The purpose of this article was to describe a taxonomy of pretend play for children with disabilities based on a systematic review of the literature to characterize pretend play. Thirty-seven studies were identified as measuring pretend play in children with disabilities. Several inconsistencies were found in the measurement of pretend play across…

There is much to be learned and pondered by reading "Proofs and Refutations" by Imre Lakatos (Lakatos, 1976). It highlights the importance of mathematical definitions, and how definitions evolve to capture the essence of the object they are defining. It also provides an exhilarating encounter with the ups and downs of the mathematical reasoning…

Twenty-three female elementary pre-service teachers were assessed on their ability to answer questions involving geometry concepts. Despite being given the definitions of the altitude of a triangle and the diagonal of a polygon on the pretest, limited understanding of these concepts was evident. A treatment using both graphic organizer and concept…

"Accountability" is widely used in discussions about what should be happening in school, but it is not an appropriate guiding concept for assessments designed to improve teaching and learning. This article examines discussions about assessment for internal and external purposes; it then outlines an alternative frame for assessment that has…

In the following pages, we examine some common methodological challenges in educational technology research and highlight new data collection approaches using examples from the literature and our own work. Given that surveys and questionnaires remain widespread and dominant tools across nearly all studies of educational technology, we first…

Helping students and practitioners to understand and utilize the Psychological Contract is often a difficult task. Unlike fault-finding research, this paper presents the PC as a positive, vibrant and valuable tool. In an effort to make the concept less elusive, the paper draws upon the metaphor of jazz. The metaphor is an accepted tool of…

Teacher incompetence and the identification of incompetent teachers have become major educational issues. With the implementation of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), every student is expected to be taught by a "highly qualified" teacher. Although "highly qualified" does not guarantee competent teaching, the two often go…

Language plays a crucial role in the classroom. The use of specialized language in a domain can cause a subject to seem more difficult to students than it actually is. When words that are part of everyday English are used differently in a domain, these words are said to have lexical ambiguity. Studies in other fields, such as mathematics and…

The participation of a student with mild mental retardation in recess can often be both challenging and rewarding for the student and teacher. This paper will address common characteristics of students with mild mental retardation and present basic solutions to improve the experience of these students in the recess setting. Initially the…

In modern world, advances and changes experienced in social, political, and economic domains cannot be effective in diminishing the unwanted behaviors displayed by individuals in a society. This underpins the need for creating a peace culture based on equality, justice, democracy, human rights, tolerance, and solidarity in a society. The purpose…

In 2000, Professor Geneva Gay wrote that culturally responsive teaching connects students' cultural knowledge, prior experiences, and performance styles to academic knowledge and intellectual tools in ways that legitimize what students already know. By embracing the sociocultural realities and histories of students through what is taught and how,…

The purpose of this dissertation is to demonstrate one iterate of a process for developing a measurement instrument for student knowledge within educational interventions. Student mathematical knowledge is framed within Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) and its tenets. That is, the construct underlying the measurement instrument corresponded…

The author of this article arrives at the conclusion that media literacy/competence of personality is the sum total of the individual's motives, knowledge, skills, and abilities (indicators: motivation, contact, content, perception, interpretation/appraisal, activity, and creativity) to select, use, create, critically analyze, evaluate, and…

As a nation, society benefits from an educated populace. At a time when economic, environmental, social, and security issues are the focus of many conversations in businesses, industries, government offices, schools, and homes, policymakers turn their attention to the further development of human capital. Educators acknowledge that they have key…

Communities across the country are grappling with different approaches to improving their schools. Introducing or expanding charter schools is one of the approaches that states and school districts have considered or implemented. Charter schools serve more than 5 percent of public school students nationwide and make up close to 7 percent of all…