Several school districts around the United States are concerned with low literacy achievement among elementary students. This study was an investigation of the effectiveness of academic coaching on student achievement results in literacy and took place in a district of approximately 400 teachers and 9,000 elementary students. The purpose of the…

Instructional strategies in science that fail to identify students' initial understanding of scientific concepts may leave students' flawed ideas unchanged, thus affecting their ability to synthesize, differentiate, and connect to new information in science. The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the relationship between concept…

This qualitative research study, utilizes a multiple case study to address the gap in the literature related to the examination of the implementation of differentiated instruction in public middle schools. Employing elements of both the Situated Learning Theory and Sensemaking Theory, this study explores the implementation of differentiated…

It has been argued that humor is beneficial in the classroom because it increases social bonding between instructor and student, salience of information, and ultimately recall and retention. The current study sought to add to the literature by empirically testing some assumptions about humor as a pedagogical tool. Specifically, we predicted that…

Distance education is a very popular and intriguing area in the present realm of education. Institutions of higher learning throughout the United States and around the world are quickly embracing distance education to serve thousands of students. This literature review of the foundations of technology distance education culminates in the year…

Context is identified as an important factor when considering the learning of informal statistical inferential reasoning, but research in this area is very limited. This small exploratory study in one grade 10 (14 year olds) classroom seeks to learn more about the role context plays in learners' inferential reasoning, where both teacher and…

This research is a high-resolution analysis of grade 6 (ages 11-12) children's interview transcripts about the operation of power stations, before and after teaching. The focus of the study was on how children's conceptual development is built at a discursive level, namely how language is used to express changes in their thoughts. The theoretical…

This paper discusses how using feature films in a graduate university subject for adult educators can pose questions about pressing social issues and develop critical thinking and consciousness. While a variety of film sources were used, the focus of this paper is on four feature films that were chosen to highlight a particular approach to…

Google Docs and EtherPad are Web 2.0 tools providing opportunity for multiple users to work online on the same document consecutively or simultaneously. Over the last few years a number of research papers on the use of these collaborative tools in a teaching and learning environment have been published. This work builds on that of Brodahl,…

This paper discusses the move from learning theories from the industrial society to learning theories from and for dialogic societies. While in the past intrapsychological elements, such as mental schemata of prior knowledge, were the key to explain learning, today's theories point to interaction and dialogue as the main means for achieving deep…

Attempting to implement client-based projects within a single semester often overwhelms students and underwhelms the client and grading professor. In this paper, we share results from a two-year pilot project in which the components of a client project were split between several classes. We discuss the client project model as a valuable teaching…

This qualitative study examined the influences of teachers' experiences on their perceptions of teaching English language learners (ELLs) framed within Mezirow's transformative learning theory. Eight teachers ranging from pre-Kindergarten to 12th grade participated in long interviews responding to a 10 item questionnaire. Each teacher…

Different conceptualizations of service-learning are found in higher education, ranging from charity to social justice focused. Little is known about the lasting impact of social justice focused service-learning on undergraduate participants, especially in a global education setting. This study examined the experience and meaning making of…

This research contributes to answer the question whether learning/cognitive styles of students serve as a justified starting point for creating target-group appropriate instruction. The study was realized in a self-regulated problem-based learning environment. Data of 56 participants on their individual learning styles, their acquired problem…

This paper aims to discuss the changing roles and competencies of a teacher in context of prevailing developments accomplished by the vast availability of social software, which have made easy the development of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs). This has been accomplished by an in-depth review of the literature on teacher's socially situated…