Forms part of a themed issue describing "Parent-Kid-Teacher Investigators," a program in which parents, children, and teachers gather regularly to use language and literacy for action research projects. Looks at the way involvement in the program nourished relationships among diverse individuals. Describes social relationships built at the…

Forms part of a themed issue describing "Parent-Kid-Teacher Investigators," a program in which parents, children, and teachers gather regularly to use language and literacy for action research projects. Discusses ways in which schools and families are alike in building a supportive environment for learning. Illustrates conditions contributing to…

Discusses the project approach in early childhood curriculum, a natural, teacher-supported companion to teacher-directed activities that develops basic skills and recognizes the child's need for hands-on experimentation to make learning meaningful. Describes the three phases of project approach: investigation, fieldwork, and display. Offers…

Professor of Education Yetta M. Goodman discusses her realization that teachers should showcase and support students rather than being the center of attention themselves, the importance of teachers observing their students in various contexts, the degrading aspect of grades, and the rights and responsibilities of teachers as professionals to state…

Suggests ways in which a teacher or visitor can tell whether children are gaining from their science activities: classroom presence of real things to learn from, children working with these materials, and more talking by students than by the teacher. Lists observational questions about student work, behavior, and communication that can be used to…

It is time to stop viewing rural schools and communities as deficient and build on their tremendous assets--small size, an understanding of the connection between humans and nature, greater access to civic life, strong school-community ties, a sense of place and community, and cultural diversity. Examples describe innovative programs initiated by…

Describes an exercise that combines outlined strategies to help students master the abstruse power of the linguistic relativity hypotheses in divining the relationship among language, thought, and culture in U.S. society. States the exercise accomplishes three important pedagogical tasks and that educator interaction with students motivates the…

The reasons to introduce formats of active learning in engineering (ALE) such as project work, problem-based learning, use of cases, etc. are mostly based on practical experience, and sometimes from applied research on teaching and learning. Such research shows that students learn more and different abilities than in traditional formats of…

There is substantial evidence that scientific teaching in the sciences, i.e. teaching that employs instructional strategies that encourage undergraduates to become actively engaged in their own learning, can produce levels of understanding, retention and transfer of knowledge that are greater than those resulting from traditional lecture/lab…

Design and technology (D&T) education involves learners coping creatively with complexity. It must take account of a wide range of often apparently conflicting demands and constraints: aesthetic, economic, political, ethical, social, and environmental as well as ergonomic, technical, and scientific. Case study tasks describe a relatively…

This paper reports on a teaching and learning technique that uses the power of everyday body language and proxemics to illustrate forms of social inequality. More significantly, the active learning exercises assist students to feel the fact that the making and maintaining of power relations is an intimate and visceral matter. In keeping with…

New information technologies can act as a Trojan horse offering activities that will require major changes in the teaching-learning process. Computer aided learning applications are able to offer advanced students the opportunity to improve their skills and to maintain their motivation. In the spirit of "learning by doing", they are…

Computer-based learning environments commonly comprise symbolic as well as static and dynamic pictorial representations, frequently combined with the possibility of modifying them interactively. While multiple, dynamic and interactive external representations have the potential to improve learning in various ways, they also place specific demands…

An active learning environment is one in which students are able to "seek" out new experiences, "interpret" them, and "relate" them to previous experiences. This approach allows students to engage in independent thinking, problem solving, and guided discovery as they explore broad movement concepts. An active learning means that students are…

Technologies such as videoconferencing used for distance education are creating ways for high schools to extend their learning communities to connect youth with professional communities of practice in ways that approximate the face-to-face interactions in traditional classrooms. These technologies are often touted as a way to augment course…