We describe research carried out with a prospective secondary biology teacher, whom we shall call Miguel. The teacher's conceptions of the nature of science and of learning and teaching science were analyzed and compared with his classroom practice when teaching science lessons. The data gathering procedures were interviews analyzed by means of…

This article builds on research related to the perceptions, perspectives, and experiences of educators in relation to democracy in education (Carr, 2006a), which, it is argued, can be viewed as having a significant impact on what students in elementary and secondary schools learn about democracy (McLaren, 2007; Regenspan, 2002), and, importantly,…

The case-based computerized laboratory (CCL) is a chemistry learning environment that integrates computerized experiments with emphasis on scientific inquiry and comprehension of case studies. The research objective was to investigate chemical understanding and graphing skills of high school honors students via bidirectional visual and textual…

A study explored the effectiveness of adding a daily, structured practice session of weekly spelling words to the traditional pattern of pretesting on Monday, posttesting on Friday. Subjects, 28 second graders from the Grapeland Independent School District (Texas), were divided into control and experimental groups. The experimental group paired up…

In order to assess educators' beliefs about individualization of instruction and/or mastery learning, the School Climate Assessment Learning Environments (SCALE-I) was developed. SCALE-I is an attitude-type instrument consisting of 30 positive Belief Statements. Subjects were three groups of educators from the Department of Defense Dependents…

Because so little research has been conducted on methods of teaching literature, two separate but related studies were conducted to (1) examine what it means to understand stable irony, and (2) to compare two methods, direct and tacit, of teaching stable irony. A 36-item test, comprised of questions about 7 ironic poems and 2 nonironic poems,…

Information drawn from research conducted in a comparative study between middle and high school students is presented. The study was designed to investigate the difference in the analysis of absolute and relativistic generalizations. Data from this research indicate that differences do exist between middle and high school students in this area of…

Recognizing that rote drill and practice (rehearsal) has been replaced with game-like teaching formats as a tool for memorization, a study compared the effectiveness of the two methods to teach eight preschoolers to recite their home telephone numbers. In six sessions, children either rehearsed their phone numbers or used small props and rhyming…

A study analyzed and compared the content of four reading journals to determine the extent to which articles concretely described strategies for teaching comprehension or for following up on comprehension instruction. A total of 654 articles from 1973 and 1983 were content analyzed for eight categories of comprehension instruction and three…

Two experiments compared the effectiveness of two separate mnemonic devices for learning the states and their capitals--one a complex key word system using substitute words for each syllable, the other a simple key word device interacting key words from the state and capital names in an illustration. In the first experiment, 88 fourth and fifth…

Comparative biography can be used as a means of enlivening the teaching of college level interdisciplinary world civilization courses. By providing (and writing) well-written "human interest" material drawn from biographical essays, instructors can illustrate problems or issues in human life by showing how major political or cultural…

For many years, methods of teaching reading have been based upon a mechanistic paradigm that something can be understood by reducing it to its most basic parts. This scientific paradigm has led to several misconceptions about reading: (1) that comprehension can be reduced to separately identifiable parts, (2) that meaning is contained within the…

Chanute Air Force Base was the first military training center to undertake an extensive investigation of the use of the PLATO IV system in technical training. The service test was to compare a conventionally taught course in general vehicle maintenance with a course taught with computer-based instructional materials. Part I of this document is the…

This report consists of the descriptions and results of two studies carried out to examine Title I programs in the Newark, New Jersey, public schools. The Sustaining Effects Study focused on two groups of pupils: those who participated in Title I programs for two years (1979 to 1982), and those who received remediation for one year (1979-80) and…