This paper offers a systematic critical review of controlled outcome studies of the "Philosophy for Children" (P4C) method in primary (elementary) and secondary (high) schools. Ten studies met the stringent criteria for inclusion, measuring outcomes by norm-referenced tests of reading, reasoning, cognitive ability, and other curriculum-related…

This paper reflects on the ongoing debate surrounding the usefulness (or otherwise) of multiple-choice questions (MCQ) as an assessment instrument. The context is a graduate school of business in Australia where an experiment was conducted to investigate the use of assertion-reason questions (ARQ), a sophisticated form of MCQ that aims to…

While an abundance of classroom and teacher education research has been dedicated towards understanding young elementary children's use of primary sources, not nearly enough exemplars have been examined that demonstrate the teaching of historical reasoning within linguistically and culturally diverse settings. The complexity of teaching social…

In this article, I examine my teaching within a social foundations teacher educations course. Using the tenets of culturally relevant teaching and the concept of the teacher as transformative intellectual as both conceptual frame and instructional guide, this self-study delineates my attempt to match my beliefs about socially just forms of…

This article presents two statistical tasks, one on comparing data sets, another on repeated sampling, both of which have powerful connections to proportional reasoning. Students' work and reasoning on these tasks are included, as well as suggestions for ways to use these tasks with middle school students to connect statistical thinking to…

This article discusses relationships between the development of an understanding of algorithms and algebraic thinking. It also provides some sample activities for middle school teachers of mathematics to help promote students' algebraic thinking. (Contains 11 figures.)

To those who would claim that the study of literature is impractical, Probst would respond vehemently, "No, it is essential." The habit of thoughtful reading, insightful questioning, and critical evaluation are learned in English language arts classes where a variety of genres, characters, and situations push students to analyze and debate and…

The article focuses on learning music among children. It is said that in general music, many concepts are introduced to young students. Most teachers have learned the mental health survival skill of teaching the appropriate use of an outdoor voice, an indoor voice, and a whisper voice. Tempo is much the same argument as volume. (Contains 2…

Many people believe in the value of outdoor experiential education opportunities such as organized camps for youth, but few instruments have been developed to measure the central youth development outcomes of camp. The purpose of this paper is to present the psychometric properties including the internal consistency and validity of scales designed…

Computers are increasingly a part of preschooler's lives. The purpose of the present paper was to discuss research avenues employing computers as a learning tool and to analyse the results obtained by this method at the preschoolers' learning level. Specifically this research was to determine if computer assisted instruction (CAI) was a useful…

The importance of thinking for language learning has been recognized for some time. ELT activities which encourage active mental processing have become increasingly common. However, there is evidence that the use of such activities has still not become widespread in a number of ELT situations. One reason for this may be lack of awareness about how…

Often, the word activism conjures up the image of what the media and others call "radicals," such as inflamed Mexican American college students, for example, who are passionate and emotional, demanding an immediate end to racism on their college campus. Some castigate activist participants as immature and unsophisticated, whereas others…

Two high school teachers advocate teaching high school students to investigate and transform their worlds with the help of the American literature. "Behind the Veil: American Literature and Culture of the 1950s" and "The Visible and the Invisible: Literary and Cultural Representations of the Native American", are the two literature units used to…

Are children learning when they are "messing about" in sand or water? Is it science? In a workshop presented at the ASE Annual Meeting in Birmingham (January 2003), "Messy science: planning for learning in the foundation stage," delegates examined the nature of an early years curriculum through first-hand experience of a…

The purpose of this research was to discover whether the children (aged 9 to 11) were thinking while taking part in practical science activities. One method the author used was to video the activity and then watch the replay with each child in turn. She was then able to ask them what they had been thinking about at each stage. The majority of the…