When students walk into a classroom, often the first question is, "What are we going to do today?" It is easy for educators to fall into the trap of using activities exclusively without considering the value or intent of the content. After all, the students are engaged, and if they are busy they must be learning. Simply being busy,…

There is currently strong and widespread support among university administrators for blended learning at the college level, or courses that incorporate some degree of online instruction. As instructors are called on to incorporate online and face-to-face elements into their instruction, they face the critical question of how to intentionally…

In many educational contexts, L2 writing assessment tends to emphasize its summative functions (i.e., assessment of learning--AoL) more than its formative potential (i.e., assessment for--AfL). While the teacher plays a dominant role in AoL, central to AfL is the role of the students, alongside that of the teacher and peers. A student-centred…

The video modeling (VM) teaching strategy is one in which a student watches a video of someone performing a specific behavior, skill, or task and is then expected to complete the behavior, skill, or task. This column discusses the variety of ways in which VM has been documented within the literature and supports teacher interest in the strategy by…

This article identifies homework as an underutilized strategy in physical education. It reviews the benefits associated with the use of homework in the physical education setting, and provides guidelines for the effective implementation of this strategy. The guidelines include practical application examples and define structured active homework…

Formative assessments are an important part of the teaching and learning cycle. Instructors need to monitor student learning and check for understanding throughout the instructional phase of teaching to confirm that students understand the objective before embarking on the summative assessment. Typically, online classrooms are developed with…

This study examines a teacher's questioning strategies in mathematics classrooms in China when implementing reform-based mathematics curriculum. It explores teacher's strategies to deal with the tensions involved in the creation of opportunities for students to express and communicate mathematics ideas while ensuring the productivity of…

Recognition of the critical role of indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) in science in the new South African national curriculum for schools affirms the importance of IKS, particularly in the natural, physical and life sciences, as they are included in its policy. This paper explores the question of how teachers implement IKS in their science…

Responsive teaching occurs when teachers take up and "respond" to their students' ideas during instruction (J. L. Pierson, 2008). Although responsive teaching is gaining recognition as an effective strategy for encouraging student learning, few methods of analysis are capable of characterizing the different ways in which teachers take up…

Many books and articles on teaching strategies and techniques, as well as manuals prepared by college teaching and faculty development support groups, stress the importance of being organized, engaging the students, and faculty making themselves available to their students. This paper discusses how being the first to arrive and the last to leave…

This phenomenological study examined special education teachers' views of students' self-determination and citizenship skills. Although the special education teachers in this study maintained that self-determination skills help promote citizenship, only one of them added self-determination goals to her students' individualized educational plans…

Integrative curriculum has been noted as a best practice toward effective learning. Quality physical educators struggle and search for different ways to integrate other content areas (e.g.., language arts, math, and social studies) into their daily lessons; however, due to budgetary limitations, they must find ways to do so with educationally…

The purpose of this study is to investigate differences between traditional conventional professional development and high quality reflective professional development and curriculum implementation of classroom practices. This study examined the extent to which professional development activities were associated with increased levels of curriculum…

"Survey Toolkit Collecting Information, Analyzing Data and Writing Reports" (Walsh, 2009a) is discussed as a survey research curriculum used by the author's sixth grade students. The report describes the implementation of "The Survey Toolkit" curriculum and "TinkerPlots"[R] software to provide instruction to students learning a project based…

This essay argues for a particular form of student blogging as a powerful tool for generating and sustaining student engagement and conversation. After a brief discussion of pedagogical principles, "hub-and-spoke" blogging is presented as a means to facilitate a more student and discussion-centered classroom. Based upon recent research and the…