Summarizes presentations at an international symposium on "Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning." Topics include the good language learner; experiments in learner autonomy; individualized learning in Italian universities; adult language learning; learner autonomy in the classroom; cultural variation in learning styles; use of…

Asserts that studying regional holidays provides an opportunity to teach about the multicultural nature of the United States. Describes the background and history of the Mardi Gras holiday in New Orleans (Louisiana). Provides individual and group activities for teaching about Mardi Gras and includes suggested resources. (CFR)

Describes the movement toward integrating the instruction of English as a Second Language (ESL) into mainstream education in Australia. Challenges of mainstreaming for teachers, students, and policymakers are described. ESL learners must have a carefully integrated program of language-conscious teaching and content-based language instruction. (SLD)

Recommends using Chinua Achebe's novel of the 19th-century conflict between African tribal culture and English colonists in a world history class. Achebe's rich narrative, written in a graceful prose, is easily accessible to high school students. The novel replaces simplistic and abstract concepts with those more complex and concrete. (MJP)

Cross-border education has been growing dramatically in both English-speaking countries and non-native English-speaking countries. While more and more students, particularly from Asian countries such as Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan choose to study in English-speaking countries, many native English speakers go to Asian countries to…

This article reports the academic and special education status of 129 graduates of special education preschools at 19 years of age. Participants had been randomly assigned to either direct instruction or mediated learning preschool classrooms. At age 19, their achievement was approximately one standard deviation below average. Consistent with…

The disparity in educational outcomes between majority White and minority African American populations has become known as the African American achievement gap. The authors examine the under performance of African American university students by providing an overview of the major cultural, communication, and learning style characteristics of Black…

Many historians agree that the United States survey has been in critical need of a new paradigm for some time, a paradigm in which chronology does not dominate and students can learn about multiple viewpoints and competing historical narratives, one in which gender and multiculturalism are expanded beyond male/female, beyond black/white/ brown.…

This chapter describes Santa Fe Community College's use of the Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory to guide iterative development of institutional improvements associated with student satisfaction.

This article discusses the relationship among an individual's cognitive style, attitude to learning, and his or her achievement in the context of computer aided learning (CAL). The results of a small-scale study involving 32 students (18 male and 14 female) studying their first electronics module during an Initial Teacher Training (ITT) Design and…

The use of student-led discussions, or literature circles, offers the potential to engage all students through a more democratic, dialogic approach. The central goal of this research was to understand how adolescents practise literacy within the context of a peer reading group, and how gender impacts these practices. Transcripts of student-led…

This study explored the perspectives of a group of teacher educators of color in an effort to capture their perceptions of teaching and teacher education. The purpose of the study was to find out what teacher educators of color bring to their work and to the teaching profession--what are their experiences, goals, intentions, passions, challenges…

This paper discusses the evidence that the specific developmental profile frequently described as being associated with Down syndrome--a profile of communication weaknesses relative to social and daily living skills--can be changed. It is not an inevitable outcome of having Down syndrome. Drawing on data collected to explore the outcomes of fully…

Spelling pronunciations are hypothesized to be helpful in building up relatively stable phonologically underpinned orthographic representations, particularly for learning words with irregular phoneme-grapheme correspondences. In a four-week computer-based training, the efficacy of spelling pronunciations and previewing the spelling patterns on…

This book presents a wide selection of issues currently of interest and concern in higher education institutions in Ireland. The chapters are snapshots of the intersection between theory, practice and research in particular settings; they are not meant to be comprehensive. Nevertheless, they present practice approaches, new theoretical…