Pedagogical content knowledge, the particular ways that teachers understand their subjects in order to instruct others, has been described and explored in the math and science education fields in some depth, yet little research exists illustrating this concept in music instruction. I used a descriptive approach to explore expert beginning band…

When teacher preparation is disconnected from classroom practice, preservice teachers are left to try to make this connection without the guidance and support of skilled mentors. Practicum or field experiences are essential for effective personnel preparation. Practicum experiences can provide situated learning for preservice teachers to…

Student perceptions of science-oriented careers and scientists have been shown to be largely inaccurate. Through an instructional design and development process we have developed a method for offering students more accurate information about science-oriented careers. This paper follows the steps involved in developing a volume of…

While associations between exposure to marital conflict and child development have been documented extensively in middle childhood and adolescence, few studies have examined the developmental consequences of conflict exposure in infancy. Moreover, those that have examined marital conflict in infancy tended to focus on consequences of conflict…

"Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies" is a peer-tutoring program for grades K-6 that aims to improve student proficiency in math and other disciplines. This report focuses on "Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies" for math. The math program supplements students' existing math curriculum and is based on peer-mediated instruction, a…

Infant DVDs typically have titles and even company names that imply some educational benefit. It is not known whether these educational claims are reflected in actual content. The present study examined this question. Of 686 claims (across 58 programs) listed on packaging, websites and promotional materials, implicit claims were most frequent…

The overall aim of the experiment reported here was to establish whether self-recognition in live video can be facilitated when live video training is provided to children aged 2-2.5 years. While the majority of children failed the test of live self-recognition prior to video training, more than half exhibited live self-recognition post video…

This paper examines the idea that contemporary strategic board games represent an informal, interactional context in which complex computational thinking takes place. When games are collaborative--that is, a game requires that players work in joint pursuit of a shared goal--the computational thinking is easily observed as distributed across…

The increasing popularity of high-bandwidth Internet connections has enabled new applications like the online delivery of high-quality audio and video content. Conventional server-client approaches place the entire burden of delivery on the content provider's server, making these services expensive to provide. A peer-to-peer approach allows end…

Detection of events and actions in video entails substantial processing of very large, even open-ended, video streams. Video data present a unique challenge for the information retrieval community because properly representing video events is challenging. We propose a novel approach to analyze temporal aspects of video data. We consider video data…

The purpose of this article is to develop a method of approach that can be used to explore the meaning and use of artifacts in education by applying a socio-cultural perspective to learning and artifacts. An empirical material of video recorded physical education lessons in Sweden is used to illustrate the approach in terms of how artifacts in…

This column helps bring the outdoors into the curriculum. The author describes how to instill a sense of wonder in students by stepping out the door and observing what is going on in one's local environment. In the complete opposite direction, exotic locales and their inhabitants are captivating, and the author suggests visiting an exotic locale…

The accuracy of video analysis of the passive straight-leg raise test (PSLR) and the validity of the sit-and-reach test (SR) were tested in 60 men and women. Computer software measured static hip-joint flexion accurately. High within-session reliability of the PSLR was demonstrated (R greater than 0.97). Test-retest (separate days) reliability for…

Researching whimsical and spirited artists can inspire new ideas and methods of communicating how art remains a valuable part of people's lives both in and out of the classroom. This instructional resource explores one such contemporary artist who, driven by a curiosity in human interaction, continues to explore the world in fanciful and…

Most teachers agree that a demonstration can be more effective than a verbal description. Math teachers model multiplication exercises, and physical education teachers model how to throw a ball. Likewise, music teachers model correct embouchure. Modeling can help students understand music concepts that are difficult to explain verbally, and visual…