The article deals with the role and impact of advanced technologies on literary education. In the beginning, the author emphasizes fundamentally different cognitive objectives of empirical science and humanities. In the authors' opinion, the current scientification of the humanities leads to the domination of a single type of knowledge based on…

The "interpretive turn" has gained traction as a research approach in recent decades in the empirical social sciences. While the contributions of interpretive research and interpretive research methods are clear, we wonder: Does an interpretive perspective lend itself to--or even demand--a particular style of teaching? This question was…

This study focuses on discovery of what combination of scaffolds will allow 8th grade social studies students to successfully interact with primary source historical documents. The teacher-researcher examined the impact of scaffolding on two obstacles to learning in the discipline of history: (a) the inability of students to navigate successfully…

Supporting upper elementary students' higher level (i.e., analytic) thinking about texts in writing is a challenge for many teachers, in large part because what it means to analyze text is not well defined and because this skill is a relatively new expectation in elementary grades. In this article, the authors clarify the goal of three common…

The ability to shift reading position has long been recognised as a means for politically minded readers--particularly those motivated by Marxist, feminist and/or race-related agendas--to read against the grain and uncover the implicit ideologies in the text. Little research has been conducted on how inexperienced and thus less sophisticated…

Participating in reform-oriented mathematical discussion calls on teachers and students to listen to one another in new and different ways. However, listening is an understudied dimension of teaching and learning mathematics. In this analysis, we draw on a sociocultural perspective and a conceptual framing of three types of listening--evaluative,…

Teaching poetry offers both challenges and promises for student engagement and response. Because of the ways many students interact with poems in school settings--with an emphasis on the technical elements of poems, rather than on the emotional resonances they evoke--for many learners, poetry can often seem elusive and uncommonly difficult. This…

Most students in most schools today study subject matter. They and their teachers conceive of the educational task as committing to memory large numbers of facts, formulas, and figures. A far more sophisticated perspective emphasizes teaching disciplines and disciplinary thinking. The goal of this approach is to instill in students the disposition…

Attempts to frame the study of teaching and learning in explicitly scientific terms are not new, but they have been growing in prominence. Journals, conferences, and centres of "learning science" are appearing with remarkable frequency. However, in most of these invocations of an educational "science", "science" itself is understood largely in…

Background: Narrative thought is a primary mode of human cognition that underpins key human capabilities such as meaning-making and social-psychological understanding. Aims: We sought to further our understanding of the development of narrative thought during adolescence, particularly in terms of the structure and content of narrative…

Authentic and constructive learning experiences that include analysis of primary source documents are necessary elements of effective social studies teaching (Bailyn, 1994; Leinhardt, Stainton, & Virji, 1994; Wineburg & Wilson, 1991; Young & Leinhardt, 1998). This study examines the abilities of 70 fifth and seventh grade students to complete…

Presents activities to help elementary students learn to interpret history. Using the voyage of Columbus, students can learn how history is written, what a historian's job is, and why it is important to analyze more than one point of view. The activities also teach students to understand historical symbols. (SM)

Examined the developing relationships between false belief understanding and an awareness of the individualized nature of personal taste as well as a maturing grasp of the interpretive character of the knowing process. Results indicated that the concept of interpretation appears to involve a more complex and significantly later arriving…

Presents a conservative approach to critical thinking instruction, which involves introducing a few tools, reinforcing them, and applying them to mastery of a specific course content. Uses the technique of visualization as an example, exploring ways of teaching students to use the technique and ways of assessing it. (MAB)

Discusses how to teach people to think, examining how reflective thinking occurs in interpretive discussion and emphasizing interpretive discussions found in all classrooms at all levels. Presents a musical example, a literary example, and a classroom conversation to support the hypothesis that questions evolve as a cluster, growing as discussants…