Analyzes prior knowledge based on the idea of knowledge structure; the relevance of using knowledge profiles is important in independent, distance learning. Suggests that prior knowledge can be helpful to enhance a student's learning process, to design more flexible learning environments, and to provide institutional support. (Author/AEF)

Speculates about connections among educators' ideas of best practice, school organization, and policy. Develops six principles of best educational practice. These connect to organization and policy through resolving four recurring problems: how students are grouped, how teachers' work is defined, how content is allocated to time, and how student…

Focuses on the teaching of language "per se," in the part of the lesson that often precedes work with a passage and the interactional activities that result from that exploitation. The optimum three-way split between formal language work, grammar-awareness raising, and communicative activities will vary from class to class. (CK)

A mental model analysis was conducted with 27 graduate and 29 undergraduate students in the statistical hypothesis testing domain to determine the nature of relevant mental models that can be taught to novices. Results suggest the efficacy of using separate and diagrammatic strategies in teaching novices introductory hypothesis testing. (SLD)

Discussion of the role of language and dialogue in adult learning looks at dialogue as epistemology and at talk as learning. It is proposed that the challenge in teaching and retaining adult learners is to create dialogue-rich classrooms, including many external speech opportunities, small-group discussion, and group projects. (MSE)

This paper argues that the ability to rapidly compare phonemes is a primary sensory-cognitive function underlying self-correction in word recognition and spelling and thus, indirectly, reading comprehension. Such phonological defects can be addressed both preventively and remedially using procedures that are fundamentally different from typical…

Effects of 2 types of oral language training programs on development of phonological awareness skills and word learning ability were examined for 48 kindergartners. Children receiving analytic and synthetic training improved significantly on both types of skills, but children receiving synthetic skills training alone improved only in blending…

According to the management perspective, educational practice is a technical process with predictable and guaranteed outcomes. This viewpoint is reflected in the New South Wales (Australia) Scott Report on educational reform. However, this approach must be challenged, and uncertainty and unpredictability in education must be acknowledged and…

In "The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization" (1990), Peter Senge shows how educators can achieve meaningful change and transform schools into self-renewing learning organizations. Organizations must develop five disciplines: personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems…

Ninety physical education teachers completed the Value Orientation Inventory to determine the extent to which they made consistent decisions regarding student learning goals within five educational value orientations. Results indicated that 97 percent made consistent curricular and instructional decisions within one or more value orientations. (SM)

Examines the psychological basis of hypermedia as a medium for learning, surveys the characteristics of current hypermedia systems, and suggests ways to make hypermedia systems more valuable as instructional environments. Highlights include parallels between human memory and hypermedia architectures; and hypermedia as knowledge presentation,…

Article agrees with Gage's paper that the process-product paradigm contributes to knowledge about teaching. It suggests modifications to traditional methodology for increasing the explanatory power of such research. It questions whether the product end of the paradigm actually indicates learning and discusses implications of the paradigm for…

The collaborative conversation of the researcher and seven relatively new female teachers is described to contribute to an epistemological understanding of learning to teach while raising questions about facilitating and studying the learning of beginning teachers. Also noted is the emergence of a feminist consciousness in the participants. (SLD)

The uses that chemistry students (undergraduates, postgraduate, and trainee teachers) make of analog models when relating equations to projects were identified. Although only a restricted use of such models were found, and for none of the reasons valued by practicing chemists, patterns were identified. The implications for chemical education at…

This article argues that higher education's current preoccupation with student evaluations of teachers encourages student passivity and disregards the importance of the contribution learners must make to learn; students who grade faculty for four years are being taught to blame someone else for their failures. (MSE)