Witnesses to and victims of serious crime are normally asked to describe the appearance of a criminal suspect, using a Cognitive Interview (CI), and to construct a facial composite, a visual representation of the face. Research suggests that focusing on the global aspects of a face, as opposed to its facial features, facilitates recognition and…

Public schools continually work to inform parents and other stakeholders about what takes place in their buildings. Everyone is familiar with report cards, of course, which inform parents through letter grades or verbal descriptions of their children's progress. Nearly every elementary school also holds a parents' night and other events designed…

This mixed-method study explored the perspectives of principals involved in the hiring process of K-12 teachers in one Midwestern state. Participants' survey data was used to examine the pros and cons of portfolios, to determine preferences in portfolio contents and electronic delivery method, and to investigate what predictors significantly…

Research during the past 15 years has repeatedly demonstrated the beneficial effects of dialogic reading (DR), a form of shared storybook reading, on the development of language in preschool children. Although much is known about the effects of DR on children, little attention has been paid to the role that adult caregivers play in the DR…

Mathematical discussions support and promote student learning as an integral part of the contexts in which students learn mathematics. Yet, American school practices often focus on teachers disseminating knowledge to students and students acquiring that knowledge through rote rehearsal rather than higher order thinking. One barrier to change in…

This study examines the racial discourses of six and seven year old Puerto Rican children participating in small group literature circles over one academic year. The main research question is "How do Puerto Rican young children in a multiage classroom construct race through dialogue within the figured worlds of literature circles?" This study…

This mixed method study examined the impact of a LEGO-based, engineering-oriented curriculum compared to an inquiry-based curriculum on fifth graders' content learning of simple machines. This study takes a social constructivist theoretical stance that science learning involves learning scientific concepts and their relations to each other. From…

This is a qualitative study of lesson study implementation and its impact on instructional practice in mathematics in a district in California. Four research questions guided this study: (1) What were the goals of the district and teachers as they relate to the implementation of lesson study in this case? (2) What were the relationships between…

This is the first study to explore lexical and grammatical development in a deaf child diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Inattentive sub-type (ADHDI). The child, whose family language was Spanish, was fitted with a cochlear implant (CI) when she was 18 months old. ADHDI, for which she was prescribed medication, was diagnosed…

A Synchronous Distance Education (SDE) course, jointly offered by Auburn University, Tuskegee University and Auburn University at Montgomery, introduced non-science majors to the concepts of nanoscience. Lectures originated from each of the three campuses during the semester, and video conferencing equipment allowed students at all three campuses…

The advance of digital video technology in the past two decades facilitates empirical investigation of learning in real time. The focus of this paper is the combined use of real-time digital video and a networked linguistic corpus for exploring the ways in which these technologies enhance our capability to investigate the cognitive process of…

In this article, the author shares her view of "open faculty." To truly understand "open faculty," one needs to step back to a time before the Internet, before it was so easy and inexpensive to share anything and everything. In the pre-Internet era, faculty fell on the same continuum between those who freely share ideas and resources and those who…

Reading to children improves vocabulary acquisition through incidental exposure, and it is a best practice for parents and teachers of children who can hear. Children who are deaf or hard of hearing are at risk for not learning vocabulary as such. This article describes a procedure for using books read on DVD in American Sign Language with…

This study was originally designed to explore the impact of a distributed approach to developing curriculum leadership among schoolteachers. Previous papers have focused on reporting evidence of teacher learning in the process of engaging teachers in various types of curriculum decision-making in an innovation project based on interview data. This…

The development of intercultural competence, especially in foreign language instruction, is considered a key goal of teaching in German schools. The present article sheds light on the teaching of intercultural topics in the context of English as a foreign language (EFL). It presents the results of an analysis of data from a larger study (DESI…