Historians of American foreign relations are continuing to expand the ways in which they approach the Cold War. The range of perspectives has evolved thanks to the influence of emerging fields and new emphases in history. The end of the Cold War revealed the many ways in which the conflict was a protracted global war. But it also brought a renewed…

Interest in study skills, one of the older realms of educational research, is enjoying a resurgence. Several forces in the field have fueled renewed interest in how learners can best use academic, organizational, and time-management skills to master content. As teacher leaders at a high school, the authors remain in contact with many of their…

While school textbooks are assumed to be written for and used by students, it is widely acknowledged that they also serve a vital support function for teachers, particularly in times of curriculum change. A basic assumption is that biology textbooks are scientifically accurate. Furthermore, because of the negative impact of…

In the urban high school where the author was teaching, grade 11 AP Literature classes were studying Toni Morrison's novel "Beloved" through literature circles. She had noticed that students undertook the role of Illustrator with immense effort, purpose, and creativity. Moreover, the group discussions surrounding the Illustrator's visual…

Background: This process study is a companion to a randomized evaluation of a school-based, peer-led comprehensive sexual health education program, Teen Prevention Education Program (Teen PEP), in which 11th- and 12th-grade students are trained by school health educators to conduct informative workshops with ninth-grade peers in schools in North…

In Life Sciences (biology) education, both nationally and internationally, the study of animal and organ morphology has traditionally involved dissection since the early 19th century. This study focused on the inclinations of teachers and learners towards animal organ dissection, and its use in problem-solving in Grade 11 Life Sciences education…

In this study, we explored how students make use of whole-class interaction in individual writing. Although various studies show the importance of classroom interaction for writing, little is known about how this works, particularly in history. Starting point is the idea that learning can move from the interpersonal level in classroom discourse to…

This article reports on a study of six Grade 11 learners' levels of understanding of concepts related to the function definition and representation. Task-based clinical interviews were used to elicit the learners' interpretations and reasoning when working with these function-related concepts. Indicators for Action-Process-Object-Schema (APOS)…

The purpose of this study was to develop a mechanical critical thinking scale for high school students. A stratified random sampling method was used to establish the norms. After pre-tests and item analysis, the scale was determined to have five subtest sections (i.e., recognition of assumptions, induction, deduction, interpretation, and…

We present two studies that investigated the adoption of visual/spatial and analytic strategies by individuals at different levels of expertise in the area of organic chemistry, using the Visual Analytic Chemistry Task (VACT). The VACT allows the direct detection of analytic strategy use without drawing inferences about underlying mental…

Using a sample of schools testing annually in grades 9-11 with a vertically linked series of assessments, a latent growth curve model is used to model test scores with student intercepts and slopes nested within school. Missed assessments can occur because of student mobility, student dropout, absenteeism, and other reasons. Missing data…

As part of curriculum changes in South Africa, an introductory programming language, Scratch, must first be taught before switching to the well-established teaching of Delphi. The nature of programming in Scratch is considerably different from that in Delphi. It was assumed that the teaching of Scratch as introductory programming language could…

This paper discusses the Khanyisa Programme, an initiative in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, where learners from under-resourced schools are supported by teachers and high achievers in Grade 11 and 12 from a previously advantaged state school under apartheid. A qualitative, evaluative study was undertaken to identify key elements in the ongoing…

This study focuses on teacher's Knowledge for Teaching Mathematics with Technology (KTMT), paying a special attention to teacher's representational fluency. It intends to characterize how the teacher uses and integrates the different representations provided by the graphing calculator on the process of teaching and learning functions at the high…

Purpose: This study examined the agreement between estimated peak oxygen consumption (VO[subscript 2peak]) obtained from the Progressive Aerobic Cardiovascular Endurance Run (PACER) fitness test and equated PACER laps derived from One-Mile Run time (MR). Methods: A sample of 680 participants (324 boys and 356 girls) in Grades 7 through 12…