This paper discusses how museums, adventure programs, and discovery activities can become an intrinsically differentiated gifted curriculum for gifted learners. Museums and adventure programs are a forum for meaningful learning activities. The contextual characteristics of effectively designed settings for learning activities can, if the…

Although logotherapy has been generally seen as a therapeutic technique, its usefulness in other areas cannot be underestimated. This paper examines museum education from a theoretical "logos" perspective and from a practical application of effective museum utilization for students. While museums will never replace schools in the formal…

An illustration of the cognitive theory of inquiry teaching is presented in this paper in a tutorial dialogue on the nature of lenses. After a description of the goals of the method, the paper discusses the following ten general strategies inquiry teachers use to accomplish the goals: (1) selecting positive and negative exemplars, (2) varying…

Questions and questioning play a major role in both formal and informal educative processes. They are the means by which a child expresses the desire to understand the world outside and they subsequently become the means by which a teacher assesses whether or not a child has satisfactorily assimilated something. This book considers questions from…

Describes a "thinking strand" in social studies instruction in a New Jersey school district. An inservice training program enables teachers to apply critical thinking skills in the classroom, actively engaging students through the use of debates, case studies, and problem-solving activities. (TE)

Inquiry-based teaching and assessment approaches are superior to standardized tests for measuring students' progress. Historical thinking skills employed in Leopold von Ranke's 19th-century seminars have been refined to consider point of view, credibility of evidence, historical context, causality, and multiple perspectives--benchmarks of…

Questioning strategies, whether teacher- or student-generated, can be a major tool in developing reading comprehension. Teachers can maximize the benefits of teacher directed questioning by (1) providing clues before providing answers to questions, (2) acknowledging appropriate responses with two or three seconds of eye contact, (3) allowing…

Presents investigations in which students are provided with a series of four mystery items related to cicadas. Observations and a class discussion follow each item. Contains basic information on doing experiments with live cicadas, specific assessment strategies for this activity, and facts about cicadas. (DDR)

Discusses the benefits of individualizing inquiry for students. Describes using this method in the social studies classroom in step by step guidelines. Offers an illustration of its successful application. Notes factors to be considered before teachers commit to this instructional method. (KO)

This book presents a collection of essays on building collaborative communities in which democratic principles of education may be recognized, focusing on learning and teaching through inquiry. After (1) "The Development of a Community of Inquirers" (Gordon Wells), there are three parts. Part 1, "Inquiries in the Elementary…

Argues current social studies reform movement raises false dichotomy between those who would emphasize content of history geography and those who would focus on critical thinking or information processing skills. Contends real goal of social studies should be practical citizenship competencies/participation. Concludes that teachers should create…

Under normal instructional circumstances, some youngsters learn programming in BASIC or LOGO better than others. Clinical investigations of novice programmers suggest that this happens in part because different students bring different patterns of learning to the programming context. Many students disengage from the task whenever trouble occurs,…

In this project, a resynthesis of the research dealing with student performance in new science curricula was conducted using refined statistical procedures. Results generally supported earlier meta-analysis studies. (CW)

The goal of this paper is to sketch the epistemological roots of constructivism, to clarify certain implications of Piaget's constructivist theory for science education, and to explicate the issues surrounding a specific research study and its replication. Constructivist epistemology is described in terms of its emergence from rationalist,…

Described is an activity that categorizes a two-digit number as "sneaky" if the continued process of taking the difference of the squares of its digits leads to a difference of zero. Other categorizations are determined by whether the difference process ends in a one-digit number or continues in a loop of numbers. (MDH)