Service learning can be a vehicle to promote democracy in the teacher education classroom. Incorporating service learning into a teacher education program is an uphill battle: teacher candidates lead complicated lives with professional and family responsibilities, some continue long-standing volunteer commitments to their communities, and course…

Theatre is a powerful tool for organizing one's experience. It is an instructional technique that motivates students as they seek to understand and communicate their learning. This article provides a foundation for using theatre as a learning strategy in the content areas for students with reading and learning disabilities, using metacognition as…

Education aims to enable students not only to acquire knowledge but also to become capable and enthusiastic lifelong learners. Prior research has found that learning is more likely to be effective where a student plays a proactive role in the learning process. Such a proactive process, including learning on students' own initiative and strategies,…

Synchronous communication has a great potential to increase individual participation and group collaboration. Despite increasing use, scant research has been conducted on variables impacting successful synchronous learning. This study focuses on learner experiences in a real-time communication mediated by the Breeze web-based collaboration system.…

A growing research base on adolescent literacy supports an emphasis on direct instruction in the reading and writing skills needed to perform these more complex literacy tasks. However, many middle and high school teachers have little or no preparation for teaching these skills within their content-area disciplines and have few resources upon…

This volume in the Language Teacher Research Series (Thomas S. C. Farrell, series editor) presents research conducted by language teachers at all levels, from high school English teachers to English language teacher educators, reflecting on their practices. The countries represented in this book are Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador,…

Each child In Finland and in Estonia receives preschool training for a year before going to school, based on a new national framework curriculum of preschool education. The aim of the present study was to compare children's learning achievements in nine target areas, based on the teacher's evaluations at the end of the preschool year, in both…

In a face-to-face classroom, the instructor can easily diagnose students' motivational status by observing their facial expressions and postures, but such cues are absent in an online classroom. Therefore, online instructors often estimate students' motivational level based on their online behavior such as the number of messages they post, and…

Authentic learning designs have been explored for some time now and have frequently been shown to provide learning settings that provide many meaningful contexts for learning. These meaningful contexts provide not only encouragement for students to learn but also a raft of learning enhancements including higher-order learning and forms of learning…

A curricular and instructional framework for increasing the vocabulary skills of diverse learners is described. Areas of convergence in research literature on vocabulary learning and diverse learners are noted, and two recommendations based on these areas of convergence are offered: interventions to address the vocabulary delays of diverse…

Reflecting the diverse philosophies and experiences of clinicians and practitioners, this book presents 30 essays that address the identification of reading strengths and weaknesses, assessment, and instructional strategies for remediation. Chapters in the book are (1) "The Role of Vision in Reading Disability" (Lois B. Bing); (2) "Problems with…

This serial presents articles, reports, and conference reports on various topics concerned with language-related areas, including general linguistics, teaching methodology, curriculum development, testing, evaluation, educational technology, language planning, and bilingual education. Articles in this volume are: (1) "Task Difficulty From the…

Educational curricula have often been shaped more by worldwide standards and modern values than by national or regional influences and may, in some cases, be irrelevant to student and local community needs. This paper explores ways in which curricula can be adapted to a region's specific, social, political, and regional conditions. It begins with…

The Research for Better Schools Urban Education Project is working with teachers in Baltimore (Maryland) and Washington (District of Columbia) to reduce the alienation of many urban students by exploring how to align what students bring to school with classroom learning. This effort is centered around the concept of learner experience, an…

The Research for Better Schools Urban Education Project is working with educators in Baltimore (Maryland) and Washington (District of Columbia) to explore how to align what students bring to school with classroom learning. This effort is centered around the concept of learner experience, an outgrowth of the project's Urban Learner Framework (ULF),…