This paper draws upon Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, capital and field to better understand and appreciate the conditions which encouraged the productive professional development (PD) practices of one very capable teacher working in a secondary school in the British Midlands. Rather than celebrating this teacher's practices and perspective as…

When students can self-select their group members, a common assumption is that students prefer to select friends from similar cultural backgrounds. However, when teachers randomize students in groups from different cultural backgrounds, students are "forced" to work together. The prime goal of this study is to understand the impact of…

A wide variety of British universities are expanding efforts to attract international students. This article argues that higher education's implicit claim to all-inclusive "universality" may hereby be challenged by subsequent issues of cultural particularity. Here I set to conceptualise possible differences in the learning culture of…

Research supports what many teachers have long known: talk is a valuable tool for learning. But how can we incorporate talk and still keep students on task, thinking collectively and deeply? Gillis offers a solid theoretical foundation for incorporating talk throughout the curriculum, and then provides practical help for implementing it, with…

Observed that teachers and students play reciprocal roles in learning. States that students learn in schemata units, and provides the list of teaching skills required to maximize these methods. Concludes that teachers must understand children's intellectual processes in order to nurture them. (NL)

The central argument of this book is that the potential of problem-based learning is yet to be realized in higher education. Problem-based learning is an important approach to learning, based in the experiential learning tradition, that needs to be more centrally located in higher education curricula. Part 1 of this book explores problem-based…

In part 1 (SE 532 193) an outline of Ausubel's learning theory was given. The application of the theory to elementary school science is addressed in this part, clarifying what elementary science means and indicating how it relates to what may be expected to be already known by elementary school children. (Author/JN)

Discusses how an understanding of how children learn can be used to teach them to read nonnarrative information books. Includes how to nurture reading of nonnarrative writing and text features that link with children's ability to learn. Concludes that spoken language reinforces student efforts to make sense of ideas being read. (DK)

Seven dimensions for characterizing a curriculum in higher education are suggested. They include: prior knowledge; institutional response to prior knowledge; primary teaching mode; rates of learning; styles of learning; content openness; and assessment. This characterization is applied specifically to chemistry departments. (LBH)

A look at research from the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, York, United Kingdom, on the design of spaces for learning. (HB)

The 88 conference papers are on six topics: Post Compulsory Structures: New Organisational Patterns in Comparative and Historical Perspective; Priorities for the 1980s; Education and the Working Life; Student Learning: Aims, Processes and Outcomes; Staff Development: Perspectives for the 1980s; and The Role of the Media in Post-Compulsory…

An investigation into student personality factors which influence student interaction and learning outcomes. (HB)

Sources of misconceptions and learning difficulties were identified by interviewing academically sound A-level students (N=10) who were having difficulties with genetics. Indicates misconceptions were related to nature of concepts used in genetics, such as frequent representation of meiosis by fixed inanimate stage diagrams and to instructional…

Developed conceptually discrete subscales to represent affective sources of variation in student learning that are specific to learning mathematics. Tested these subscales, the Experiences of Studying Mathematics Inventory, with 317 South African and Australian undergraduate mathematics students and groups of 1,439 and 387 British, South African,…