Purpose--Sociocultural learning theories, usually premised on participation in some community, explain workplace learning well up to a certain extent. The paper aims to extend beyond these and to account for learning in repetitive and mundane work environments from a dialectical perspective. Design/methodology/approach--Based on a longitudinal…

Team teaching between native English speaking teachers and local L2 English teachers has become an increasingly common phenomenon in schooling in the East Asia region. The relevant literature reports some positive impacts of team teaching and also highlights some of the challenges or conflicts which arise. The aim of this paper is to focus on…

Analysis of interview and classroom observation data collected through four institutional case studies reveals some consistent findings regarding how writing assignments and class discussions can be made conducive to critical thinking development. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)

For some years now, teachers in the post compulsory sector have been lambasted in educational circles for what some perceive as the poor quality of teaching and learning in classrooms. Such criticisms have tended to emanate from those responsible for inspecting the sector's provision. In fact, when Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education) and…

Child psychologists are frequently involved in the assessment of ADHD symptoms among school-aged youth. There is limited information regarding the extent to which psychologists adhere to recommended assessment practices and whether differences exist in assessment strategies among psychologists from different specialty areas (clinical, counseling,…

This article reports on a specific aspect of a larger study of "a day in the life" of five two-and-a-half-year-old girls in families in Canada, Italy, Peru, Thailand and the UK. The larger study involved filming each of the five children in their family contexts for one whole day and studying a number of emerging themes related to the…

I discuss philosophical and methodological difficulties in researching young children's spiritual development. I describe my research involving detailed discussions with, and observations of, 14 teachers of 4- and 5-year-olds. I highlight key issues, including what distinguishes spiritual from other sorts of development, the nature of children's…

This paper discusses a formal study conducted in 2001 at Brigham Young University to determine the value of the library to the university community. Methods used to collect data for the study included an e-mail survey, usage statistics, naturalistic observations, and interviews. Two years after the study, the authors wondered if the conclusions of…

A participant observation study, located in central Scotland, was carried out to observe the process of skill acquisition among informally trained auto mechanics in the workplace. As well as noting processes of workplace learning, the benefits/limitations of this type of learning was noted and suggestions made as to how this information may be of…

In the research reported in this article, we sought to understand the instructional practices of 26 secondary teachers from one district who use a problems-based mathematics textbook series (Core-Plus). Further, we wanted to examine beliefs that may be associated with their instructional practices. After analyzing data from classroom…

In Design and Technology lessons English primary school pupils between the ages of 5 and 11 learn to design and make artefacts with materials and tools. Teachers, mainly non-specialists, are expected to teach specific skills, knowledge and understanding in contexts which are deemed to be meaningful to the pupils. In 1996 a set of primary school…

The purpose of this study was to characterise the development of a preservice physical education teacher's professional activity over the course of training interactions with her co-operating teacher. The student teacher's professional development was studied using a hermeneutic and inductive approach based on the analysis of data from observation…

Children with autism exhibit significant deficits in imitation skills which impede the acquisition of more complex behaviors and socialization, and are thus an important focus of early intervention programs for children with autism. This study used a multiple-baseline design across five young children with autism to assess the benefit of a…

Autism symptoms, including impairments in language development, social interactions, and motor skills, have been difficult to model in rodents. Since children exposed in utero to sodium valproate (VPA) demonstrate behavioral and neuroanatomical abnormalities similar to those seen in autism, the neurodevelopmental effects of this antiepileptic…

Several studies have been done on the effect of school music instruction on the self-concept of students, as well as on student perceptions of school music experiences, but few researchers have undertaken an in-depth inquiry of individual students to attempt to understand their possibly unique perceptions of school music. This case study used…