Research indicates that the quality of classroom assignments makes a difference in student learning. Moreover, assignment quality varies between teachers even within the same school and there is room for improvement in many of the assignments that teachers provide to students. Assignment quality, as described in this book, puts into practice…

This paper adds to the research studies on prospective elementary school teachers' mathematics knowledge with findings on proportional reasoning. In addition to analyzing prospective elementary school teachers' solution strategies for solving a missing value proportion task, it also examines the nature of the drawings and writing they used to…

As part of a research project on students' understanding of variability in statistics, 272 students, (84 middle school and 188 secondary school, grades 6-12) were surveyed on a series of tasks involving repeated sampling. Students' reasoning on the tasks predominantly fell into three types: additive, proportional, or distributional, depending on…

In considering how best to optimize distance education systems, economy (cost effectiveness and efficiency), technology (communication technologies) and equity (gender, accessibility, minority, language, religion etc.) are vital issues in any distance education systems. Moreover, how end-users, distance learners, can equally share and exchange…

This book contends that although the arts are often thought to be closer to the rim of education than to its core, they are in fact critically important for developing complex aspects of the mind. The book aims to dispel the idea that the arts are somehow intellectually undemanding. It argues that many of the most subtle forms of thinking take…

This report describes how to implement Howard Gardner's multiple intelligences (MI) into Israel's Tanakh classrooms and includes samples of implemented materials. It also notes goals and obstacles encountered during this process and how they were overcome. To illustrate this process, the report provides an overview of Tanakh-centered activities…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1998 Civics Assessment measured student knowledge, intellectual and participatory skills, and civic dispositions at the fourth grade level. This publication describes fourth graders' performance based on 30 questions from the fourth-grade assessment. Twenty-three of the thirty questions were…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 1998 Civics Assessment measured students' knowledge, their intellectual and participatory skills, and their civic dispositions at the 12th-grade level. This publication describes 12th graders performance on 38 questions from the 12th-grade assessment. Thirty-one of the thirty-eight questions…

Today's technology gives us a great opportunity to complement the subtlety of human thought with the power and accuracy of modern computers. In this presentation I consider fundamental modes of human thinking to see how enactive, visual and symbolic methods can be used in a versatile way with the support of well-designed software. My analysis…

National History Day, a year-long educational program, fosters academic achievement and intellectual growth. In addition to acquiring historical knowledge and perspective while developing entries and competing in a series of district, state, and national contests, students develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills that help them manage…

Having work published is an important part of a teacher's professional development, but many educators may be uncertain about how to write for publication. This "how-to" guide for teachers aims to make it easy by adopting a reader-friendly tone and a can-do attitude. The guide explains the role of thinking in writing for publication and…

In their work in science and mathematics education, the authors have observed that students intuitively react in similar ways to a wide variety of scientific tasks. These tasks differ with regard to their content area and/or to the reasoning required for their solution, but share some common, external features. We have identified three types of…

This essay explains the relevance of critique in rural education to novels about rural places. The most important quoted passage in the essay is from the noted physicist Richard Feynman: "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." Novelist-physicist C. P. Snow, historian Henry Adams, and poet and student-of-mathematics Kelly Cherry also…

This paper explores the role of organising data in representing numerical data in an organised way--a skill which does not come naturally to most students. Grade 6 children were given a series of lessons on organising data and then representing the data graphically. It was found that after instruction, more students were able to reorganise the…

If we consider the gap between mathematics at elementary and secondary levels, and the logical nature of the higher level, it is important that aspects of children's logical development in the latter grades in elementary school be clarified. We focused on 5th graders' learning "division with decimals" as it is known to be difficult to…