One of the greatest sources of wonder, the moon, becomes the focus of a classroom inquiry in this book which gives an illustration of integrated curriculum. Two teachers recount how their students observed the moon's transit for 28 days, recording their impressions in written and illustrated records called "Moon Journals." The book…

A study investigated the English language acquisition of three native Spanish-speaking children in a bilingual preschool, focusing on the spontaneous use of English when play-acting at being superhero figures from popular children's culture. The occurrence of this voice is contrasted with the children's use of Spanish for other types of play and…

Poor preparation of adult literacy educators is often blamed for the failure of adult literacy students. Four critical issues related to developing the adult literacy professional work force are as follows: how literacy is learned in adulthood; how practitioners learn and improve their practice; how new knowledge is generated in and for the field;…

Inquiry-based staff development is a promising direction for rethinking practice and research and for generating knowledge from a field-based perspective for adult literacy. Rethinking staff development entails investigating a number of current assumptions: the nature and function of literacy learning in adulthood; adult literacy practitioners as…

A multiple, embedded case study research design was employed to describe and explain the case method pedagogy used by two veteran practioners. The units of analysis were two graduate courses, one a teacher ethics course and the other a business policy course. Information was gathered utilizing precourse and postcourse interviews and a…

The question examined in this paper is: what is known exactly about variables that affect long-term retention of knowledge learned in school? U. Neisser (1982) asserts that "it is difficult to find even a single study, ancient or modern, of what is retained from academic instruction." Further, popular belief holds that much of the knowledge…

Seven false but common assumptions about bilingual learners are examined, and whole language principles offering alternatives to those assumptions are presented. The seven assumptions include the following: (1) learning proceeds from part to whole; (2) classes should be teacher-centered; (3) lessons should serve students' future needs; (4)…

A study was conducted of the effectiveness of summarization training as a means of improving reading comprehension and retention among developmental English students in a community college. A sample of 58 community college students in five developmental reading classes was randomly assigned to either a summarization treatment or control group. The…

This paper outlines work in progress at the University of Edinburgh on the construction of a small World Wide Web-based interactive learning environment (EPIC) developed for the teaching of high performance computing. The paper begins by outlining work done in cognitive science on how people make use of structure in physical environments. Within…

This book draws on classroom experience to provide models of instructionally sound, thoughtful, and thought-provoking history teaching for students from a wide variety of backgrounds. Most chapters begin with a classroom vignette showing a community of inquiry as students are actively engaged in their history education. Each vignette offers a…

The question of what determines the appropriate use of self-directed learning (SDL) as opposed to teacher-directed learning (TDL) for midcareer professionals was examined through a review of the literature on SDL, SDL in professional development, and through interviews with 12 midcareer adults in a wide variety of professions. In general, the…

This paper describes a technique for English-as-a-Second-Language teaching that has students and teachers sharing personal narratives, developed using ethnographic research techniques, as a classroom exercise. The technique, used in a higher education institution in Japan, is presented as a work-in-progress to those who are interested in…

This paper presents a model that was developed for the categorization and evaluation of stand-alone interactive media and that now is used to contribute to a more detailed and specific educational discussion of Internet use. The paper begins with a review of the foundations on which the model is built, including software as subject, tool, or…

New technologies such as Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) have led to recent discoveries about how the brain works and how people learn. The interactive capabilities of World Wide Web-based instructional strategies can be employed to better match how we teach with how we know students learn. This paper…

Prior research on learning has been linked to instruction by the derivation of general principles of instructional design from learning theories. However, such design principles are often difficult to apply to particular instructional issues. A new method for relating research on learning to instructional design is proposed: Different ways of…