In this integrated inquiry, students in an elementary teaching methods class investigate a real-world problem outside the classroom. The students use the Cognitive Research Trust (CoRT) thinking strategy to find the causes of, impact of, and possible solutions to the problem. They present their findings and then discuss implementation of this…

Classroom teachers are assuming more and more responsibility for meeting the needs of students from a larger number of diverse backgrounds and with increasingly diverse special needs. Many practicing teachers identify students with special needs as their greatest concern and challenge, but often one of their greatest rewards. One way of…

This exploratory, descriptive study examined the way five chemistry teachers from four different schools enacted their visions of an activity labeled as the multiple solution pathway (MSP) lesson structure--one in which students were given a relevant problem to solve and the opportunity to propose and explore several solutions to the problem. A…

Today's students find it difficult to develop an understanding of what it is they need to know, and more importantly, why they need to know it. Framing this "need to know" has been called by various names, such as "inquiry," "inquiry process," "essential questions," "knowledge construction." Inquiry, however, goes much deeper than casual…

Teachers face the challenge of introducing ecological concepts in an authentic way that students can apply to their lives and surroundings. Fieldwork helps achieve this goal and can have a range of beneficial impacts on participants, but opportunities to conduct fieldwork can be limited, especially in urban environments. Urban environments are…

The new history in Britain and the new social studies in the United States each grew out of a desire in the 1960s to reform education and to create an inquiry-based mode of instruction. Although the two movements shared many similarities, the British movement succeeded whereas the American movement largely failed. The failure of the new social…

No empirical research has focused on understanding the academic stress of Chinese international students in the United States. This qualitative inquiry examines the most stressful aspects of their academic lives in the U.S., how they characterize their academic stress, and what conditions they believe tend to account for their academic stress.…

Why do teachers and other educational practitioners become researchers of their own practice? Is their primary motivation one of self-development, the attainment of a doctoral qualification, or the desire to improve outcomes for their learners? Practitioner research is often believed to bring about transformation, particularly in its more…

Much has been written about teachers' professional learning through inquiry into their own practice. The emphasis has been on teachers researching, reflecting and making change in their practice. Despite the wealth of literature concerning teacher inquiry and professional development, there is little about teacher educators with respect to their…

This article presents an interview with Linda Gottfredson (nee Howarth), who obtained her BA (psychology, Phi Beta Kappa) from UC Berkeley in 1969, served in the Peace Corps in the Malaysian Health Service from 1969 to 1972, and received her PhD (sociology) from Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in 1976. She was Research Scientist at JHU's Center for…

The International Boiling Point Project is an online, collaborative project for students in grades 6-12 in which they investigate the impact of four factors (room temperature, elevation, volume of water and heating device) on the boiling point of water. A detailed procedure is provided for students in order to limit the number of variables…

There is increased phenomenological interest, philosophical and empirical, in the meaning and meaning-making dimensions of the experience of movement in physical education (Kentel & Dobson, 2007; Kretchmar, 2000a; Loland, 2006; Smith, 2007; Whitehead, 1990). This scholarly concern about the qualities and characteristics of movement shifts the…

This paper engages questions about ends in environmental education research. In doing so, I argue that such questions are essentially normative, and that normative questions are underrepresented in this field. After cautioning about perils of prescribing research agendas, I gently suggest that in environmental education key normative questions…

This article argues for approaching pedagogical outcomes as ends-in-view that guide, but do not determine or limit, pedagogical possibilities. In this article, the authors draw from their experience in a senior-level, interdisciplinary service-learning course called Literacy and Community to demonstrate that the moments of conflict generated by…

This study investigated whether the mere knowledge of the meaning of variables can facilitate inquiry learning processes and outcomes. Fifty-seven college freshmen were randomly allocated to one of three inquiry tasks. The concrete task had familiar variables from which hypotheses about their underlying relations could be inferred. The…