Informal science education (ISE) venues such as zoos, nature centers, parks, and natural history museums play a critical role in allowing the general public to learn scientific concepts (National Research Council, 2009; 2010). Most adult learning of scientific concepts takes place outside of classrooms and away from work (Rennie and Williams,…

Individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) show a specific deficit in visuo-spatial abilities. This finding, however, derives mainly from performance on small-scale laboratory-based tasks. This study investigated large-scale route learning in individuals with WS and two matched control groups (moderate learning difficulty group [MLD], typically…

Teachers and teacher educators who are seeking to (1) enact the kinds of innovative and transformative partnerships needed to bring out the best in teachers and students and (2) enable the rich connections possible among parents, teachers, student teachers, faculty members, and community members have no choice but to interrupt the old forms of…

According to the author, teaching for social justice entails the acquisition of the following learning outcomes: (1) knowledge of the meaning, historical development, and application of human rights; (2) ability to analyze human rights from multiple perspectives; and (3) willingness to address human rights issues in local, global, intercultural,…

In his speech, "Human Illness and the Experience of Vulnerability," Archbishop Tutu used his experience, eloquence and humour to emphasize the vulnerability of human beings during illness. The Archbishop emphasized the need for healthcare professionals to realize that patients are not simply numbers or cases, but fellow human beings who are in…

Noting the ever-increasing encroachment of discourses and practices from the private sector on public education providers, this paper argues that such organizations exist within competing sets of differences that seek to define and fix the meaning of "education" and "business". We report on fieldwork conducted in an adult…

In this article, the author describes how she used a commonplace book assignment to help students expand their background knowledge and as a means to formulate mature, informed perspectives regarding issues of importance. In the assignment, the author wanted the students to: (1) investigate issues of the day; (2) develop multiple perspectives…

That our writing can be misunderstood by our readers is a conceptual difficulty for developing writers. This paper outlines a perspective-taking process that assists elementary students in composing referentially detailed descriptions. Through a procedural sequence that includes drafting, feedback, readers' perspective task, revision and drafting…

Source monitoring is made difficult when the similarity between candidate sources increases. The current work examines how individual differences in social intelligence and perspective-taking abilities serve to increase source similarity and thus negatively impact source memory. Strangers first engaged in a cooperative storytelling task. On each…

This experiment explored whether or not 2-year-olds would engage in synchronic imitation with human hands. Sixty-four 24-month-old infants participated. In a test of synchronic imitation, infants were given a toy while a model simultaneously performed novel actions on an identical toy. Infants were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 model conditions: a…

The importance of teaching communication skills in any undergraduate medical curriculum cannot be overstated. Effective doctor-patient communication is widely recognised as an essential aspect of quality patient care. A communication skills module developed for first year medical students at the University of Western Australia (UWA) is described…

Students at American colleges and universities do become more advanced in their global perspective taking along all three dimensions--cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal. Their degree of involvement in a number of cocurricular activities and their perceptions of the campus community are correlated with their level of perspective taking on…

Through an eighty-one-year-old woman's literacy narrative, I argue that literacy researchers should pay greater attention to elder writers, readers, and learners. Particularly as notions of literacy shift in digital times, the perspective of a lifespan can reveal otherwise hidden complexities of literacy, including the motivational impact of…

In this study we take up challenges regarding researcher positionality, representation, and the construction of difference as a launching point to reflexively analyze our own practices within a research project exploring multilingualism, multiliteracies, and teacher development. Our data were drawn from a teacher study group we facilitated during…

Emergency preparedness can be considered to be a form of lifelong learning and public pedagogy with implications for race equality. The paper is based on an ESRC project "Preparedness pedagogies and race: an interdisciplinary approach" considering the policy process around the construction of the "Preparing for Emergencies"…