Three Oaks Elementary School in Fort Myers, Florida, was the first school to adopt Core Knowledge, an articulated K-6 curriculum promoted by E.D. Hirsch, author of "Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know" (1987). Hirsch feels that emphasizing skills over knowledge unintentionally injures disadvantaged students. Program…

Educational researchers and policymakers need to understand the ecological correlation fallacy, since so much bad research (and policy) has been based on it. Aggregate data may or may not yield results that are true for individuals. Only individual-level data can correctly answer questions about the relationship between variables for individuals.…

As the old European paradigm yields to a new multicentric reality, educators must consider culture and language paramount to educational planning. Technology can empower teachers' creativity and students' responsibility for their learning. New technologies can help address equity and access issues, accelerate students' linguistic and conceptual…

Muses about Howard Gardner's theory of "multiple intelligences." Finds that, although learning should be defined broadly enough so that everyone can succeed at it, Gardner's theory does not teach educators much about talent that was not already known through common experience. (PA)

Discusses the potential of synchronous communication, in the form of videoconferencing, to support learners in distance education courses. Highlights include examples of videoconferencing in higher education in Northern Ireland; videoconferencing in schools of librarianship in the British Isles; and the potential of videoconferencing in the…

When children feel threatened by environmental factors (abuse, poverty, malnourishment, family violence, or the traditional schooling system), they downshift their thinking and limit their behavior choices. To think critically, children must feel safe to take risks. They learn best when immersed in complex experiences and when allowed to process…

Interview data from 30 third-year college students in Scotland suggest that students' strategies for reading expository text were primitive. There was some evidence of comprehension monitoring in that students recognized that their learning was slight but little evidence of strategies that could affect and advance comprehension. Contains 43…

Interviews with 53 part-time adult students in Hong Kong showed no consensus on what constitutes good teaching. Their perceptions of teaching were framed by conceptions of learning on a continuum from reproduction to self-determination. Position on this continuum was correlated with preference for didactic or facilitative teaching. (Contains 22…

Three studies investigated 3-year-olds' comprehension of indirectly and directly learned words after a 2-day delay. Found indirectly and directly learned proper and common names resulted in proper name mappings that picked out individual and common name mappings that could be extended to another category member. When additional, sometimes…

Examines qualitative data from three case-study schools to illuminate barriers to responsiveness facing socially disadvantaged schools and impeding school improvement. Highlights cumulative impact of contextual influences, which interact with internal school factors, particularly that of local school hierarchies and processes of labelling that…

Case studies of four Australian apprentices and four trainees illustrate the following: their growing appreciation for the value of off-the-job training; preference for face-to-face training; centrality of relationships with off-the-job trainers; the implicit contract of expectations of the parties to the training contract; and dissatisfaction…

Compares outcomes of open-inquiry and expository versions of a chemistry laboratory experiment at the university level. Investigates whether the two versions would result in different outcomes depending upon students' attitudes towards learning. Indicates that the open-inquiry version shows the most positive outcomes, and students with low…

Uses situated abstraction to understand nurses' conceptions of intensive quantity of drug concentration. Explores nurses' conceptions to undertake a pointed examination of the degree of situatedness of nurses' knowledge and reasoning. Demonstrates that nurses' conceptions were abstracted within their practice when they coordinated mathematical…

Examines the cognitive supports that underlie achievement in science using a cultural historical framework and the activity setting (AS) construct with five features: personnel, motivation, scripts, task demands, and beliefs. Reports four emergent phenomena--science activities, the building of learning, meaning in lessons, and the conflict over…

Presents research suggesting that college women's friendships are learning relationships in which intellectual play and performance are risk-free and in which college women reconcile the constructed barrier between autonomous and interdependent learning and engage in dynamic articulation of thinking and knowing. Discusses implications of the value…