Engaging emotion is essential to effective history instruction. This may strike some as a banal observation, as we have long known that student enthusiasm and engagement are key elements of learning. If asked, many teachers would use emotionally-laden vocabulary to describe their commitment to the profession: love of history, passion about student…

In this article Raymond Benton, Jr. describes how he implemented a variation on Eliot Aronson's (Aronson et al. 1978) "jigsaw classroom" activity. While there are similarities between Aronson's jigsaw classroom and what is described here, there are differences as well. In Aronson's system, the classroom was divided into subgroups. Each…

For students to learn optimally, teachers must design classrooms that are responsive to the full range of student development. The teacher must be adaptive, but so must each student and the learning culture itself. In other words, adaptive teaching means constructing a responsive learning culture that accommodates and even capitalizes on diversity…

Systematic instruction including frequent collection and graphing of data is essential for effective and efficient instruction of students with significant disabilities. The system of least prompts procedure is a systematic strategy often used to teach tasks to students; however, the traditional method for graphing the data collected using this…

Effective instruction is a key component of successful classroom management and includes practices that maximize the likelihood of student participation, active responding, and correct responding while minimizing errors. Researchers have established the connection between effective instruction and (a) increases in desired student behaviors,…

Supplemental small group reading instruction is frequently provided in the general education setting to struggling students at elementary schools that use response to intervention frameworks. Although building reading proficiency is the main focus of the intervention, students' learning-related behaviors should also be addressed to improve…

This commentary suggests that the first geography course a student takes is of critical importance because the relative success or failure of the instructor in offering an interesting, relevant, and well-taught class may strongly influence whether the student take additional geography courses later in his or her education career.

We developed a computerized game designed around principles shown to improve classroom performance and experience: multimedia, practice testing, vivid instructional techniques, and in-class participation. Students compete as 2 teams, and the game plays like Jeopardy meets Hollywood Squares with learning outcomes. Our evaluation indicated that the…

This paper describes the use of handheld computers in the Science classrooms of four Tasmanian schools over a year. Analysis was informed by theories of innovation and assisted by ecological perspectives. Teachers demonstrated a range of attitudes to innovative pedagogies associated with the devices, and these corresponded to student achievements.…

Writing is a recursive and complex set of cognitive processes that can be taught effectively to students with disabilities. Employing an adapted cognitive theory of writing, a broad view of what constitutes evidence, and the support of a variety of assistive and internet-based technologies, we developed a writing instructional program to meet the…

States that applied research is the domain of faculty members, not just institutional researchers. Describes several ways in which faculty members at Harcum Junior College assessed the effects of their own teaching through a year-long assessment project that studied the effects of the Classroom Assessment Techniques (CAT) on students' learning…

An alternating treatments design with a best treatments phase was used to compare two active student response (ASR) conditions and one on-task (OT) condition on the acquisition and maintenance of social studies facts during computer-assisted instruction. Each week for six weeks, five students were provided daily computer-assisted instruction on 21…

A study of a junior-level grammar class for preservice teachers was conducted by an observer at Miami University of Ohio to determine the effectiveness of a Socratic teaching style that allowed the teacher to do most of the talking. Students in the class also participated in the observation; they were interviewed regularly by the graduate student.…

Explains that one way to overcome free riding (when some members of a group shirk their responsibilities, leaving others to complete the work) is the "Knickrehm Method", in which the professor grades the group project and students can gain or lose points based upon peer evaluations. Describes two trials of the Knickrehm Method. (CMK)

During the 1994 fall semester, an instructor taught an English 101 section at Central Arizona College-Superstition Mountain Campus that used readings from Graham Flegg's "Numbers: Their History and Meaning" as the basis for 3 of the assigned readings. Only 3 of the 5 assigned essays were based on math--as opposed to all of them--for…