Uses the experience of one of the authors in teaching a class in an alternative high school as an illustration of how themes are used in teaching. Elaborates upon the thematic approach to organizing educational experience. (Author/RK)

Folk music has been defined as music that folks sing. Folk math is defined as math that folks do. It's logical, useful, sensible, discusses the ways you and others really use mathematics in the outside world, and it uses language that folks use. (Editor/RK)

Based on studies that detailed the benefits of quality early childhood education, the Alabama Pre-Kindergarten Initiative provides young children with enriching learning experiences to ensure that they will be ready to succeed in school. These experiences are critical for low-income children in economically distressed Appalachian counties.…

A 3-year study of 50 health occupations and trade and industrial preservice teachers in an alternative teacher education program included a simulation work exercise and analysis of instructional materials. Informal workplace learning resulted in implicit knowledge in the first year of practice. Critical practice was shown to be an important model…

Explores external quality monitoring in higher education, including types of external bodies, their modus operandi, and reasons for evaluation. Concludes that external evaluation is legitimating the status quo, failing to ask significant questions about the reality of learning experiences for students. Suggests that quality monitoring engage more…

Encourages the use of storytelling by students to develop communication skills and encourage shared learning experiences. Describes several classroom activities that serve as preparation for actual storytelling. (MG)

Investigates teachers' use of humor in relationship to immediacy and affective learning outcomes. Reports that (1) amount and type of humor influenced learning; (2) students were particularly aware of tendentious humor; (3) an overdependence on tendentious humor diminished affect; (4) male and female students perceive humor differently; and (5)…

Describes kindergartners' responses to a visit to an old, inner-city cemetery. The visit acquainted children in early childhood programs with the concepts of death, burial, and the rituals related to them. (RJC)

Reviews "Human Minds: An Exploration" by Margaret Donaldson, which inquires into the diverse uses of minds, their ontogenetic development, and their histories. The two predominant themes in the book are the ontogenetic and historical development of cognition, and development of social-emotional understandings and experiences as well as…

This article recounts a learning experience at the Kansas State School for the Deaf in which students invited an author of children's books about deaf children, Jean Andrews, to visit and participated with the author in developing her next book. Students also wrote their own books, and received feedback on them from Andrews. (DB)

Discusses the interaction between children's minds and the learning environment, offering a conceptual framework that aims at creating authentic contexts where the quality and variety of mediated learning experiences will enable children to build a deep understanding within the domain studied. (MDM)

This study aimed to determine the role of reading-related experience and processing speed on the time it took for children to name familiar stimuli. Children (n=168) were administered measures of global-processing speed, title and author recognition, naming time, and reading ability. Naming times were predicted by age-related change in processing…

Computer-assisted language-learning literature points to a need for experimentation with innovative learning structures to realize the full potential of recent technological developments. Reports on a research project that addresses these concerns by exploring the experiences of 23 French second-language learners as they worked independently with…

Two groups of college students were given different types information to read regarding stimulant medicines for attention deficit hyperactive disorder. No differences were found between the gender of participants and their perceptions of the medications based on reading materials. Type of information did influence their views of the efficacy and…

Different aspects of courage are discussed through anecdotes: from the courage required in the outdoors, which most adventure educators have experienced, to observations that courage may be required when it is not anticipated, that it may also involve restraint, that expressing one's needs requires courage, and that courage is also the ability to…