The present study was designed to examine the reflections of college music performance majors (N = 12) who were teaching private music lessons. Students were instructed to keep a journal during one private lesson of their choice per week. Results indicated initial expectations of lessons that were consistently lower than lesson evaluations after…

What does it mean to take a writerly approach to research? Sondra Perl and her co-authors have pondered this question over the past five years as they have each worked with her to design and draft dissertations that combine their work as literacy researchers with their love of writing. Each of them has moved toward storytelling as a compelling and…

Science-themed books are wonderful tools for emphasizing the importance of observation and journaling. They can also be used to effectively promote literacy skills in science. This article shares a selection of nature books and the ways teachers and students used them to engage in the process of scientific inquiry. (Contains 3 figures and 10…

This study examined the use of generalizability theory to evaluate the quality of an alternative assessment (journal writing) in mathematics. Twenty-nine junior college students wrote journal tasks on the given topics and two raters marked the tasks using a scoring rubric, constituting a two-facet G-study design in which students were crossed with…

Background/Context: Metacognition has been a subject of study for cognitive theorists, behaviorists, educators, and others. The term metacognition has traditionally and simply been defined as "thinking about thinking," yet it describes a complex process that can result in a nuanced understanding of oneself as a thinker and a learner. Metacognition…

The socioemotional factors, which influence students' trajectories on their pathways to reading success, are often overlooked in literacy screenings and reading instruction. This article outlines the connections between personality factors, in particular resilient personalities, and early literacy success. It also offers teachers a series of six…

The purpose of the present research study was to examine effects of the use of SmartMusic practice software on the intonation and rhythmic accuracy of brass players' musical performances. Twenty college brass players who served as participants in the four-week study were randomly assigned to one of two practice conditions. The WSM (With…

How are the internet and its online spaces for open exchange changing reading and writing practices, and how can we capitalize on these changes in composition instruction? This article traces the author's experiment with blogging in her first-year writing class and considers how and why blogs help students negotiate the unfamiliar demands of…

This review is an exploration into whether classroom methods similar to those applied by K-12 teachers are valid for adults and can be successfully applied to classrooms for disadvantaged adults: specifically, journal writing as a tool for improving learning and classroom relationships. The literature dispels the myth that teaching adults differs…

This study investigated the humorous activity of two infants, 18 and 21 months old, in their infant group childcare setting. This was a qualitative study that followed two infants for four months. Through participant and non-participant observations, journal writing and interviews, data were collected on children's involvement in humorous…

Arguing that journal writing is a particularly appropriate evaluation mode for travel experiences because it is a learning activity that encourages reflective observation, this booklet includes an instructor's guide for the student travel journal and a student's guide to writing a travel journal. The instructor's guide section discusses objective…

Suggests having students write a series of business magazine article summaries as part of a journal assignment. (MS)

Describes one family's use of a journal to record family history and daily observations. Points out that family journals increase family unity and help teach children the value of writing. (ARH)

Describes how one teacher learned to eliminate ethical and pedagogical problems inherent in student journal writing by placing restrictions on assignments. (ARH)

This paper focuses on some of the issues from a study that questioned the validity of the proposal advanced by the influential North American curriculum movement referred to as "Discipline-Based Art Education" (DBAE); that the methods and understanding of artists, art critics, aestheticians, and art historians can be represented in a…