Argues that many laboratory experiments are designed to be clever and challenging but instead are confusing and frustrating for most students. Describes the use of a teaching approach in English courses for chemistry laboratories in which students get to do the experiment for fun and practice, then meet with the teacher for discussion before…

Notes that beginning foreign language learner-readers lack linguistic and cultural knowledge assumed in foreign language literary texts, gaps often resulting in possible "mismatches" between the readers' actual cognizance of linguistic and cultural norms and the level of understanding assumed in the foreign text. (40 references) (Author/CK)

Claims that, to prepare students for the future workplace, some notions are best forgotten. Educators must design seamless learning approaches, and institutional policies and practices must engage students in a variety of learning activities. Schools should cultivate an institutional ethos that promotes involvement in educationally purposeful…

Discusses issues in implementing and evaluating an interdisciplinary curriculum. An integrated approach is time-intensive and difficult to evaluate, and requires changing teacher practices and beliefs. (Contains seven references.) (LMI)

Investigates the acceptability and possible role of virtual reality (VR) in environmental education. Among the principal findings were that the sample population of environmental educators indicated an acceptance of VR as a teaching tool. VR applications that allow students to have an experience not available in the physical world were perceived…

Describes an attempt to introduce differentiation by task in an inner city secondary school. Concludes that differentiated work cards lead to no significant improvement in the achievement of lower ability students. High and medium ability students improved their performance as a result of using the work cards. (DDR)

Describes a study that determined whether combining cooperative learning strategies with instruction delivered using an integrated learning system (ILS) produced academic and attitudinal gains in fifth-grade students. Results revealed that students using an ILS in cooperative groups for mathematics instruction performed better and were more…

Tells stories of children in their first year of school (mostly age five) who were using calculators for the first time. Implications are that children's thinking moves from a rough to a more thorough and refined grasp of the whole. Learning mathematics with calculators is more like the learning of language than traditional classroom mathematics.…

Describes two approaches to connecting literature and problem solving with mathematics. One approach is to focus on a particular strategy of problem solving, then find a storybook related to the strategy. Another approach is to find a favorite children's book and develop the problem-solving portion of the lesson from the book. A resource list and…

Shares perspectives on what is happening at the national level in science education reform, why reform is needed, and the role that environmental education can play in this reform effort. Contains a discussion of the recent changes in science content and instructional goals. (DDR)

There is evidence to suggest that mature students learn particularly effectively in a problem-solving environment, and that they appear to be especially responsive to analogies and metaphors. Three examples are given of domains where the student has to convert a formulation into an equivalent diagram. Arguably, the process of performing this…

Discusses etymologies of mathematics words as a rich resource for deepening student understanding and appreciation of mathematics, history, and language. Presents detailed examples concerning the branches of mathematics, conic sections, and words of Arabic origin. (KHR)

Presents activities that integrate physics, earth science, and health. Students explore their own sensible temperature focusing on the physical processes of heat transfer. (DDR)

Presents information about the chemistry of color-changing markers. Discusses the importance of acid-base reactions and oxidation-reduction chemistry. (DDR)

Provides an overview of issues identified by undergraduate students through an evaluation of a distance learning course at the University of Wollongong (Australia) delivered in a distributed learning environment. Highlights include pedagogical issues and solutions; technological issues and solutions; and learning support issues and solutions.…