Technology is used in all facets of society, and elementary schools should not lag behind in preparing the elementary school pupil of today for tomorrow's technology-infused workplace. Technology should capture student interests and learning activities should be fascinating and should engage student interaction. Technology may also assist learners…

This packet contains seven research briefs in the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory's (NWREL's) "School Improvement Research Series" for 1995-96. Topical Synthesis #8, "Community-Based Learning: A Foundation for Meaningful Educational Reform" (Thomas R. Owens and Changhua Wang) summarizes lessons that NREL has learned over the past 20…

Active learning results in better comprehension and retention of course concepts than passive learning. Experiential exercises (EE's) are a valuable means of achieving the goals of active learning. Well conceived EE's require, among other things, that the student: (1) engage in the gathering of concept-related behavioral data; (2) write a report…

This study used Brookfield's Critical Incident Questionnaire (CIQ) to assess the learning environment and student nurses' perceptions of hospital staff modeling behaviors. CIQs were distributed to Associate Degree female nursing students at United Medical Center in Cheyenne, Wyoming. A large majority (80%) of the 117 respondents identified…

This study provides a description and analysis of how teachers read research in light of prior beliefs about what research is and how it should influence teaching. Attention to teachers' beliefs has become an essential feature of studies designed to help understand research. The beliefs on which researchers and teacher educators typically focus…

This study was conducted to analyze the process of learning to teach from the perspective of the student teacher. Issues associated with how student teachers perceive experiences contributing to their learning process form the basis of the analysis. Data referred to come from a larger study conducted over 3 years which explored the perceptions of…

Teachers engaged in action research are involved in a process that focuses on how they and their students construct and reconstruct learning experiences, thereby extending professionalism and creating additional learning opportunities for students. This paper describes the evolution of an action research project involving an elementary school…

An intensive case study was conducted of one high school student's internship in an effort to determine the organizing principles that created the internship curriculum. A junior in the School for Extended Learning received high school credit for serving an internship at the Community Video Center (CVC), a non profit organization offering video…

This article explores transfer of learning in the arts to non-arts learning. The analysis is presented in the context of theories of knowledge acquisition more generally. Behavioral and neuro-function processes are discussed.

City-as-School (CAS) is a New York City Board of Education independent alternative high school whose primary curriculum objective is to link students with hundreds of learning experiences throughout the community. Students receive academic credit for each learning experience successfully completed. Credit is determined by the nature of the…

Microcomputers have the potential to alter the entire learning environment and change the nature of education, but the use of computer-assisted instruction (CAI) methods developed when computers were less readily available can endanger or retard the change. Designed to increase the efficiency of the teaching of course content, CAI makes no attempt…

Beginning core-French students who had contact with part-time French monitors and students who did not were compared in five Canadian provinces in 1979-1980 as part of an evaluation of the Second Language Monitor Program. Twenty-eight schools and 56 classes were studied in Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia, along with 5 schools…

An annotated bibliography on the state of research in experiential learning covers sponsored field study, internships, or cooperative type placements at the postsecondary level. In addition to 4 studies in progress, 23 empirical research projects are described that concern program evaluation, developmental changes in students, program design, and…

This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study examining the role of digital teaching portfolios in teachers' professional development and classroom practice. The participants, all teachers, took part in a formal course in which they develop a digital teaching portfolio. The findings suggest that the processes involved in creating digital…

A cost/benefit analysis of the assessment of experiential learning was performed at Webster College, Missouri. An undergraduate and a masters degree program were studied; the costs of evaluating experiential learning were compared to the costs of traditional college programs. Total costs for experiential learning assessment were found to be…