Purpose: The purpose of the study is to undertake a formative evaluation of a young person's Smokebuster club and to examine how young people's experience of being a club member can be used to inform the club's future development. Design/methodology/approach: After seeking and being granted Local Research Ethics Committee approval to undertake the…

Recent papers document that student problem-solving competence varies (often strongly) with representational format, and that there are significant differences between the effects that traditional and reform-based instructional environments have on these competences [Kohl and Finkelstein, Phys. Rev. ST Phys. Educ. Res. 1, 010104 (2005); Kohl and…

We have developed a wet lab DNA microarray simulation as part of a complete DNA microarray module for high school students. The wet lab simulation has been field tested with high school students in Illinois and Maryland as well as in workshops with high school teachers from across the nation. Instead of using DNA, our simulation is based on pH…

A great deal of similarity exists between engineering and technology education. Many schools and state education administrators are working to bring engineering principles and problem-solving approaches into the technology education classroom. More and more, technology education is viewed as a breeding ground for tomorrow's new crop of engineers.…

This paper discusses a formal study conducted in 2001 at Brigham Young University to determine the value of the library to the university community. Methods used to collect data for the study included an e-mail survey, usage statistics, naturalistic observations, and interviews. Two years after the study, the authors wondered if the conclusions of…

Researchers in the fields of cognitive and language development have made less use of large-scale longitudinal designs and of person-centered approaches to data analysis than have researchers in the fields of social and personality development. It is argued that differences among domains of developmental psychology in the research methods employed…

Institutions of higher education want to diversify their learning climates, and many offer courses in multiculturalism, yet these courses still do not meet the needs of attitudinal change. A new instrument was developed, the Munroe Multicultural Attitude Scale Questionnaire (MASQUE), that was theoretically based in Banks's transformative approach,…

The purpose of this study was to characterise the development of a preservice physical education teacher's professional activity over the course of training interactions with her co-operating teacher. The student teacher's professional development was studied using a hermeneutic and inductive approach based on the analysis of data from observation…

The aim of this paper is to develop an approach that can be used in addressing the issue of the use of information technology and its importance in human meaning making. By using a combination of Wittgenstein's work method, a sociocultural perspective on learning, and a sociotechnical perspective on artifacts a specific focus for analyses was…

The Virtual Vee Map proved successful in promoting student learning in the areas of inquiry and data analysis using resources and data available on the internet. A postsurvey found that a majority of students enjoyed collecting and interpreting the data to find an answer to their own inquiry question. (Contains 3 tables and 6 figures.)

This videocassette introduces SPEEDE/ExPRESS, a system for the electronic transfer of student records. The electronic transfer of student transcripts and other records has numerous benefits for students, in terms of timely transfer, and for administrators who will find it easier and quicker to transfer records rapidly through electronic means,…

The educational objective of this exercise is for students to use a risk assessment tool to evaluate a hazardous release site and for students in grades 8-12 to increase their experience with geology, aquifers, soils, land use, pollution, data analysis, and map concepts. Students use background information on hazardous materials, the Environmental…

This guide presents an introduction to the basics about data collection and discusses the uses of data in daily work. The emphasis is on youth programs in Indiana, but the information is useful for programs in other states. Ways in which program planners and advocacy activists can use data are described, and local, state, and national resources…

VTLOGANL is a project to enhance and develop new methods and computer software to aid the social science researcher using video tape. This paper describes the latest release of the VTLOGANL program and provides a brief description of its capabilities. VTLOGANL is a BASIC program designed for an MS-DOS computer system. It uses Indexed Sequential…

The National Household Education Survey (NHES) CD-ROM for 1991, 1993, and 1995 contains an Electronic Codebook (ECB) program that allows the user to examine the variables in each of the NHES data sets easily and to create Statistical Analysis system and Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (for DOS or Windows) that will generate an extract…