More than chalkboards: classroom spaces and collaborative learning attitudes

Learning Environments Research - The well-known benefits of collaborative learning have prompted the development of active learning classrooms that are designed to facilitate peer interaction....     

The role of instructional variables in conceptual change in high school physics topics

This study was conducted to determine the effect of three variables on conceptual change in physics. Ninth and 10th-grade students who, despite instruction, still held nonscientific intuitive ideas about the motion of objects participated in viewing a demonstration, engaged in student-to-student discussion, and/or read a refutational text about Newton's laws of motion. Students (N = 310) were randomly assigned within classes to eight groups representing combinations of the three activities and participated in pretesting, instruction, and posttesting. Posttest results revealed that reading the refutational text helped students change their intuitive ideas to scientific ones, while seeing a demonstration affected how students interacted with group and text on some measures. Discussing ideas in a group did not lead to significant learning of scientific notions but, rather, caused students to be less influenced by either the demonstration or the text.     

Interest-enhancing approaches to mathematics curriculum design: Illustrations and personalization

Two common interest-enhancement approaches in mathematics curriculum design are illustrations and personalization of problems to students’ interests. The objective of these experiments is to test a variety of illustrations and personalization approaches. In the illustrations experiment, students (n?=?265) were randomly assigned to lessons with story problems containing decorative illustrations, contextual illustrations, diagrammatic illustrations, misleading illustrations, or no illustrations (only text [control condition]). Students’ problem-solving performance and attitudes were not affected by illustration condition, but learning was better in the control compared with contextual illustrations. In the personalization experiment, students (n?=?223) were randomly assigned to story problems that were either personalized based on: a survey of their interests, their choice of interest topics, a randomly assigned interest topic, or the original nonpersonalized story problem (control). The findings indicated there were benefits for choice personalization both for performance in the problem set as well as on a later learning assessment.     

“Stop! You didn't read who wrote It!”: The concept of author

Virginia Lowe has lectured in both children's and English literature at several Australian teachers' colleges and is currently a school librarian. She has published a monograph,Adult Book Child, and several articles on books and young children.     

An Experimental Approach to Evaluating the Viability of Potential Applicants for Assistant Principal Vacancies

Despite the purported national shortage of qualified applicants for administrator vacancies, there is little empirical research regarding assistant principal recruitment. This study involved an experiment to evaluate the viability of teachers as applicants for assistant principal vacancies. ANOVA results indicated administrator certification program status (admitted, not admitted) and school level (elementary, middle school, high school) explained 28% of the variance in job ratings. Teachers who were enrolled in administrator certification programs rated the job higher than did teachers who were not enrolled in administrator preparation programs. Middle school teachers rated the job higher than did high school teachers. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.     

The Linguistic Mass/Count Distinction as an Indicator of Referent Categorization in Monolingual and Bilingual Children

This study examines the acquisition of the linguistic mass/count distinction in English by bilingual (Spanish-English) children. The goal of the study is to explore whether bilingual children, like their monolingual peers, can draw information from the linguistic context in which a new noun id presented to determine whether the new word refers to an object or a substance. Results indicate that at 7 years of age, even bilinguals who are strong in English do not yet draw such inferences. By 9 years of age, however, bilinguals who are strong in English have response patterns similar to those of their monolingual peers but bilinguals who have lower English abilities still lag behind their monolingual peers in drawing such inferences.     

Classroom Process and Practices in Public Pre-K Programs: Describing and Predicting Educational Opportunities in the Early Learning Sector

Research Findings: The present study used data from 117 publicly funded preschool classrooms within a large, diverse, suburban county to describe teacher practices and child engagement along with classroom activity settings and children’s exposure to instructional content. Practice or Policy: Results from this investigation revealed that children spent the largest share of the day in teacher-directed whole-group instruction and in free play and very little time was spent in individual and small-group settings. Although a 3rd of the school day was dedicated to academic activities, there were few opportunities for socioemotional learning, and children spent roughly a 3rd of the school day in routines/transitions and meals. Few differences emerged in the classroom observations across school- and community-based programs; however, more educated and experienced teachers spent more time teaching and in teacher-directed instruction.     

Effect of the implicit combinatorial model on combinatorial reasoning in secondary school pupils

Elementary combinatorial problems may be classified into three different combinatorial models (selection, partition and distribution). The main goal of this research was to determine the effect of the implicit combinatorial model on pupils' combinatorial reasoning before and after instruction. When building the questionnaire, we also considered the combinatorial operation and the nature of elements as task variables. The analysis of variance of the answers from 720 14–15 year-old pupils showed the influence of the implicit combinatorial model on problem difficulty and the interaction of all the factors with instruction. Qualitative analysis also revealed the dependence of error types on task variables. Consequently, the implicit combinatorial model should be considered as a didactic variable in organising elementary combinatorics teaching.