The Independent Investigation Method is presented, a model developed to enable gifted students to grow in their independence as they move through a research assignment. The seven-step process guides elementary students from beginning to end in the research process, including topic, goal setting, research, organizing, goal evaluation, product, and…

In school library research programs, a challenge for students doing research emerges when they take their projects home and turn to their parents for assistance. Often parents lack sufficient knowledge of the research process to be able to effectively help their children. Moreover, teachers expect parents to monitor student homework but rarely…

Undergraduate research is an important learning experience for students and at small teaching-centered institutions with limited resources, research opportunities on campus can be insufficient to accommodate all interested students. However, to encourage these students to apply for such opportunities, a model that involves establishing partnership…

The convergent synthesis of borrelidin is an actively pursued research project by undergraduate chemistry students at Chico State and the varied laboratory techniques, chemistry and required spectral analysis give them a rich undergraduate research experience. Each student who has worked on borrelidin has made a positive contribution to the…

Theorists consider student interest central to effective education, but undergraduates have varying interest in psychological research. We developed a measure of interest in psychological research and tested person-level predictors of interest in a sample of undergraduate psychology students (N = 139). Interest in psychological research was low to…

The field of synthetic biology (the name is derived from an analogy to synthetic chemistry) has recognized itself as a "field" only since about 2002. Synthetic biology has gotten some high-profile attention recently, but most people are not aware the field even exists. Synthetic biologists apply engineering principles to genomic circuits to…

Educators are busier than ever before. What practitioner has time to add "researcher" to his or her job description? Yet the very complexity of education today mandates that educators become researchers. Educators cannot do their jobs properly unless they become researchers who have the goal of fostering a culture of inquiry throughout the entire…

It may be true that students are born with an innate interest in science and technology. However, teachers say many students do not sustain that interest through their school years. In this article, the author describes the Toshiba/NSTA ExploraVision program. One of the world's largest K-12 science and technology competitions, ExploraVision is a…

Archivists have created millions of digital primary source images that have contributed to the transformation in history teaching. This generation of students arrive on the college campus familiar with primary source documents but as yet unprepared to search finding aids or understand archival collections. This review of archival, educational, and…

In the last issue, this journal asked a question on many librarians' minds, and it was pleased with the depth and variety of responses. As suggested by this journal editorial board member Oliver Pesch, readers were asked, "Many libraries have gone to federated searching to win users back from Google. Is it working?" Respondents approached the…

Not only are the hills alive with the sound of music, but the school library media center at Delsea Regional High School in Franklinville, New Jersey, is alive with the sound of reading. The media center has become a hub of reading, because the school library media specialist has made the promotion of reading and reading-incentive activities an…

Graduate programmes in instructional design/educational technology are, by their nature, continuously being updated and improved. As a most recent iteration of the ever-evolving graduate experience, an experimental programme at Pennsylvania State University's Instructional Systems programme takes as its centerpiece a research apprenticeship in…

Student use of electronic books has become an accepted supplement to traditional resources. Student use and satisfaction was monitored through an online course discussion board. Increased use of electronic books indicate this service is an accepted supplement to the print book collection.

In this article, the author vitalizes her British literature course by asking seniors to investigate, through an I-Search paper, the concept of heroism. Students research a historic or contemporary individual, drawing on their understanding of heroic literary figures previously studied, and interview family, community members, and others connected…

Over the years of teaching, the author has been more and more interested in making course content and goals relevant to the real, lived experiences of students. Based on this interest and spurred by an article on community-based research in "Teaching English in the Two-Year College" (TETYC) in September of 2005 as well as a move in composition to…