Limited research has been conducted on inquiry based teaching strategies on language arts and mathematics instruction. The research problem at the study site was the lack of research-based findings on the effectiveness of traditional and inquiry based teaching strategies on language arts and mathematics instruction. The purpose of this case study…

Children have immense curiosity, a thirst for knowledge and a questioning attitude. They are innate scientists. The challenge for early childhood educators is to fuel this curiosity through the provision of appropriate learning experiences and an engaging environment within early learning centres. This paper presents a detailed case study of how a…

The research reported in this paper is part of an ongoing investigation into the design of a technology-enhanced learning environment that draws from approaches embodied in the situated learning theory. In this learning context, Second Life machinima (animated artefact filmed in a 3D virtual environment) is used as an anchor to mediate authentic…

Our paper reports upon and critically analyses findings from a two-year research project into the provision of continuing professional development for making purposeful use of Web 2.0 tools in teaching. Based on our research, we make recommendations for delivering effective continuing professional development workshops whilst also acknowledging…

This instructional paper is intended to provide an alternative approach to developing lecture materials, including handouts and PowerPoint slides, successfully developed over several years. The principal objective is to aid in the bridging of traditional "chalk and talk" lecture approaches with more active learning techniques, especially in more…

The freshman research paper can be a labor for both the teacher and the student with its many layers of skills and expectations. While academia has moved beyond note cards and simplified documentation models, students continue to get lost in the research process, often to the point that instructors may even wonder if they had been teaching in an…

This paper describes the use of project-based learning to teach design skills to civil engineering students at University College Dublin (UCD). The paper first considers the development of problem-based leaning (PBL) as a tool in higher education. The general issues to be considered in the design of the curriculum for a PBL module are reviewed.…

We incorporated an active, collaborative-based research project in our undergraduate Research Methods course for first-year sports medicine majors. Working in small groups, students identified a research question, generated a hypothesis to be tested, designed an experiment, implemented the experiment, analyzed the data, and presented their…

In Scotland in recent years there has been growing interest in a more play-based pedagogy commonly described as Active Learning. The research reported in this article is an exploration of moves towards creating an active play-based learning environment in six Primary 1 classrooms in Scotland and is concerned with (i) the children's experiences in…

The acquisition of scientific knowledge is fraught with difficulties and challenges for the learner. The very nature of some scientific domains contributes to the learning difficulties students' experience. Phenomena in these domains are composed of multiple organization levels featuring complicated interactions within and across these levels.…

Computer Science (CS) introductory courses that are offered by the Department of Information Systems at the University of Minho (UM), Portugal, seem to abound in non-motivated students. They are characterized by high failure and withdrawal rates and use mainly deductive teaching approaches. Deductive instruction begins with theories and progresses…

In this paper, we describe an automatic personalization approach aiming to provide online automatic recommendations for active learners without requiring their explicit feedback. Recommended learning resources are computed based on the current learner's recent navigation history, as well as exploiting similarities and dissimilarities among…

A long-duration stimulus will elicit a negative sustained potential (SP) that is maximum in amplitude over fronto-central areas of the scalp. This study examines how the duration of active attentional processing of the stimulus might also elicit a nonsensory contingent negative variation (CNV) that overlaps and summates to the SP. Subjects were…

Due to the rapidly changing knowledge, teachers are supposed to teach their students ways of thinking and gathering information, not certain contents that would change shortly. In this sense, sustainability, which, in part, means the preparation of an individual who has the ability to practise critical thinking and to find creative solutions to…

This article deals with teacher identity development of students enrolled in the teacher training program. The authors, who advocate inquiry-based teaching practices, propose reflective and organizational strategies to support these. In order to gain insights into the experiences and values of student-teacher-researchers (STRs here on) to shape a…