Foxfire awards were presented to a professor of education who helped found a Foxfire-affiliated teacher network and develop new courses, and four elementary-secondary teachers who implemented Foxfire classroom approaches that included learning centers; student tutoring; individual folder work; student-researched stories of family, community, and…

Describes a study conducted at the C. W. Post Campus of Long Island University (New York) that measured librarians' opinions of and attitudes toward a self-paced bibliographic instruction workbook. Survey results were compared for librarians who used the self-paced approach and those who followed a traditional approach. (Contains six references.)…

Students in a combined grade 3-4 in a charter school in Asheville, North Carolina, chose the topics and ways to demonstrate their learning to fulfill history curriculum requirements. Their choices of local historical architecture and traditional quilt-making spiraled out to include photography, historical fiction, and quilted pillows, which were…

The teacher of an inclusive K-3 class in Pike County, Kentucky, chose coal as a topic because it had meaning to her students and they could use the community as a learning laboratory. Although a democratic classroom fostered student ownership of the material, older and younger students had different motivational requirements. (TD)

Focuses on the Library at the University of the West of England, Bristol, which is undertaking a study to examine the feasibility of close faculty/librarian working partnerships in the management of an integrated package of pedagogic delivery and assessment with information provision for self-directed learning through an electronic reserve.…

A teacher describes using some of the Foxfire core practices to teach a "last chance" program for students in grades 7-8 who were angry, oppositional, and defiant. After a cooperative classroom planning process in which counselors helped students articulate their ideas, the students began revealing their interests. These interests, in…

Describes implementation of the "process workshop" model for university chemistry classroom instruction. Defines process workshop as a classroom environment where students are actively engaged in learning a discipline and developing essential skills by working in self-managed teams on activities that involve guided discovery, critical thinking,…

A high school teacher describes how her classroom methods changed from traditional teacher-centered pedagogy to the active and democratic involvement of students in developing their own learning communities. Sidebars describe class projects: an oral history project that blossomed into a "Forties Festival" with 1940s alumni and the…

A person-centered instructional design model was developed for virtual, Web-based environments, based on the work of Carl Rogers. This model attempts to address several issues raised in the literature. A person-centered instructional model is described and contrasted with instructionalist and constructivist approaches. Theoretical and practical…

Schools strive to educate fully every child who walks through their doors. Yet many schools find themselves burdened with large numbers of struggling learners who have not yet acquired the necessary foundation skills that are required in order for them to be able to master the curriculum successfully. Here, the author discusses the Universal…

Reforms in the functioning and purpose of higher education during the past 2 decades have created profound changes in the expectations and values of university students worldwide. Indeed, the values of entrepreneurship, vocational relevance, and commercial success have considerably displaced the traditional expectations of knowledge acquisition…

This study describes the implementation of the Assessment of Learner-Centered Practices (ALCP) surveys in 4 English schools, 3 primary schools and 1 secondary school during the academic year 2002-2003. The ALCP teacher and student surveys for grades kindergarten through 12 were developed and validated with over 25,000 students and their teachers…

This paper addresses the concept of blended learning, an approach that has been gaining popularity in recent years with the advancement of computer-mediated training solutions. It begins with an effort to define blended learning and a description of its historical context. A discussion of blended learning as a learner-centric approach follows,…

In response to a decision at Worcester State College (Massachusetts) that remedial mathematics and other mathematics courses should be taught in a non-lecture format--learning by doing rather than by watching--a math computer lab was created. Three courses each have a 1-hour lecture per week, with students responsible for all additional learning…

Based on 4 years' experience in a Goodwill adult literacy program, this handbook offers insights to teachers who want to facilitate student-directed group learning. The handbook is organized in seven sections that cover the following: (1) comments on the nature of adult learning and the philosophy of the approach; (2) thoughts on progressive…