This experiment investigated the effect of the presentation of a globe--the culturally accepted artifact representing the earth--on children's reasoning in elementary astronomy. Forty-four children from grades 1 and 3 were interviewed individually. First, the children were asked to make their own representations of the earth (i.e., drawings and…

For the last few years, the author has been implementing a pedagogy that infuses musical composition--specifically the recording of electronic music--into his first-year composition courses. The author and his students have been quite surprised by the theoretical and practical connections that exist between the production of popular electronic…

This article is about a computer lab project in which prospective teachers used Geometer's Sketchpad software to create two-dimensional nets for three-dimensional shapes. Since this software package does not contain ready-made tools for creating non-regular or regular polygons, the students used prior knowledge and geometric facts to create their…

While astronomy has recently re-emerged in many science curricula, there remain unresolved teaching and learning difficulties peculiar to astronomy education. This paper argues that mental model building, the core process in astronomy itself, should be reflected in astronomy education. Also, this crucial skill may promote a better understanding of…

Much has been written about literacy and popular culture but less about the role, if any, of popular culture in children's play. In view of the fact that play is recognized by many as a primary mode of learning, particularly in the early years, and also as an essential process in the representation of ideas and feelings, this is something that…

This is a manual for those considering the role of Tutor in an educational programme following Open and Distance Learning (ODL) methodologies. To introduce the concept of self-learning, the manual is designed to be self-instructional: (1) Self paced; (2) Easy to read; (3) Easy to follow the instructions; (4) Illustrated with examples to enhance…

The emergence of what is increasingly becoming known as the knowledge age implies that higher education should prepare students to be, primarily, knowledge workers. This proposition triggered a small scale study in which structured interviews were carried out with 25 second-year undergraduates registered for a psychology module on motivational…

Prisoner's Dilemma is a common game theory scenario in which two players must choose between acting cooperatively or out of pure self-interest. What a player decides affects not only his own outcome but also that of the other player. "Friend or Foe," a TV game show that has appeared on the cable Game Show Network (GSN), places pairs of contestants…

This article looks at the importance of student-generated analogies, metaphors, and similes as an entry point into their understandings of HIV/AIDS. In addition, it argues that analogies, metaphors, and similes are good tools for eliciting students' prior understandings of HIV/AIDS, especially matters relating to sexuality that are often…

This study investigates how different types of prior knowledge influence student achievement and how different assessment measures influence the observed effect of prior knowledge. We introduce a model of prior knowledge that distinguishes between different types of prior knowledge and uses different assessment measures to assess different types…

In this article, experiences of beginning primary teachers on an English employment-based route into teaching, called the Graduate Teacher Programme, are presented and evaluated. Factors affecting the progress of trainee teachers on the programme are explored, including prior work experience, expectations of the participants and levels of support…

This study describes the interactions of three adult-child reading partnerships in a program that matches corporate volunteers with "at risk" students for weekly hour-long story reading sessions. Using discourse analysis within a sociocultural framework, the researcher identified variation in the way these partners were constructing the act and…

With 104 advanced second language (L2) readers, this investigation seeks to construct a multicomponent model of interest and L2 reading. Sources of interest (SI) refer to variables that induce feelings of interest in a text. Perceived interest (PI) refers to the feeling of interest itself (Schraw, Bruning, & Svoboda, 1995). A factor analysis…

This chapter highlights the central role of experience in learning and consciousness; it also outlines experience-based instructional processes that adult educators can use. (Contains 1 figure.)

Factors affecting performance on base-10 tasks were investigated in a series of four studies with a total of 453 children aged 5-7 years. Training in counting-on was found to enhance child performance on base-10 tasks (Studies 2, 3, and 4), while prior knowledge of counting-on (Study 1), trading (Studies 1 and 3), and partitioning (Studies 1 and…