There has been renewed discussion of the scientific method, with many voices arguing that it presents a very limited or even wholly incorrect image of the way science is really done. At the same time, the idea of a scientific method is pervasive. This article identifies the scientific method as a simple model for the process of scientific inquiry.…

College students often struggle to understand complex technical language inherent in scientific communication. In some cases, this struggle leads to plagiarism. We performed a statistical analysis to find which teaching strategies are best suited to significantly reducing plagiarism in science courses. (Contains 1 table and 7 figures.)

Case studies challenge students to think, to process ideas at a higher and more complex cognitive level, and to experience science as a process rather than as a collection of facts. This article describes an introductory biology course sequence that makes regular and frequent use of case studies, which the author has found has synergistic…

This article recommends that teachers create a Personal Teaching Record as the first step in getting (and staying) organized. The author suggests that teachers create a page that can be duplicated for each week of the school year, listing each of the teaching areas (math, reading, social studies, art, music, etc.) and placing the date at the top.…

A Professional Development Schools partnership between the University of Maryland and other elementary schools in the district worked together to explore, discuss and reflect on the challenges of helping students to write about mathematics. Finding ways to help students effectively communicate their mathematical thinking is a challenge for…

A conceptually sound, research-based method is presented to make sense of students' thinking about length. It is suggested that the levels of framework is an important tool for improving instruction and formative assessment as well as effectively diagnosing and remediating students' difficulties in learning about length. Some of the measurement…

Laura Ingalls Wilder's purpose in writing the "Little House" books for children illustrate the day-to-day experiences of a girl, and her stories provide glimpses into a young mind's conceptualization of aspects of living that are mathematical in nature, such as geometric and quantitative conceptions, logical reasoning and communication, and…

In this study, modeling advantage that depicts the likelihood of a teacher model being imitated by students over other competing models in a particular class was developed to differentiate the rival modeling of two kinds of teachers (the technical teachers vs. the lecturing teachers) between college students' learning styles and occupational…

This new WebWare combines instructional text and Jmol interactive, animated illustrations that help students visualize the mechanism. It is concluded that by animating the fluxional behavior of a simple model for chiral metal catalyst Sn(amidinate)[subscript 2], in which axial/equatorial exchange within the amidinate rings occurs through a Berry…

A set of sophisticated and realistic laboratory simulations is created for use in freshman- and sophomore-level chemistry classes and laboratories called 'Virtual ChemLab'. A detailed assessment of student responses is provided and the simulation's pedagogical utility is described using the organic simulation.

The authors discuss the use of storybooks to promote multicultural sensitivity among elementary school children. The increasing diversity in the United States dictates that children are sensitive to cultural differences of individuals from varied backgrounds. Because they are in a formative stage of life, children are an ideal population with…

Students are sometimes proactive and engaged in classroom learning activities, but they are also sometimes only reactive and passive. Recognizing this, in this article I argue that students' classroom engagement depends, in part, on the supportive quality of the classroom climate in which they learn. According to the dialectical framework within…

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of schema-broadening instruction (SBI), with and without explicit instruction in strategies for tackling the complexities involved in real-life (RL) math problems, on the math problem solving of third-grade students. Teachers (n = 30) were assigned randomly to 3 16-week conditions: control, SBI,…

Examined effectiveness and feasibility of phonological awareness training, with and without a beginning decoding component. Teachers were assigned randomly to three groups: control, phonological awareness training, and phonological awareness training with beginning decoding instruction and practice. Group differences were identified at the end of…

The changes in post-apartheid South Africa have been accompanied by considerable changes in the education system. The most notable include desegregation of schools, development of a National Qualifications Framework, adoption of new language policies for education, and introduction of outcomes-based curricula. However entrenched assessment…