This paper presents a methodology designed to explore the role of context in collaborative knowledge construction activity in asynchronous web-based discussion. The discussions of two student groups participating in a web-based teacher education course were compared. The comparison aimed to highlight the differences and similarities between the…

Plato wrote that higher order thinking could not start until the student had mastered conventional wisdom. The American educational establishment has turned Plato on his head with the help of a dubious approach to teaching developed by one Benjamin Bloom. Bloom's taxonomy was intended for higher education, but its misappropriation has resulted in…

The cognitive revolution began in the 1950s as researchers began to move away from the study of knowledge acquisition and behaviorism to the study of information and the way it is processed. Four factors are discussed in chapter 1 as contributing to the increase in popularity of the "cognitive revolution" (increasing enthusiasm for the…

This paper reports the results of an experiment with 21 Italian children (age 2;8-5;11) and 29 U.S. children (age 2;7-5;9) who were tested on their knowledge of verb raising to C in main WH-questions, an obligatory movement process in adult Italian and English. Along the lines of recent movement and feature checking theories, it is proposed that,…

This study was designed to explore students perceptions of how a change in pedagogy influenced learning. The study was undertaken as part of a professional development residency in which a teacher educator worked with the staff of a high school science faculty in an on-site professional development program focusing on classroom teaching and…

Researchers suggest that children of minority groups are so confused by the customs of the dominant culture represented in schools that their English literacy learning suffers. An ethnographic study examined the literacy learning of two language minority children in a suburban kindergarten program. Using unstructured interviews, the focal…

This book provides insights into one of the nation's largest and most comprehensive school-restructuring movements, the Accelerated Schools Project. Since its inception in 1986, the focus of the movement has been on transforming schools with students at risk of dropping out into schools with high expectations of all students. This is accomplished,…

This study investigated the effects of K. J. Klauer's (1989) inductive reasoning training program of teaching children. Effects of training and the range of transfer of the training were assessed. The subjects were 34 third-grade Dutch children of average ability, matched on age, sex, and IQ. Children from the training condition (N=17) received…

Discussion of the role of pragmatics research in language teaching looks at the role such research should play in the language classroom, and the role of researcher, teacher, and teacher educator in making that connection. It is noted that pragmatics research has discovered a number of differences in the ways in which first- and second-language…

When teaching beginning reading, the use of certain children's stories, called predictable books, can yield higher reading comprehension skills, provide excellent practice for sight words, and teach good oral reading skills. A nurturing classroom environment is an important component of an effective beginning reading curriculum. An effective…

Pychologists, educators, and others have challenged the idea of a fixed IQ. This book uses recent research and earlier discoveries to argue that intelligence is not genetically set. Noting that the idea of learnable intelligence reflects the belief that intelligence can be taught, the book outlines a theory of learnable intelligence, including…

Whole language, a theory of language instruction that was developed primarily in terms of helping children learn to read, has now been extended to middle- and secondary-school levels. Andragogy, the learning of adults, is a specific theory of adult education, conceived in contradistinction to pedagogy, the teaching of children. When these two…

Many people prefer to learn in ways that differ from the ways in which other people of the same class, grade, age, nationality, race, culture, or religion prefer to do. The ways in which people prefer to learn are their "learning style preferences." This handbook was designed for supervisors interested in implementing and guiding staff in the…

In this study, a programmatic decision-making framework called the consensus marker-outcome variable system (CMOVS) was developed as a result of a comprehensive "meta-review" and synthesis of research on variables considered by experts to be important to learning for all students, including those with special needs or those at risk of failing. The…

This paper discusses the theory of multiple intelligences (H. Gardner, 1983) as it applies to the basic public speaking course. According to the paper, the multiple intelligences theory (MI) suggests that intelligence should not be viewed as a single dimension, but rather as a composite of several aptitudes and talents. The paper states that…