher Education and Learning to Teach Study of the National Center for Research on Teacher Education combines case studies of teacher education programs with longitudinal studies of teacher learning. In this paper, the development of the theoretical framework on which instrumentation for the longitudinal study is based is discussed.…

A project, using a longitudinal survey, seeks to describe the cognitive content of the professional competence developed within the field of engineering, psychology, economics, and medicine. With the aid of several empirical studies, the project will hopefully clarify when and how changes occur in students' perceptions and patterns of thought,…

This paper explores issues that designers of learning environments should consider, omitting issues about knowledge learned and the social settings in which learning occurs that are addressed elsewhere. The perspective taken on design is to think of each decision in terms of its costs and benefits, an approach that may allow designers to minimize…