When the author's 25-year-old daughter Anna applied for a job as a secretary at a charter public school in the Rio Bravo neighborhood of Albuquerque, the principal thought she was overqualified for the job with her degree from St. John's College in Santa Fe. The principal instead asked her to take over for a teacher who was quitting her 6th grade…

One of the subjects that undergraduate students learning Object Oriented (OO) design find hard to apply is the construction of class hierarchies in general, and the use of interface classes in particular. The design process requires decomposition and reconstruction of problems in order to model software classes. The common attributes and behaviors…

Improving students' problem-solving abilities is a major, if not the major, goal of middle grades mathematics. To address this goal, the author, who is a university mathematics educator, and nine inner-city middle school teachers developed a math/science action research project. This article describes their unique approach to mathematical problem…

This article provides an overview of some perspectives about special issues in classroom mathematical teaching and learning that have stemmed from the huge explosion of research in children's mathematical thinking stimulated by Piaget. It concentrates on issues that are particularly important for less-advanced learners and for those who might be…

The library literature contains many discussions on problem-based learning as a means of engaging students in instruction and promoting information literacy. A related but relatively unexplored opportunity is available through client-based projects. Using examples from the business education literature, library literature, and the author's…

The purpose of this article is to describe innovatory online teaching carried out in the inter-university master's "Educational Innovation Policies and Practices for the Knowledge Society", with the participation of Malaga, Almeria and Internacional de Andalucia Universities. The master's focuses on the exploration of a problem-based…

This article reports on a collaboration project between South Africa and Sweden, in which we want to investigate whether the emphasis in undergraduate mathematics courses for engineering students should be more conceptual than the current traditional way of teaching. On the basis of a review of the distinction between conceptual and procedural…

The newly revised mathematics curriculum in Singapore has recently factored Applications and Modelling to be part of the teaching and learning of mathematics. Its implication is that even children should now be involved in works of mathematical modelling. However, to be able to implement modelling activities in the primary mathematics classroom,…

Whilst researching a teacher's use of miniature "handheld" computers (PDAs) with students, it became apparent that the related research literature implied unwarranted benefits arose from using this technology in the classroom setting. Focusing closely upon one exemplar UK government-commissioned research study, this paper attempts to…

Historically, calculus has displaced many algebraic methods for solving classical problems. This article illustrates an algebraic method for finding the zeros of polynomial functions that is closely related to Newton's method (devised in 1669, published in 1711), which is encountered in calculus. By exploring this problem, precalculus students…

Teaching children to ask and answer questions is critically important if they are to engage in reasoned argumentation, problem-solving and learning. This study describes how teachers can be taught to challenge children's cognitive and metacognitive thinking during cooperative learning and the affect this has on children's discourse and follow-up…

There is a case to be made for the integration of the Project Based Service Learning (PBSL) process and the design and construction of educational facilities. A growing body of research supports the notion that the formulaic educational system of the last hundred years may no longer serve the learning styles of new and future generations. Their…

This study investigates the effectiveness of computer-delivered hints in relation to problem-solving abilities in two alternative indirect instruction schemes. In one instruction scheme, hints are available to students immediately after they are given a new problem to solve as well as after they have completed the problem. In the other scheme,…

The authors present an activity to help high school students conceptualize the sociopolitical complexity of global warming through an exploration of varied perspectives on the issue. They argue that socioscientific issues such as global warming present important contexts for learning science and that the social and political dimensions of these…

This study investigated the effects of adding individualized, function-based support to the well-documented early intervention First Step to Success. A single-subject multiple-baseline design was applied across three K-1 students who did not respond to standard First Step to Success procedures. A functional behavioral assessment and individualized…