This paper examines the literature on computer games and serious games in regard to the potential positive impacts of gaming on users aged 14 years or above, especially with respect to learning, skill enhancement and engagement. Search terms identified 129 papers reporting empirical evidence about the impacts and outcomes of computer games and…

In the largest study of instructional practice ever undertaken, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project is searching for tools to save the world from perfunctory teacher evaluations. The first report (released in December 2010) described the potential usefulness of student surveys for providing…

Through a series of summit meetings, the Adult Education Great Cities Summit Initiative explored the needs and concerns of adult education students, teachers, and local program administrators in five large, urban settings. Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Miami, and Houston participated in a series of activities focused on improving learner…

"Reading Mastery" is designed to provide explicit reading instruction to students in grades pre-K-5. One of several Direct Instruction curricula from McGraw-Hill, "Reading Mastery" is available in two versions: (1) "Reading Mastery Classic" (for grades pre-K-2) aims to help beginning readers identify letter sounds,…

The use of evidence in health promotion has become the gold standard, and obliges rethinking how to increase the (often limited) use of evidence in public health policy. Recently calls have been made to reconceptualise science policy relations as dynamic, interactive and co-constructive practices. Building on a qualitative investigation of an…

In the U. S., there is significant controversy about how teachers should be prepared and licensed. Many of the sharpest controversies stem from public skepticism about whether formal teacher preparation is necessary given the lack of conclusive evidence that it has a direct impact on students' achievement. This article presents a review of recent…

Adults are able to access semantic and syntactic information rapidly as they hear or read in real-time in order to interpret sentences. Young children, on the other hand, tend to rely on syntactically-based parsing routines, adopting the first noun as the agent of a sentence regardless of plausibility, at least during oral comprehension. Little is…

Whether you are an experienced curriculum designer or new to Understanding by Design[R] (UbD), you will benefit from the latest design tools and the updated UbD unit Template 2.0. UbD authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe share their insights and the practical tips that have helped thousands of educators design curriculum based on the UbD…

In its 2002 report, foremost among the recommendations of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism's Task Force on College Drinking is that "to achieve a change in culture, schools must intervene at three levels: at the individual-student level, at the level of the entire student body, and at the community level. Research conducted…

Self-assessment is an often-overlooked alternative to external assessment. Program staff can use self-assessment processes to systematically review the quality of their afterschool programming and to facilitate discussions on ways to enhance it. Self-assessment of point-of-service activities, which can provide a wealth of valuable information…

The number of automobile recalls in the U.S. has increased sharply in the last two decades, and the numbers of units involved are often counted in the millions. In 2010 alone, over 20 million vehicles were recalled in the United States, and the massive recalls of full model lines by Toyota have brought this issue to the front pages around the…

This study highlights ways in which generative activities may be coupled with network-based technologies in the context of teacher preparation to enhance preservice teachers' cognizance of how their own experience as students provides a blueprint for the learning environments they may need to generate in their future classrooms. In this study, the…

The recently released document "A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practices, Crosscutting Concepts, and Core Ideas" emphasizes the importance of engaging students in practices of science and engineering to help them understand how scientific knowledge about the natural world develops. The document identifies eight essential…

This article reports the reactions of twenty-seven professors now teaching in community college leadership programs who responded to the question, "What issues do you emphasize in your courses and what issues most concern your students/practitioners?" It also draws on a separate survey of forty-seven state directors and on the writings of four…

We present results of a pseudolongitudinal study of attitudes and beliefs about physics from different cohort groups ranging from final-year high school students in the UK to physics faculty (N=637), using the Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey (CLASS) instrument. In terms of overall degree of expertlike thinking, we find little…