The charter public school movement has experienced significant growth, attracted veteran community activists and committed educators, acquired the bipartisan support of Congress, contributed to increases in student achievement, and influenced a variety of educational improvement efforts. Internal and external challenges facing charter schools are…

Discusses a survey of more than 2,000 students from remedial and college-level reading and English classes that measured three key areas: self-concept, value, and reading strategies. Finds that: (1) developmental students were lacking in reading self-concept and valued reading less; (2) first-time students valued reading less than experienced…

Presents the second part of a response to the finding that there is sufficient overlap between the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) and the International Baccalaureate Middle Years Program (IBMYP) to allow the two programs to coexist. Argues that the two programs are incompatible and the two together place undue…

Addresses the notion of defining and measuring student achievement in ways that go hand in hand with educational reform efforts. Focuses on performance-based assessment, portfolios, and rubrics. (DDR)

Speculates about reasons for the lack of use of concept mapping as an instructional strategy. Concludes that the two main barriers to its extensive adoption are the epistemological beliefs of classroom teachers and the underlying philosophy of the curriculum. (Contains 45 references.) (DDR)

Teacher cohorts in England and China received special training in techniques for teaching higher-level critical and creative cognitive strategies to deaf learners. Evaluation after 6 months of classroom implementation found students improved in reasoning and critical (but not creative) thinking and teachers developed cognitive terminology and…

Offers teachers practical advice on enhancing student learning through the use of online discussion. (PKP)

The contribution of qualitative research consists in "description, verification (of existing theories, hypotheses, generalizations, or practices), evaluation or prescription, as well as understanding" (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992, p. 16). This qualitative study examined the dynamics and complexities, which occur in the natural setting of a seventh…

This paper reports on a 3-year study of a half-day urban magnet high school founded upon a desire to provide rigorous science, math, and technology experiences to students who would not otherwise have access to such educational opportunities. Using the theoretical lens of how a model of an educated person gets culturally produced within the school…

When the author and her teaching colleague assessed their 7th and 8th grade students' research papers, they realized that although the papers demonstrated proper structure, the students had not gained meaningful understanding of their topics. Although the teachers had carefully prepared students to write, they had not ensured that students had…

Mathematics educators have found sociocultural models of teaching and learning to be powerful in their ability to describe and support the pursuit of instruction based on recent standards documents (e.g., National Council of Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM], 1989, 2000). These models of instruction, however, have been criticized for their lack of…

This chapter serves as a review of the nature of transitions confronting adult learners and points to applications and strategies for anticipating coming changes.

In order for students to understand genetics and evolution, they must first understand the structure of the DNA molecule. The function of DNA proceeds from its unique structure, a structure beautifully adapted for information storage, transcription, translation into amino acid sequences, replication, and time travel. The activity described in this…

Mastery motivation is an internal drive to master a skill, behavior, outcome, or goal. It has been called persistence, "stick-to-it-iveness" (McCall, 1995), goal-directedness, determination, and tenacity. Mastery motivation is expected to foster development as the child is motivated to learn something new. Parents and other caregivers play an…

Many authors have argued that word-learning constraints help guide a word-learner's hypotheses as to the meaning of a newly heard word. One such class of constraints derives from the observation that word-learners of all ages prefer to map novel labels to novel objects in situations of referential ambiguity. In this paper I use eye-tracking to…