Successful inclusion is directly related to collaboration success between the special education specialist and the general classroom teacher. The role of the special educator has undergone steady change ever since students with exceptionalities were intentionally included in regular classrooms. This role now requires effective collaborative…

The purpose of this paper is to describe the procedures and the analysis of an instrument designed to measure preservice teachers' ability to develop appropriate 5E learning cycle lesson plans. The 5E "inquiry lesson plan" (ILP) rubric is comprised of 12 items with a scoring range of zero to four points per item. Content validity was…

A critical element of an introductory course in business law includes an understanding of the court process and dispute resolution. At Georgia State University (GSU), the authors have required undergraduate business students to make a "court visit" to witness this process in action and to broaden students' basic understanding of the role…

We assessed the benefits of employing microthemes--short in-class writing assignments designed to facilitate active learning--as pedagogical tools in psychology courses. Students in target course sections completed 10 in-class microthemes during a semester. We designed the microthemes to serve as active learning assignments that would enhance…

The purpose of this qualitative exploratory case study was to determine the pedagogical value of Wiki technology-enhanced instruction for middle grade students. The sample consisted of three Wiki projects representative of work from 6th, 7th, and 8th grade middle school students. The examination of the data collected from the three samples of Wiki…

The purpose of this study was to determine ways "Digital Biographies," a Project Based Learning Unit, developed 21st century skills while simultaneously supporting NCLB accountability standards. The main goal of this study was to inform professional practice by exploring ways to address two separate, seemingly opposing, demands of…

Online learning and teaching is rapidly increasing in many countries, including high schools in the USA and teacher education worldwide. Online and blended approaches to professional and organizational development are, therefore, becoming essential to enable effective and equitable education. Authentic project-based learning to support the…

This paper reports on the results of a 3-year study conducted at the Centre for Schooling and Learning Technologies (CSaLT) at Edith Cowan University in collaboration with the Curriculum Council of Western Australia which concerns the potential to use digital technologies to represent the output from assessment tasks in the senior secondary…

This research focuses on the development and implementation of an adaptive learning and grading system with a goal to increase the effectiveness and quality of feedback to students. By utilizing various concepts from established learning theories, the goal of this research is to improve the quantity, quality, and speed of feedback as it pertains…

Teaching the rock cycle can overwhelm even the most enthusiastic rock hound. As middle school science teachers, we constantly struggle with an appropriate balance between Earth system content and experiential activities. The authors have found that stations can be successfully employed to teach rock cycle content while reinforcing development of…

Writing has special importance in anthropology. Writing fieldnotes is a central methodology for documenting and analyzing culture, and written personal reflections upon this process are viewed as providing insight into how knowledge is produced by a "situated" researcher. That said, there is little discussion in the discipline about the…

The purpose of this study was to describe students' attempts to solve nonroutine math problems and to explore possible correlates of their performance. The focus of this study was on inattended (i.e., intentionally avoided) dimensions that have been underrepresented in the literature, including attitudes, interests, values, aesthetics,…

To many people, standardized testing means multiple-choice testing. However, some tests contain questions that require the test taker to produce the answer, rather than simply choosing it from a list. The required response can be as simple as the writing of a single word as complex as the design of a laboratory experiment to test a scientific…

This paper examines whether three bibliometric indicators--the journal impact factor, citations per paper and the Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative's list of "ranked journals"--can predict the quality of individual research articles as assessed by international experts, both overall and within broad disciplinary…

The research reported here documents scientists' changing practices and attitudes concerning college teaching. Graduate students and postdoctoral scientists participated in long-term, inquiry-based teaching professional development while maintaining an ongoing commitment to research science. Data analysis focused on digital recording and…