Examines the importance of understanding the way relations between teachers and children affect the development of learning environments and how classroom interaction may promote or retard learning. Describes how teaching styles depend on cultural contexts and examines successful and unsuccessful classrooms with examples from a variety of school…

Describes a content analysis of the journal entries of six college freshmen in developmental reading courses, which indicated that students' metacognitive awareness of both reading and learning processes increased over time. (HTH)

The concept of autonomy in second language learning is explored by tracing some steps in the evolution of theory and practice. The first section relates one definition of learner autonomy ("the ability to take charge of one's learning") to self-instruction in language learning and to research in language learning at the adult level. The…

The impact of travel on older adults was examined through semi-structured interviews of a purposively selected sample of eight individuals ranging in age from 56 to 89 years. The interviews were designed to determine whether interviewees' travel had resulted in any transformative learning experiences. The participants (three Caucasian married…

Argues that research for teacher use would be more effective if it were: (1) of the form referred to as naturalistic case studies and (2) oriented toward discovering cognitive and social interaction mechanisms underlying the learning processes in classrooms. (Author/SK)

Results of a microlevel study of the problems associated with student evaluation of teacher lecture performance indicated that student ratings of lectures are valuable feedback regarding teacher presentation but should be interpreted with caution as a measure of teaching effect on student learning. (SB)

Describes how the authors gradually changed their methods of teaching chemistry to mixed-ability groups. (Editor/RK)

Styles of thinking and learning are relevant for understanding and testing foreign-language aptitude. This article emphasizes one particular theory of styles, the theory of self-government, and discusses the nature of styles, gives some history of the concept of styles, describes styles in theory, describes measures of styles, and discusses the…

Presents an approach to teaching cultural anthropology that combines an inductive method and ethnographic case studies. From introductory courses to graduate-level seminars, the inductive case study approach combines written materials, films, and other aids to allow students to discover culture. Discusses how audiovisual aids can be used.…

People's mental models are viewed as being significant in achieving organizational outcomes, on the assumption that mental models influence people's acts. A fundamental issue in the area of organizational learning, then, is the relation between mental models, learning and performance. We contend that a fruitful line of work is to study persons as…

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the debate about how to tackle the issue of "the teacher in the teaching/learning process", and to propose a methodology for analysing the teacher's activity in the classroom, based on concepts used in the fields of the didactics of mathematics as well as in cognitive ergonomics. This…

The aim of this paper is to show how information literacy can be conceptualised as a key learning process related to discipline and academic maturity, rather than as a generic skill. Results of a small-scale study including questionnaires and observation of student behaviour are reported and analysed in relation to Bruce's "seven faces of…

New analytic procedures are presented for determining the relationship between students' experience in classrooms and learning curriculum content. Based on data obtained from two studies in the Understanding Learning and Teaching Project (ULTP) conducted at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), an analysis of the multi-layered nature of…

This study aims to report the effort on teaching vector algebra using free open source software (FOSS). Recent studies showed that students have difficulties in learning basic physics concepts. Constructivist learning theories suggest the use of visual and hands-on activities in learning. We will report on the software used for this purpose. The…