Describes a project that used the model of character impersonation to allow students to communicate via e-mail with Clovis Crawfish, a children's literature character. Highlights include teaching interns who provided classroom support; a collaborative model of instruction; effects on learning and student behavior; a constructivist approach;…

Discusses new challenges for preservice and inservice teacher education connected with changing conceptions of the teaching profession in the Czech Republic, noting innovative approaches and strategies (e.g., constructivist approaches, reflective practice, and university-school cooperation) and examining training strategies to help students…

Examines the conceptions of educating beginning art teachers with specific reference to Canadian art education. Addresses the use of the visual journal, which demonstrates visual and verbal thinking, by preservice teachers at the University of British Columbia as a means to develop an artistic understanding of their growth as art teachers. (CMK)

Sfard and Thompson (1994) state that what matters most is that educators develop ways of thinking, teaching, and learning mathematics. This study introduced constructive habituation, a new strategy developed to aid both students and teachers in the thinking, teaching, and learning of mathematics. Constructive habituation attempts to unite…

The GetSmart system was built to support theoretically sound learning processes in a digital library environment by integrating course management, digital library, and concept mapping components to support a constructivist, six-step, information search process. In the fall of 2002 more than 100 students created 1400 concept maps as part of…

This case study discusses the influence of politics on educational technology policies and practices by tracing the effects of a change of governing political parties with differing ideologies and advisory constituencies. It begins by describing a democratic socialist government initiative based on social capital theory and emphasising connections…

This study examines the effectiveness of a new constructivist curriculum model (Powerful Ideas in Physical Science) in improving prospective teachers' understanding of science concepts, in fostering a learning environment supporting conceptual understanding, and in promoting positive attitudes toward learning and teaching science and chemistry in…

Increasing numbers of counsellors practise using social constructionist (e.g. narrative, collaborative language systems and solution-focused) approaches. Social constructionist theory holds that matters such as "understanding" are constructed and upheld in human interaction though counselling approaches derived from this theory offer…

Children living in a democratic society deserve rich and powerful citizenship lessons. These lessons are of particular importance for children of low socio-economic and culturally diverse backgrounds whose families may feel disenfranchised from citizenship participation because of their education levels, language capabilities or cultural…

School science students can benefit greatly from participation in student-directed, open-ended scientific inquiry projects. For various possible reasons, however, students tend not to be engaged in such inquiries. Among factors that may limit their opportunities to engage in open-ended inquiries of their design are teachers' conceptions about…

We articulate and explicate a mechanism for mathematics conceptual learning that can serve as a basis for the design of mathematics lessons. The mechanism, reflection on activity-effect relationships, addresses the learning paradox (Pascual-Leone, 1976), a paradox that derives from careful attention to the construct of assimilation (Piaget, 1970).…

Although we have entered into the 21st century, most institutions of higher learning have not yet realized a routine integration of technology into regular classroom pedagogical practices. This article highlights two of the main concerns of university-level foreign language faculty with respect to incorporating technology into everyday classroom…

The article documents a two-year interpretive case study of fourth through sixth grade students engaged in a problem-based telecollaboration exchange between classrooms in Laramie, Wyoming, and Monteverde, Costa Rica. Problem-based learning was viewed in concert with a constructivist perspective to guide examination of global issues. The…

Adopting the concept that "decisions can be seen as argument-driven actions," the purpose of this study was to apply the argumentation structure raised by Stephen Toulmin (1958) to capture two science teachers' instructional decision-making mechanisms in their teaching practices. The two case teachers were chosen because of their close…

When we refer to scientific knowledge, we, implicitly or explicitly, refer to its three components, namely its conceptual framework, its methodological principles and its cultural aspects. The pendulum is a topic of science teaching and learning where all three of these aspects can be examined with the aim of gaining a holistic appreciation of the…