This article reports on an exploratory study of instructional issues encountered in the teaching of Mandarin as a foreign language at the university level. The research reveals the sometimes conflicting views held by teachers, researchers, students, and institutions with respect to instructional methods and types of classroom interaction,…

This paper reports on an investigation into the first time implementation of a technology education unit of work by a beginning primary school teacher. The researchers monitored the teacher's implementation of the unit across a 6 week period using an interpretivist research approach. A variety of data sources were drawn upon including teacher and…

Inquiry training is a powerful teaching model for principals to know and teachers to implement. It is designed to teach students to engage in causal reasoning and to become more fluent and precise in asking questions. Further, inquiry training helps learners build concepts and form and test hypotheses in all curriculum areas. The current emphasis…

A poorly performing school is like a complex puzzle with its pieces haphazardly scattered. To achieve coherence and improve performance, a principal must have a vision of how the completed puzzle should look. Schools that have effectively implemented instructional models have principals that are puzzle solvers. To fit diverse needs into place and…

In Canada over the past two decades many legal disputes have arisen concerning education for children with learning disabilities. Most often these disputes are concerned with equal access for children with disabilities and centre on the notion of appropriate education. Issues concerning equal access to appropriate education have a long history and…

Although disordered eating behaviors are relatively common among college women, many questions about their etiology remain. In the present study, structural equation modeling was used to investigate potential mediating associations among variables previously found to be associated with the continuum of disordered eating behaviors in a large sample…

The Simple View of Reading (P. B. Gough & W. Tunmer, 1986; W. A. Hoover & P. B. Gough, 1990) provides a 2-component model of reading. Each of these 2 components, decoding and comprehension, is necessary for normal reading to occur. The Simple View of Reading provides a relatively transparent model that can be used by professionals not only to…

This article presents a study on how to improve the quality of Year 1 children's mathematical talk. Using a dictaphone, the children were recorded as they worked with their partner. Later, the children's responses were marked against a checklist of three types of talk: (1) disputational; (2) cumulative; and (3) exploratory. Throughout the study…

The relationship between conceptions of teaching and approaches to teaching was explored in a study of 18 secondary school art teachers in Hong Kong. Conceptions of teaching approaches were fitted to a four-category model. Each of the categories was distinguished by reference to six relevant dimensions. As is the case in higher education,…

The purpose of this paper was to examine explanatory mechanisms of differences in children's internalizing problems between ethnic minority (i.e., Indian) and ethnic majority (i.e., English) children living in Britain. Fifty-nine English children (31 girls) and 66 Indian children (30 girls), and their parents constituted the sample of this study.…

Students involved in holistic technological practice need to develop an understanding of technological practice outside the classroom and to participate in tasks set as close as practicable to actual technological practice. This paper investigates the context of assessment and its relationship to achievement and the importance of teacher knowledge…

A sample of 490 high school students from 81 schools in Michigan participated in an experiment in which they were randomly assigned to either a control or an experimental Web site. The experimental Web site provided exposure to educational material about the process of organ donation and organ transplantation. The control Web site provided…

This standard lesson on identifying salt and sugar crystals expands into an opportunity for students to develop their observation, questioning, and modeling skills. Although sugar and salt may look similar, students discovered that they looked very different under a magnifying glass and behaved differently when dissolved in water. In addition,…

Rates of overweight children and adolescents have nearly tripled over the past 30 years. Many barriers exist to healthy eating and physical activity for children and adolescents, including factors in the school and community environment. It is these modifiable school environmental factors that led to the development of the Nutrition Friendly…

Although many countries offer school-based HIV/AIDS prevention programs, little is known about how teachers feel about being part of these programs. This paper presents the views of primary school teachers in Malawi regarding their potential role in HIV/AIDS prevention. Data come from two focus groups with 12 male and 12 female primary school…