Researchers from BBN Laboratories and Lesley College (Massachusetts) have begun exploratory studies to build an understanding of the learning that occurs when middle school students interact with science-based simulations. Sixty hours of discussion among eight middle school students were videotaped as they used the simulations from the…

This book, which is designed for individuals interested in changing and developing their organizations, examines the organizational learning cycle and ways of learning collectively. Among the topics discussed in the book's nine chapters are the following: (1) changing nature of work and organizational learning; (2) theoretical framework of…

Professional knowledge created as teachers interact with the complexity of variables related to teaching and learning in active, thoughtful, reflective practice, is essential to expert teaching. This qualitative study is designed to describe and define the factors (processes) that are pertinent to the process of reflection as it is utilized by…

Because of the emphasis placed on language and the language process by both foreign language and special education, one must examine both the theoretical and the methodological similarities between the two areas. Even though differences between the students should be noted, what really needs to be examined is the learning process itself. This…

This research summary focuses on learning preferences of early adolescents and their relationships with academic achievement and gender. The classroom structures under study were cooperative (working with peers in accomplishing academic material), competitive (competing with peers in academic endeavors), and individualistic (having no involvement…

Recognizing that for young children, play is a tool for learning, this book compiles contributions by different authors, reflecting both up-to-date research and current classroom practice as they relate to children's play. Part 1 of the book explores the value of play as a cross-cultural concept as well as one rooted in the Western world. Gender…

The question of why some second language learners are more successful than others is examined from two different approaches. One looks at the social distance between the speakers of the target language and the learner's native language and, on one hand, the resulting learner and target-language-speaker attitudes and, on the other hand, the type…

It is the responsibility of the nation's schools to teach students to become lifelong, independent, self-assertive learners and evaluators of information. If schools are to analyze and evaluate whether or not they adequately address the goal of teaching learning skills across the curriculum, a conception of the components of learning skills and…

Many women in two-year colleges are returning to education after having been away from a school setting for an extended period of time. In a community college writing class, written comments to a teacher on the first day of class indicated that women were considerably less self-confident than the men, with several revealing fear of expressing…

A model of foreign language instruction for professionals, particularly those with limited time and budget, is proposed. Principal components of the model include: (1) a detailed, diagnostic linguistic profile of the learner, including lexical, grammatical, sociolinguistic, and sociocultural characteristics; (2) an inventory of the learner's…

This study examined the effect of an innovative teaching activity to improve concrete operational thinking skills with preschoolers in Head Start programs. A "learning set" of classification games and seriation games was used to teach the oddity principle and insertion into a series. These games were played with the children using toy ponies and…

A study investigated common discourse features in the Spanish of six novice-level Spanish second language learners, as evidenced in oral interviews by two interviewers. Features examined included use of cohesive devices, use of the first language, whispering to self, scaffolding with the interviewer to express themselves, and negotiation. Results…

This pamphlet discusses the role of play in the development of young children and the importance of avoiding placing young children exclusively in programs with a strong academic orientation. Presented in a question-answer format, the pamphlet includes information regarding: (1) the importance of providing opportunities for young children to learn…

This document contains five papers from a symposium on advances in qualitative research in human resource development (HRD). "Case Study and Its Virtuoso Possibilities" (Verna J. Willis) asserts that the case study method is particularly well suited for research in HRD because its creative and investigative possibilities have not yet…

This paper reports on a project aimed at designing, implementing, and evaluating a hypermedia system, IPER-3, facing the three classical problems in the history of mathematics (i.e., trisection of the angle, quadrature of the circle, and duplication of the cube). The goal of the project is to study the opportunities offered by this kind of…