Ambient gamma dose rates in air were measured at different locations (indoors and outdoors) to demonstrate the ubiquitous nature of natural background radiation in the environment and to show that levels vary from one location to another, depending on the underlying geology. The effect of a lead shield on a gamma radiation field was also…

Dominating strands within the research literature on second homes explain social conflicts between rural hosting and visiting second home populations by describing their differing perspectives on rural development. Such presentations suggest that locals are likely to welcome new developments in order to enhance the economic viability of their…

The purpose of this study was to examine whether Socioscientific Issues (SSI) based learning environments affect university students' epistemological understanding of scientific inquiry differently from traditional science educational contexts. We identify and compare conceptions of scientific inquiry of students participating in an…

This article shares the authors' views on language-diversity issues in research in mathematics education. Described are tensions, questions, and myths that they have regularly faced as researchers. They use similarities and differences in two settings (multilingual classrooms in South Africa and U.S. mathematics classrooms with Latino/a students)…

A recent survey on implementation of Response to Instruction/Intervention (RTI) found 94% of participating schools implementing some level of RTI ("Global Scholar," 2011). Therefore, it is logical to assume that most educators have heard about the concepts at the heart of RTI, even though specific iterations and names of the frameworks…

This paper presents another effort in determining the difficulty of engineering students in terms of solving word problems. Students were presented with word problems in algebra. Then, they were asked to solve the word problems orally; that is, before they presented their written solutions, they were required to explain how they understood the…

We have been developing a digital concept maps website (www.conceptmapsforlearning.com) based on the principles of effective assessment for learning. The purpose of this paper is to reveal its promising contributions to formative evaluation practices. The website reduces the workload of teachers as well as provides immediate and delayed feedback…

This paper describes the structure of the "Air Pollution Course", an environmental science laboratory course developed at the Science Education Laboratory of the Faculty of Primary Education, University of Athens, as well as the findings resulting from its implementation by pre-service elementary teachers. The course proposed in this…

The authors examine the growth and impact of guided reading, small group teaching for differentiated instruction in reading that was stimulated by their early publications. Many changes in literacy education have been observed as a result--almost as if educators had a "romance" with guided reading and leveled books. While changes have been…

This study examines preservice elementary teachers' (PTs) knowledge for teaching the associative property (AP) of multiplication. Results reveal that PTs hold a common misconception between the AP and commutative property (CP). Most PTs in our sample were unable to use concrete contexts (e.g., pictorial representations and word problems) to…

This paper first introduces the background of the AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business) accreditation, and then analyzes the current status of the participation of Chinese business schools in AACSB accreditation. Based on the data analysis, the paper points out that there are two main problems in the Chinese business…

Not only is science perceived by some as a hard-to-teach subject, but there are certain topics that all teachers regard as notoriously hard to teach. While their natural inclination may be to eliminate some of the details, teachers have to be careful not to water down the curriculum. How do they share the complexity of the natural world without…

The use of electron orbitals in quantum theory and chemistry is discussed. Common misconceptions are highlighted. Suggestions are made how chemistry educators may describe orbitals in the first and second year college curriculum more accurately without introducing unwanted technicalities. A comparison is made of different ways of graphically…

Researchers in this study examined the attitudes toward domestic violence, the victim, and her perpetrator. A total of 194 participants were randomly assigned to one of 4 hypothetical scenarios to evaluate how observers' perceptions were influenced by their own sex and myths about domestic violence, by the victim's decision to return to the…

Three and a half centuries ago, a five-year experiment was conducted involving the growth of a willow tree in a pot which received only water. The conclusion, that a tree is therefore made solely from water, was not so ridiculous when there was still general acceptance of the Aristotelian view of only four "elements": water, earth, fire and air.…