"A Framework for K-12 Science Education" identifies eight science and engineering practices for K-12 classrooms. These practices, along with core ideas and crosscutting concepts, define the nation's learning goals for science. The practices outlined in the framework are: (1) Asking questions and defining problems; (2) Developing and using models;…

What do we know about Socrates and the teaching method that, having taken his name, has become widely used from kindergarten through postgraduate seminars? The practitioners employing so-called Socratic methods include vastly different styles, the author says, noting that "we may be mistaking common phrasing for common practice." The differences…

A course was designed for medical students in which literature and writing exercises were used to promote reflection on cross-cultural patient encounters. Students were encouraged to consider Kleinman's principles of open-ended questioning as the basis for enhancing these patient conversations and were prompted to develop skills in close reading…

Is "two" ever a plural marker in child language? By some accounts, children bootstrap the distinction between the words "one" and "two" by observing their use with singular-plural marking ("one ball/two balls"). Others argue that the numeral "two" marks plurality before children begin using numerals to denote precise quantities. We tested the…

Ideally, students requesting services should be seen quickly at their university counseling center to increase the likelihood of a successful treatment outcome. However, in these times of ever-increasing demand for university counseling services and the challenges of securing resources to keep up with that demand, the reality of prompt…

We study how different sections voted on the same set of classroom voting questions in differential calculus, finding that voting patterns can be used to identify some of the questions that have the most pedagogic value. We use statistics to identify three types of especially useful questions: 1. To identify good discussion questions, we look for…

This article reviews some sensitivity versus specificity imbalances in forensic investigations of child sexual abuse. It then proposes the development or further testing of additional approaches for those children who do not respond to the current, single-interview National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) protocol. Although…

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)--now in development--will be based on "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" released by the National Research Council last summer. The "Framework" identifies seven scientific and engineering practices that should be used in science classrooms. These practices reflect the multiple ways in which…

This article investigates the issue of secondary school pupils asking questions. This is an important topic on which very little has been published to date. The article reviews the current literature, which almost exclusively reports the lack of student initiated, content related questioning in classrooms. A small study is described that…

This study presents the results of the analysis of a group of teacher-made test questions for statistics courses at the university level. Teachers were asked to submit tests they had used in their previous two semesters. Ninety-seven tests containing 978 questions were gathered and classified according to the SOLO taxonomy (Biggs & Collis,…

This comparative study explores the verbal communication between museum educators and young children, based on principles of developmental psychology. In early developmental stages, when student learning is greatly dependent on verbal communications from the teacher, observation skills may be developed through purposeful instruction. Through the…

The article explores the use of a classroom-based investigation at Masters level to support pre-service teachers (secondary English PGCE trainees) in focusing on the need for explicit teaching and assessment of speaking and listening skills. With reference to specific case studies, it explores how the module encourages trainees' use of Socratic…

Asking questions is one of the key external indicators of curiosity and a cornerstone of scientific inquiry. To understand the types of questions students ask in an introductory college science class for preservice elementary teachers, students used an online question-ranking tool (Google Moderator) as part of the daily routine. This study…

This dissertation presents the results of an experiment that measured the learning outcomes associated with three different pedagogical approaches to introductory physics labs. These three pedagogical approaches presented students with the same apparatus and covered the same physics content, but used different lab manuals to guide students through…

AutoTutor is a natural language tutoring system that has produced learning gains across multiple domains (e.g., computer literacy, physics, critical thinking). In this paper, we review the development, key research findings, and systems that have evolved from AutoTutor. First, the rationale for developing AutoTutor is outlined and the advantages…