A common misconception about the nature of art and of aesthetic appreciation is that these activities are essentially a question of "feeling," as if tuning in to the right feeling will automatically lead to a full understanding of the work of art. Another widespread misunderstanding essentially reduces art viewing to a simple question of…

This article discusses the viability of concepts such as complex systems theory, evolutionary theory and chaos theory as metaphors for being able to give a global perspective of one particular school described in a previous article entitled "Leading people in a chaotic world." The article restates and re-explains this one particular case in…

We present a design for a junior level numerical methods course that focuses on a series of five open-ended projects in applied mathematics. These projects were deliberately designed to present many of the ambiguities and complexities that appear any time we use mathematics in the real world, and so they offered the students a variety of possible…

This article introduces systems thinking and identifies its implications for practice-based learning and improvement. The article defines systems, identifies fundamental aspects of systems thinking, and provides strategies for creating more practice-based learning environments in medical contexts. (Contains 1 table.)

This article is a cross-validation of R. G. Tedeschi and L. G. Calhoun's (1996) original study of the development of the Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI). It describes several psychometric properties of scores on the PTGI in a sample of middle- to old-aged adults with a history of cardiovascular disease. The results did not support the…

Drawing from research studies and observations from successful schools, this book debunks many common myths about school leadership and offers more reliable leadership guideposts to steer by: (1) Why focusing on results only can lead to misperceptions about your school's true performance; (2) How to use a Leadership for Learning Framework to…

This article describes the activities that fifth-grade students experienced when learning about the moon, its phases, and eclipses. It illustrates how mathematics and science can be integrated to enhance the learning of both. (Contains 3 figures.)

How should a teacher respond when a student makes off-base guesses about meaning in a literary text because that learner is trying to genuinely understand the story rather than find the "right" meaning? Aukerman argues that when teachers jump in to correct students' interpretations, they short-circuit students' processes of reading and thinking.…

The basic theory of Rasch measurement applies to situations where a person has a certain level of a trait being investigated, and this level of ability is what determines (to within a measurement error) how well the person does on each item in a test. This paper responds to frequent suggestions from colleagues that the use of Rasch measurement…

In December 1984 when the Soviet Union still was an "evil empire" and the United States "encroached on the achievements of Socialism," Ira Jay Winn wrote, "students who scream "Kill the Russkies" or who believe that the Soviets fought against us in World War II... are not simply ignorant of historical facts or…

This exploratory study, a one group pretest-posttest design, investigated the development of elementary preservice teachers' understandings of distribution as expressed in the measures and representations used to compare data distributions. During a semester-long mathematics methods course, participants worked in small groups on two statistical…

The present research was carried out with the participation of 106 students in their last grade in Elementary School and revealed certain problems that these students faced in understanding the concept of area measurement. The students in the sample persisted on using measurement strategies that often led to failure. Our research plan comprises a…

In postgraduate study, students including L2 students are often required to write a thesis and, as a growing literature reveals, L2 students often experience difficulties in the writing of this genre. While most of this research has involved surveys (questionnaires and interviews) and case studies of supervisor perceptions, only a few studies have…

Data structures and algorithms are core issues in computer programming. However, learning them is challenging for most students and many of them have various types of misconceptions on how algorithms work. In this study, we discuss the problem of identifying misconceptions on the principles of how algorithms work. Our context is algorithm…

This paper suggests ways in which to look at textbooks in terms of how they socially construct students with disabilities who receive special education services. Although students with developmental disabilities were not included in most of these texts, the treatment of students with mild disabilities revealed varied attitudes towards disability.…