In this paper, we report a pilot study on engaging a group of undergraduate students to explore the limits of sin(x)/x and tan(x)/x as x approaches to 0, with the use of non-graphic scientific calculators. By comparing the results in the pretest and the post-test, we found that the students had improvements in the tested items, which involved the…

Students with high-functioning autism (HFA) often have high anxiety levels and poor social skills, and general education teachers may lack the specialized training needed for this population of students. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to investigate teachers' perceptions about the direct teaching and the cooperative learning…

This study investigates the potential and use of social networking technology, specifically Facebook, to support a community of practice in an undergraduate-level classroom setting. Facebook is used as a tool with which to provide supplementary language learning materials to develop learners' English writing skills. We adopted the technology…

This article maps some of the ways in which neoliberalism, pedagogy, and curriculum are closely interconnected. Looking at the Spanish curriculum reform during the first Socialist administration in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it explicitly identifies child-centered pedagogies as an important tool in articulating the neoliberal agenda in…

The purpose of this study is to identify how a four-semester sequence teacher education program helps change pre-service teachers' perceptions about constructivist teaching and learning as they progress through the program. The participants of the study included a total of 194 science pre-service teachers in four different semesters of their…

For the general population, sharks have a reputation that does not really fit with their biological and ecological nature. Informal surveys often classify sharks as dangerous, aggressive and/or man-eaters. This apparent common knowledge seems difficult to detach from the conscience of many worldwide zoo visitors, even with the help of…

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between preservice teachers' (PTs) teacher efficacy beliefs and their constructivist-based teaching practices. Data were gathered through the questionnaire (Teachers' Sense of Efficacy Scale) and the observation protocol (Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol) administered to the…

This paper presents and compares a variety of approaches that have been developed to guide the decision-making process in learning design. Together with the companion Learning Design Rashomon II (Prieto "et al.," 2013), devoted to existing tools to support the same process, it aims to provide a view on relevant research results in this…

Institutions are developing online courses that contain rich multimedia, but research shows there is little difference in student achievement when these types of materials are included. However, many studies report the results of the presence, not the access, of multimedia learning objects. In addition, they do not categorize the multimedia as…

This paper examines the evolution of the professional identities of student teachers (STs) in a paired-placement teaching practicum in Vietnam. The study draws on activity theory, its notion of contradiction, and Vygotsky's concepts of ZPD and "perezhivanie", to identify the factors driving the intricate learning process. Opportunities…

Online Writing Instruction (OWI) has become a viable educational alternative in online instruction in the K-12 educational community. To continue to effectively compete in a global society, educators have identified a necessity for instruction that replicates real-world situations and problem-solving tasks which is consistent with constructivism.…

The aim of this study is to determine the levels of scientific epistemological beliefs of 8th grade students. The sample of the study consisted of 355 students. The data of the study were collected through the use of the Scale of Scientific Epistemological Beliefs, which was developed by Elder (1999) and adapted into Turkish by Acat, Tuken and…

This paper establishes a theoretical framework that will support a qualitative study of young women who, in their second year of college, struggled with and ultimately determined a career path after first considering engineering as both a vocational choice and an identity. Establishing Baudrillard (1995) as the primary theorist for this…

In this proposal, I introduce a method for modeling the dynamics of a sixth-grade student's accommodation of his fractions scheme to include a disembedding operation (Steffe & Olive, 2010). I will describe a three-part approach consisting of a constructivist teaching experiment, retrospective analysis, and stochastic modeling of the student's…

In the face of budgetary constraints, new marketplace competition, digital innovation and an emerging generation of students with new demands and new needs, higher education in America is challenged as never before. This paper reviews the various challenges facing traditional non-profit educational institutions, considers the potential of an…