This study investigates the impact of ethics instruction in communication courses on students' moral reasoning competence. Using a quasi-experiment, participants in interpersonal conflict courses and communication ethics courses were exposed to different levels of ethics instruction through a variety of instructional methods. Results indicate that…

We applied a mixed-method research design to investigate the patterns of reasoning used by novice undergraduate chemistry students to classify chemical substances as elements, compounds, or mixtures based on their particulate representations. We were interested in the identification of the representational features that students use to build a…

This article describes a 3-year study of school visits to four natural history museums and addresses the research agenda with regard to out-of-school learning. More specifically, the findings focus on the "process of learning" in museums. Comprehensive data collection allowed for an analysis of patterns of guided visits, the way the…

The author used a discourse analytic framework to examine the "voice" of a middle school mathematics unit. The aim of the analysis was to see whether the authors of the unit achieved the ideological goal (i.e., the intended curriculum) put forth by the NCTM's "Standards" (1991) to shift the locus of authority away from the teacher and the textbook…

Science classes are full of abstract or challenging concepts that are easier to understand if an analogy is used to illustrate the points. Effective analogies motivate students, clarify students' thinking, help students overcome misconceptions, and give students ways to visualize abstract concepts. When they are used appropriately, analogies can…

Heejung An describes the pedagogical framework underpinning the design of an interactive Web-based HTML coding tutorial geared for novice learners attending a technical college. The author discusses the ways in which the tutorial was designed to support the learners' initial stages of cognitive skill acquisition. Of primary interest are the three…

We investigated the effects of divergent thinking training (with explicit instruction) on problem-solving tasks in a sample of Third Culture Kids (Useem and Downie, 1976). We were specifically interested in whether the children's originality and fluency in responding increased following instruction, not only on classroom-based worksheets and the…

North American higher education finds itself on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, it accepts droves of freshmen who equate learning with rote memorization and who correlate achievement with the ability to pass narrowly focused standardized tests. On the other hand, it is expected to contribute to the country's cultural and economic vibrancy…

This paper will present a review of design-based research conducted over the past 10 years that has modeled and promoted students' reasoning, conceptual change and argumentative dialogue processes and practices through designing a number of digital dialogue games. This line of work was inspired by some challenges and insights that emerged during…

The author decided to minimize the stressful emphasis on assessments in learning in his 11th grade American History and Government classes and put the fun back into teaching. Tired of the repetitive aspects of teaching the required state standards related to the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court cases, the author switched gears from simply…

Most museum educators strive for their programs to have positive effects on students, but what impact do they really have? What factors, including museum-school programs, contribute to positive academic performance and critical thinking in particular? This article examines the Guggenheim Museum's artist-in-residence program, Learning Through Art…

One aim of physics laboratory instruction is to help students connect theory to practice. So experiments are often chosen in order to "demonstrate" specific concepts. Furthermore, students are expected to approach phenomena in a scientific way, that is, they should develop a hypothesis and plan their experiments accordingly. Although it is usually…

This paper reports on a qualitative study investigating the viability of instant messenger (IM) interaction to facilitate intercultural learning in a foreign language class. Eight students in a Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) class participated in the study. Each student was paired with a native speaker (NS) of Chinese, and each pair…

Young people's experience of education in a "risk society" is characterised by a terrain of "initiative overload" which appears to make the routes through which young people are seeking to plot a path evermore perilous. This article is concerned with the impact of creative learning on young people, as represented by the UK…

This article will share results from research that investigated how sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students who had not been exposed to formal algebraic methods approached word problems of an algebraic nature. Student use of systematic guess and check, the predominate approach taken by these students, is the focus. The goal is to consider the…