Instrumentation rigor and bias management are major challenges for qualitative researchers employing interviewing as a data generation method in their studies. A usual procedure for testing the quality of an interview protocol and for identifying potential researcher biases is the pilot study in which investigators try out their proposed methods…

The use of focus groups may provide researchers with important insights into research questions via participant discussion and interaction. As a human services practitioner and researcher, I became interested in learning how to conduct focus groups in order to apply these steps to my research and gain valuable insights about the human experience…

Being a competent communicator is complex and goes beyond expressing simple needs and wants to include having the ability to ask and respond to wh-questions. For individuals with autism spectrum disorders who use pictures to communicate, initiating communications such as questions can be difficult and it has been shown that some picture systems do…

In the last three columns, the authors introduced the idea of ethical reasoning, discussed its importance to education, and briefly dealt with a number of understandings essential to skilled ethical reasoning. In this column, the authors continue this discussion. They distinguish between simple and complex ethical questions and reason through an…

This article takes a look at the multiple purposes science informational books can serve in the classroom. The books featured are well written with creative visuals that engage readers in a variety of topics. Although any of these books can enhance the science topics it addresses in the book, they can also be great teaching tools for metacognitive…

People tend to think that streaks in random sequential events are rare and remarkable. When they actually encounter streaks, they tend to consider the underlying process as non-random. The present paper examines the time of pattern occurrences in sequences of Bernoulli trials, and shows that among all patterns of the same length, a streak is the…

We studied what 13-15-year-olds believe teaching's components are. Thirty-six children viewed two films: direct transmission (DT) and Socratic teaching (ST) and a third film of a non-teaching conversation (C). We investigated the participants' understanding of teaching's components and the role of intentionality in teaching. All children judged…

It may be argued that, from a virtue-ethical perspective, three aspects of a teacher's role in moral classroom conversations are of primary importance: (1) encouraging students to be morally reasonable, (2) stimulating the students' emotional involvement, and (3) guiding students toward a normative ideal of virtue. This study sets out to explore…

In this article, the author describes some efforts initiated about 2 decades ago to reform mathematics assessment. Many, if not most, of those ideas have gradually eroded not only from school practice but also from the knowledge base of current day thinking and research in mathematics assessment. In addition to exploring and explaining the policy,…

This paper firstly introduces the concept of constructivist learning which advocates that students actively construct knowledge themselves with teachers' assistance. Based on the six important elements of constructivist learning and teaching planning approach, detailed examples of designing the six constructivist elements of situation, groupings,…

Most postsecondary faculty in the United States include course goals or objectives as key components of their syllabi. In addition to individual course objectives, many institutions have identified institution-wide student learning outcomes (SLOs). This paper describes one faculty member's attempts to elicit feedback from students regarding their…

This paper offers a comparative reflection on how two nations, the U.S. and Lithuania, are implementing inquiry-based science in elementary classrooms. The qualitative study explored how fourth grade teachers in Southern California and in Lithuania employed effective inquiry-based strategies in their classrooms. A teacher's use of questioning…

The purpose of this research is to set up a 5Why scaffolding guided questioning teaching case film for student teachers. The case can provide complete 5Why scaffolding guided questioning science teaching unit (campus insect unit) for the student teachers to observe and learn the curriculum design, teaching didactics and problem solving method. In…

In the context of rapid policy transformation from segregation to inclusion in the education of children with special educational needs in Ireland, a study was conducted to investigate the interplay between policy and principles of inclusion, resource teachers' and class teachers' interpretations of this and the manner in which policy and…

Preschool teachers' language use has been described in recent research, as preschoolers' language development is found to be an important preparation for later reading development. Based on existing research on teachers' language use in sociodramatic play, however, it is still unclear how teachers use their language specifically in sociodramatic…