A college professor (on the elementary language arts and children's literature faculty) and a doctoral candidate (also writing coordinator for an Illinois school district) team-taught a graduate language arts course at Northern Illinois University, implementing practices that reflected their pedagogical and political convictions. Both wanted the…

This practicum was aimed at increasing children's abilities to use the computer through word processing activities. Most of the activities involved children working in cooperative groups. Another objective of the practicum was to incorporate the computer into the language arts area. A third objective was to effectively use a single computer beyond…

A case study of the methods of teaching U.S. history that have been developed by an exemplary fifth-grade teacher is presented. It includes description, rationale, and examples of the instructor's overall approach, along with detailed recording of everything done during a month-long unit on the English colonies. The teacher's approach is notable…

This study examined the use of heuristic problem-solving strategies in math by seventh-graders under three different conditions: working individually; working in groups; and working as cooperative teams. No significant differences were found for the three conditions over a 5-week experimental period on a problem solving post-text (the Maryland…

A method for planning multicultural lessons for both regular and gifted and talented students, and sample lessons, are presented. The approach was developed in order to introduce Hispanic culture through literature in a bilingual classroom. All materials are constructed based on Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. The lessons were…

On-line collaboration is becoming increasingly common in education and with organisations. It is believed that this can in itself cause stress for collaborators. We believe that in some ways stress can be designed out of on line collaborative exercises through management of the on-line working processes. This paper investigates methods of reducing…

Cooperative learning is a teaching strategy that promotes the positive interaction of children in small, heterogeneous groups. Each group contain three or four students of varying achievement levels, backgrounds, socio-economic status, and sex. Cooperative learning processes promote student motivation, build group skills, foster social and…

A study was conducted to evaluate the final outcome of the Section 98 writing project, a 3-year collaboration between the School District of the City of Saginaw and the University of Michigan, and to successfully employ the gap reduction design with the pre- to post-test results stemming from the writing project. Students in six sections of…

This book presents personal narratives from New Brunswick teachers concerning their experiences in trying to meet the academic and social needs of children in multi-level classes. Topics include the first year of teaching, the process of adapting for students who have special needs, cooperative learning in the class, integration experiences,…

Twelve graduate students from a variety of fields who were enrolled in a qualitative research class met in an informal setting that facilitated a collaborative learning mode--defined in this presentation as a method of group interaction whereby all members learn from each other's experiences, scholarship, and skills. The first of the six papers…

It is argued that if whole language teachers are to use computers in their reading and writing programs, they will need both software and strategies for using computers that are consistent with their beliefs and goals. For whole language teachers, as for other good teachers, it is the teacher's beliefs about curriculum and instruction rather than…

This report summarizes the curriculum development and research effort that took place at the Cupertino Apple Classrooms of Tomorrow (ACOT) site from January through June 1987. Based on the premise that computers make revising and editing much easier, the four major objectives emphasized by the computer-intensive writing program are fluency,…

A descriptive study of teacher perceptions of critical thinking skills and implementation of teaching behaviors that foster critical thinking was carried out. Participants were 30 teachers at an elementary school in a small, affluent community in the San Francisco Bay area. Data were gathered by means of a questionnaire administered to a consensus…

According to the literature on cognitive style, of utmost importance to critical thinking is the organization of segments of information into a comprehensive whole. Creative thinking is a process in which a person becomes aware of a problem or difficulty, searches for possible solutions from past experience, and evaluates, modifies, and tests…

To determine teachers' reasons for implementing cooperative learning, a study involving classroom observation, teacher interviews, and the use of the Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SCQ) was undertaken. Subjects included eight elementary school teachers and seven secondary school teachers. Each teacher's class contained about 30 students. The…