The purpose of this phenomenological study was to describe and explain teachers' perceptions about effective professional development as well as to identify the environmental factors that affect the teacher participants' ability to engage in and implement various behaviors and beliefs transferred from the professional development experience. Four…

The present study was a follow-up to Tsai and Wen's (2005) earlier research, in which 802 articles published in the "International Journal of Science Education," "Science Education," and the "Journal of Research in Science Teaching" from 1998 to 2002 were analysed in terms of author's nationality, research type, and research topic. In the present…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore informal contexts of teachers' workplace professional learning and inform educational researchers, teacher educators, administrators and teachers about ways in which teachers learn to improve their practice. By questioning how teachers learn on-the-job to be better teachers and how school cultures…

Helping students take ownership of their learning is often a challenge in a large lecture course. In this article, the authors describe a nature of science-oriented group project in a chemistry course in which students gave presentations in concurrent conference sessions as well as its impact on student learning as evidenced through multiple data…

We used a large sample of singleton children to estimate the effects of socioeconomic status (SES), race/ethnicity, gender, additional socio-demographics, gestational and birth factors, and parenting on children's risk for learning-related behavior problems at 24 months of age. We investigated to what extent these factors increased a child's risk…

This study tests the hypothesis that cultural differences in group orientation predict an interaction between the student variable--ethnicity--and a learning context variable--reward structure--on math performance after group learning. One hundred and thirty-two African-American and European-American female and male fourth and fifth grade students…

This paper presents a number of hypotheses concerned with individual learning strategies based on a pre-experimental, observational case study. Three children (two seven-year-olds and one eleven-year-old) native speakers of Hebrew were the subjects of the study. The language data collected from them consisted of spontaneous speech about their…

Since structural dimensions of knowledge and learner contribute to preferred message structure, an understanding of structural relationships can aid in the more effective design of instructional messages. Five studies were conducted to explore these relationships. Knowledge structure was defined as the iconic representation of the body of…

Educational policy aims are very ambitious: from pre-school to lifelong learning they demand improvements in both quantity and quality. These demands have wide-ranging effects on teaching workloads. It is difficult to achieve these aims effectively without rethinking our approach to teaching and learning. Our essentially nineteenth-century model…

The intention of this article is to explore, challenge and expand our understandings of children's improvised vocalisations, a fundamentally human form of expression. Based on selected examples from observation and recording in non-institutional settings, the article outlines how this phenomenon can be understood as learning and as communication.…

This paper continues to explore the relationship between the imagination and learning. It has been claimed by Maxine Greene, amongst others, that imagination is the most important of the cognitive capacities for learning; the reason being that "it permits us to give credence to alternative realities". However little work has been done on what…

This paper describes a developmental model that can be used to evaluate and guide teacher reflection ond progress along a continuum in order to maximise the potential learning benefits afforded by interactive whiteboards. The model was developed using classroom observations and semi-structured interviews with eight teachers over o period of…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the study of supply chain design from the perspective of complex dynamic systems. Unlike extant studies that use formal simulation modelling and associated methodologies rooted in the physical sciences, it adopts a framework rooted in the social sciences, strategic niche management, which…

In this article, we propose to link the study of writing-to-learn to the theory of aptitude-treatment interaction (ATI). In an experimental study we examined the effects of a course on ''Writing-to-learn about literary stories'' consisting of writing tasks adapted to either a planning or a revising writing strategy. We hypothesized that the…

A study explored research data to see if evidence exists to support the assumption by adult educators that adults learn differently than children. Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) documents, educational and psychological periodicals, and other resources were reviewed. It was discovered that most adult educators have dealt with…