Careful lesson planning is essential in elementary STEM education because the crucial role of STEM education at the elementary level is to help students develop fundamental skills employed in real life as a foundation for future learning. This study examined how elementary STEM teachers curate digital resources for lesson planning and the relevant…

In this article, the authors unveil the Trade Book Inquiry Design Model (IDM) blueprint. Anchored in a compelling question inspired by a trade book, the new blueprint is broken into two instructional blocks: "Reading and Comprehension" and "Living Social Studies." The inquiry template is designed to be instructionally efficient…

The purpose of the study is to design a lesson plan model for character education in primary education, and to elicit the related stakeholders' opinions and suggestions on the proposed lesson plan model. As a qualitative design research, the data in this study were collected through written document analysis and interview. Criterion sampling…

The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the decisions and adaptations that literacy specialists make before, during, and after literacy intervention instruction. The theoretical framework for this study included social constructivism (Dewey, 1933), metacognition theory (Flavell, 1976), and adaptive expertise (Hatano & Ingnaki,…

Students with disabilities lack access to and achievement in rigorous and cognitively challenging mathematics and are typically subjugated to rote and remedial forms of mathematics education in segregated settings. In this presentation, I argue that teacher educators, guided by disability studies in education (DSE) concepts, can support…

This paper examines the status and relevant challenges in Japan's primary geography education system, from the perspectives of curriculum and levels of teachers' expertise. Japanese elementary schools adopted the subject Social Studies in the National Curriculum Standards. These emphasize geographical content and the curriculum structure utilizing…

This study investigates the use of inquiry learning (IL) approach for intellectually disabled (ID) students. It draws on findings from the trial lessons of 6 classes of ID students in a project developing an adapted General Studies Curriculum for ID students at primary level. Data analysis focuses on examining how IL was employed for ID students.…

This qualitative study aims at detecting areas that requires to be developed in the EFL reading program in elementary stages in Kuwaiti public schools by using children's literature. It also examines the reading program in the public elementary curriculum. The participants were six English language major students from the College of Basic…

Zimbabwe like most developing countries continues to experience shortages in skills. One such area that has experienced skills shortages is education. This has resulted in governments and education institutions coming up with innovative ways to improve the training of of teachers. Such innovative models include the Open & Distance Learning…

Social studies has long been relegated to the sidelines in the elementary grades. Teachers have often used children's literature to teach social studies (e.g., Hicks, 1996; Hinde, 2005, 2009; Kent & Simpson, 2008) but there are concerns that this integration shortchanges social studies learning (e.g., Alleman & Brophy, 1993, 1994; Brophy,…

The number of English language learners (ELLs) in the United States has increased dramatically. Given this increase it is vital for teacher education programs at the pre-service level and professional learning programs at eh in-service level to address the needs of ELLs. This article presents a teacher preparation model--"a language-based…

This research examines "lesson study" as a traditional model of creating professional knowledge in schools. "Lesson study," typically defined as teachers' classroom based collaborative research, has a long history in Japan as a shared professional culture with potential for enhancing learning, enriching classroom activities and…

This study questions the belief that little or no social studies is being taught in regular elementary education classrooms. That belief is based on time studies and a body of research that looks at curriculum and teacher interviews and concludes that the social studies time block has been decreased in elementary classrooms, therefore little or no…

Studied the preconditions and obstacles to building network contacts for two teams of five Finnish elementary school teachers each. Results show that breaking traditional patterns of teacher work, especially the tradition of single- handed lesson planning and implementation, results from team work in building a shared object. Results show the…

This study examined the lesson plans of 67 teacher interns in Kentucky to determine the extent to which their lesson objectives were designed to develop higher order thinking skills in their students. Copies of the first lesson plans submitted by first year teachers in one large Kentucky school system for a 3-year period, 1995-1998, constituted…