The role of Israel in the identity of North American Jews is of concern and interest to community leaders, philosophers of Jewish education, and most important, practitioners in the field. Although there is an awareness of the need to help emerging Jewish educators grapple with the complex questions surrounding Israel engagement, little research…

The purpose of this study is to examine how a school-based leadership team identifies and alters school conditions to foster the development of TLCs. Many educators, school leaders, and politicians have embraced teacher learning communities (TLCs) as a vehicle for school reform. Despite the considerable documentation of the capability for TLCs to…

The most productive learning experience for students whether online or in face-to-face classes can often be the interaction among students and with an instructor. Online teaching and Social Network Analysis (SNA) offer the opportunity to examine intellectual social networking and strategies that promotes student interaction which can enhance…

This study adopts a case study approach to investigate the impacts of synchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) learning environments on learners' perception of social presence. The participants were twelve French as a foreign language (FFL) beginners in a Taiwanese university. Divided into three groups, they conducted some tasks in three…

This study investigated the effects of visual cues in multiple external representations (MER) environment on the learning performance of novices' program comprehension. Program codes and flowchart diagrams were used as dual representations in multimedia environment to deliver lessons on C-Programming. 17 field independent participants and 16 field…

Considering Canada's Tri-Council statement on the ethical conduct for research involving human subjects, we discuss some of the ethical challenges of doing research on teaching and learning in which one's own students and teaching act as the context of such scholarly activity. We advocate establishing basic principles based in the complex…

The learning curve is high for novice special education teachers. They must assume full teaching responsibilities, while at the same time become familiar with district and school policies, curriculum, and assessment policies and procedures. They are expected to build relationships with administrators, teachers, paraprofessionals, families, and…

Citation is one of the most prominent features of academic writing through which academic writers both exhibit the breadth of their scholarship in a specific research area and subtly demonstrate their memberships of the disciplinary community. Citations are important rhetorical devices that allow seasoned writers to promote their current research…

This article explores the talk among novice teachers who participated in an inquiry project designed to rethink the instruction for their struggling students by drawing upon competence rather than deficiencies. A critical discourse analysis (CDA) based on theories of systemic functional linguistics and CDA provided tools to explore how their use…

This comparative case study investigated the educational software evaluation processes of both experts and novices in conjunction with a software evaluation checklist. Twenty novice elementary education students, divided into groups of five, and three experts participated. Each novice group and the three experts evaluated educational software…

Self-authorship, a theory developed by Robert Kegan (1982) and applied to college students by Marcia Baxter Magolda, is the ability to internally define one's own beliefs, identity, and relationships (Baxter Magolda, 2001). People who self-author have the ability to make career, academic, relationship, and life decisions that take into…

Objective: To determine whether differences in nutrition knowledge affected how women (a high-involvement group) interpreted intrinsic cues (ingredient list) and extrinsic cues ("all natural" label) on food labels. Methods: A 2 (intrinsic cue) x 2 (extrinsic cue) x 2 (nutrition knowledge expert vs novice) within-subject factorial design…

Autonomy in language learning does not simply equate with independence, as language learning is a social activity that requires interaction with others. This also applies just as much to distance language learners, who need to reconcile independent language learning and interdependence with others. This article draws on findings from 43 mid-course…

The nature of expertise in astronomy was investigated across a broad spectrum of ages and experience in China and New Zealand. Five hypotheses (capable of quantification and statistical analysis) were used to probe types of expertise identified by previous researchers: (a) domain-specific knowledge-skill in the use of scientific vocabulary and…

This paper presents research findings related to the "Dynamic Enhanced Evaluation of Problem Solving (DEEP)" (Spector & Koszalka, 2004) methodology for assessing how participants conceptualize ill-defined problems in biology using annotated concept maps. The methodology engages highly experienced (expert) and less experienced…