Attention to the attitudes of preservice and inservice primary teachers toward science is of fundamental importance to research on primary science education. However, progress in this field of research has been slow due to the poor definition and conceptualization of the construct of primary teachers' attitude toward science. This poor theoretical…

The 1999 "Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing" defines validity as the degree to which evidence and theory support the interpretations of test scores entailed by proposed uses of tests. Although quite explicit, there are ways in which this definition lacks precision, consistency, and clarity. The history of validity has taught us…

Connectivism has been offered as a new learning theory for a digital age, with four key principles for learning: autonomy, connectedness, diversity, and openness. The testing ground for this theory has been massive open online courses (MOOCs). As the number of MOOC offerings increases, interest in how people interact and develop as individual…

Preschoolers participated in a modified version of the disambiguation task, designed to test whether the pragmatic environment generated by a reliable or unreliable speaker affected how children interpreted novel labels. Two objects were visible to children, while a third was only visible to the speaker (a fact known by the child). Manipulating…

This study examined and compared patterns of errors in the oral definitions of newly learned words. Fifteen 9- to 11-year-old children with language learning disability (LLD) and 15 typically developing age-matched peers inferred the meanings of 20 nonsense words from four novel reading passages. After reading, children provided oral definitions…

Differences in definitions of limit and continuity of functions as treated in courses on calculus and in rigorous undergraduate analysis yield contradictory outcomes and unexpected language. There are results about limits in calculus that are false by the definitions of analysis, functions not continuous by one definition and continuous by…

Instructors across the disciplines require their students to write literature reviews. Although numerous sources describe the literature review process, instructors and students face difficulty when approaching the structure of a literature review. This paper presents a straightforward, efficient approach for teaching students how to write a…

This article attempts to describe the creation and implementation of the first Professional Development School (PDS) model of teacher education in Panama. The authors set the context within brief histories of international education and PDSs and provide operational definitions of the critical terminology. To be sure, the scope and scale of the…

In this article, we share with readers our hopes, fears, and predictions for reading assessment in American schools at a critical policy juncture--the production of new assessments to measure achievement of the Common Core State Standards. It isn't just Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and Smarter Balanced…

In this exploratory study the researchers examined examine the value of exposure to the spelling and pronunciation of word forms when introducing the meanings of new and difficult vocabulary words. Researchers randomly assigned kindergarten English learners to one of two types of storybook reading delivered by tutors. Students received individual…

The purpose of this dissertation was to compare and contrast the Leadership Styles of two Heads of Department who work at Carnelian Secondary School (anonymized). It augments a previous paper (Parascandalo 2011) which examined the role of the middle leader in secondary schools in educational literature. The investigation by means of two…

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) prepares an annual report on graduates and dropouts in Texas public secondary schools. This report includes state summaries of the annual dropout rate, longitudinal graduation and dropout rates, and state attrition rates. In addition to statewide statistics, the report provides historical information about dropout…

We provided a multicomponent academic vocabulary intervention to six English learners with learning difficulties in a fifth-grade general education setting. A multiple probe design across word sets and replicated across students evaluated the effects of the intervention on students' use of expressive language to read and define content-specific…

What is the Internet? The Internet is a worldwide network of computers communicating with each other. This paper offers some basic, easy-to-understand meanings of words about the Internet that individuals may have questions about.[The preparation of this fact sheet was supported in part by the National Resource Center on Supported Living and…

Several authors have suggested that children with autism are impaired in their ability to imitate others. However, diverse methodologies, contradictory findings, and varying theoretical explanations continue to exist in the literature despite decades of research. A comprehensive account of imitation in children with autism is hampered by the lack…