The National FFA Organization's Partners in Active Learning Support (PALS) is a program that utilizes high school members from FFA chapters as peer mentors. The purpose of this study was to examine needs of a sample of PALS advisors and mentors. An on-site pilot study was initially conducted, which included 3 individual interviews with program…

Leadership is often described as something that is learned from experience. However, experiences do not often occur within a controlled environment where learning and its impact can be evaluated. In this paper, we investigate the efficacy of two types of learning experiences. University students received leadership training of equal length through…

Science educators have generally agreed that understanding the atom concept is the basis of science education. However, the numerous research studies have shown that many students at all educational levels have difficulties understanding this concept. This study was developed under three headings. The first was to identify misconceptions that…

The study purpose was to test the effect of a school- and home-based alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) prevention program on reducing environmental, parent, and child risk factors for ATOD use. The design was a three-group pretest-posttest with interviews at baseline and 1 and 6 months post-intervention. The sample was 126 parents and their…

This study examines the effectiveness of written error corrections versus reformulations of second language learners' writing as two means of improving learners' grammatical accuracy on a three-stage composition-comparison-revision task. Concurrent verbal protocols were employed during the comparison stage in order to study the learners' reported…

The point of departure of this study is the well-known hypothesis according to which structures that involve the syntax-pragmatics interface and instantiate a surface overlap between two languages are more vulnerable to crosslinguistic influence than purely syntactic domains (e.g. Muller and Hulk, 2001). In exploring the validity of this…

This study examines the differential effect of two types of written corrective feedback (CF) and the extent to which language analytic ability mediates the effects of CF on the acquisition of articles by adult intermediate ESL learners of various L1 backgrounds (N = 91). Three groups were formed: a "direct-only correction" group, a "direct…

This study investigates the effect of a CALL application designed to enhance speaking and listening in Mandarin Chinese on advanced students' verbal skills, learning attitudes, and self-efficacy. A pretest/posttest experimental/control-group design with intact classes was employed to minimize treatment diffusion. Over the course of 14 weeks,…

This study examined critical thinking instruction in a required introductory communication course (N = 324). Experimental group participants received enhanced instruction using various active learning strategies, activities, and assignments. Results indicate significant improvement in their critical thinking skills. Implications for pedagogy and…

Background: This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the Parents Plus programme with families of pre-school children with developmental disabilities and significant behavioural problems in the Irish health service. The Parents Plus programme is a group-based parent training package involving video modelling, which was designed to be…

Objectives: To assess the impact of a voluntary, paraprofessional home visiting program on promoting child health and development and maternal parenting knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Methods: This collaborative, experimental study of 6 Healthy Families Alaska (HFAK) programs enrolled 325 families from 1/00 to 7/01, randomly assigned them to…

This longitudinal case-study aimed at examining whether purposely teaching for the promotion of higher order thinking skills enhances students' critical thinking (CT), within the framework of science education. Within a pre-, post-, and post-post experimental design, high school students, were divided into three research groups. The experimental…

This study examined the effect of scaffolding learning components in a computerized environment, for students solving qualitative science problems in a simulation of laboratory experiments. Four scaffolding components were identified (structural, reflective, subject-matter and enrichment) and used in different configurations to construct four…

Group parent-training interventions for the treatment and prevention of externalizing problems in young children have been empirically validated almost exclusively with mother-only groups or with groups where the majority of participants are mothers. One reason for this focus has been the difficulty in attracting fathers to parent-training groups.…

Educating students from linguistically diverse backgrounds has historically been the domain of the ESL teacher. However, new migration patterns and changing student demographics force the mainstream teacher into a new role: the language and content teacher. In order to embrace this new role, educators must implement instructional strategies…