The idea of active learning was first introduced to kindergarten teachers in Hong Kong in 1981 when they received their in-service teacher education. In a two-year, school-based project, 60 teachers in five schools were asked to create collaborative videos about models of good practices after sharing "effective" teaching episodes with…

Much has been written about the promise of online learning environments for higher education, and there is a rapidly growing body of research examining the nature of learning and interaction in such courses. This article presents a discourse analysis of an interactive, text-based, online, graduate education course, designed and taught according to…

Entertainment media is a part of everyday life for most adults, including adult educators. This paper reports on a mixed method study, informed by social constructivism and critical media literacy, exploring US adult educators' consumption of entertainment media, how it affects their thinking about group identities, and how they draw on it in…

I define the "literacy autobiography" as a reflective, first-person account of one's development as a writing being. In this article I share a classroom practice that invited language learners to consider and compose their literacy autobiographies (LA). The context was a university credit English as a second language (ESL) classroom. The purposes…

The name of Zoltan P. Dienes (1916- ) stands with those of Jean Piaget, Jerome Bruner, Edward Begle, and Robert Davis as a legendary figure whose work left a lasting impression on the field of mathematics education. Dienes' name is synonymous with the multibase blocks that he invented for the teaching of place value. Among numerous other things,…

We describe research carried out with a prospective secondary biology teacher, whom we shall call Miguel. The teacher's conceptions of the nature of science and of learning and teaching science were analyzed and compared with his classroom practice when teaching science lessons. The data gathering procedures were interviews analyzed by means of…

Geographic information systems (GIS) are computer-based tools for geographic data analysis and spatial visualization. They have become one of the information and communications technologies for education at all levels. This article reviews the current status of GIS in schools, analyzes the requirements of a GIS-based learning environment from…

There is currently a disparity between the way reading instruction is conducted in many of today's schools and the method by which students' reading is assessed. Additionally, traditional assessments often ignore learner differences in culture, ability, learning style, and background, while focusing on static results that involve little to no…

Background: Most studies have investigated college and high school students' epistemological beliefs in Western contexts, with few studies examining how beliefs about learning are related to children's strategies and comprehension in the Chinese cultural context. Aims: The present study investigated Chinese elementary school children's beliefs…

Teachers who attempt to promote metacognitive learning strategies in their pupils usually encounter resistance because the pupils believe that they should be instructed by a teacher. One step in overcoming such resistance is to help students to recognize and discuss their implicit views. This document describes a repertory grid which can be used…

This guide for adults provides directions for setting up activities to help children ages two to eight discover scientific facts using familiar materials. The activities are child centered and are presented from a constructivist perspective which acknowledges that children and adults need to form their own hypotheses and keep applying them through…

Piagetian and Vygotskian theories may be used as starting points to examine the role of play in development and learning from a constructivist perspective, including how children use play to deepen their understanding and skills, encounter new problems, and incorporate newly mastered skills into their play. Contemporary factors such as an emphasis…

Beginning teachers experience problems in moving from a traditional classroom environment to a constructivist classroom, especially in their use of traditional language. Traditional language not only does not work in a constructivist classroom, but hinders the creating and sustaining of such. Teachers can change the language they use in the…

This volume contains 48 papers and 9 abstracts/research notes. Titles include: "Alternative constructs and cognitive development: commonalities, divergences and possibilities for evidence"; "Discipline knowledge and confidence to teach science: self-perceptions of primary teacher education students"; "Teacher beliefs about…

Defining better implicit models of children's actions in a series of situations is of paramount importance to understanding how knowledge is constructed. The objective of this study was to analyze the implicit mental models used by children in complex change problems to understand the stability of the models and their evolution with the child's…