If students are explicitly taught about their brain's capacity to change, their motivation to learn can greatly increase. Marcus Conyers and Donna Wilson, author of "Developing Growth Mindsets," share examples from elementary to high school classrooms where students who are taught about brain plasticity show a greater potential for…

This article seeks to empower teachers to create a literacy environment in which children begin to identify as writers: confident, willing to take risks, engaged, excited, persistent, resilient, resourceful, and self-starting. The teaching methods provided in the article are centered around the writer's workshop model, applied in a Kindergarten…

One of the aims of primary education, as suggested by the Cambridge Primary Review, should be, 'Exploring, knowing, understanding and making sense'. It should give the children 'the opportunity to encounter, explore and engage with the wealth of human experience and the different ways through which humans make sense of the world and act upon it'.…

Many K-16 educators agree that active learning is a key component for student success in life sciences. At the same time, some instructors are frustrated by inconsistent student participation in these activities and may revert to traditional teaching strategies. Horse caregivers face a similar frustration when they lead a horse to water and it…

Students explore the relationship between thrill-seeking rides and their algebra 1 curriculum in an informative, engaging, student-centered lesson that was designed using a project-based-instruction (PBI) framework.

Student Uncertainty as Pedagogical Resource (SUPeR) is a teaching approach that science teachers can use to promote student scientific literacy, practice, and learning. SUPeR helps students navigate scientific uncertainty to improve understanding of scientific concepts and phenomena. The SUPeR approach consists of four phases: (1) problematize a…

This paper presents a summary of Dr. Clinton Lee (Andy) Anderson's 40+ years Military (US Army) Educator Service implementing Dr. Malcolm S. Knowles' perspective on andragogy. Some specifics of Anderson's implementation include five Adult Basic Education (ABE) characteristics of facilitating Knowles' andragogy, six differences between teaching and…

Wales has seen a shift from a performance-driven education system to one focused on the learner (Evans, 2021). The aims of the Curriculum have 'four purposes'. Every child is seen as: (1) an ambitious capable learner; (2) an enterprising, creative contributor; (3) an ethical, informed citizen; and (4) a healthy confident individual. Traditional…

The purpose of this article is to explore the concept of student agency when applied to learning across "The New Zealand Curriculum" (Ministry of Education, 2007). To explore agency the author presents and describes a range of teaching pedagogies that are based on principles of intrinsic motivation. The author describes, with examples,…

Mathematics-related affect comprises an individual's attitudes, beliefs, emotions and motivations towards mathematics. These affective constructs have been widely studied in mathematics education and cognitive psychology and have been shown to be related to cognitive outcomes such as performance on a range of mathematical tasks. However, it is not…

Children learn to find answers when multiplying two whole numbers (e.g., 3 × 7 = 21). To this end, they may repeatedly add one number (e.g., 7 + 7 + 7 = 21). But what meanings do they have for multiplication? The authors address this issue while sharing an innovative, playful task called Please Go and Bring for Me (PGBM). Drawing on the…

The vision of the Framework and NGSS requires important shifts in teaching approaches and instructional materials. We argue that this commitment to engaging learners in meaningful practice and supporting students' epistemic agency entails that we support "coherence from the students' perspective." This coherence arises when students see…

When it comes to language learning and teaching, one of the major issues that needs to be tackled is the large differences between students in terms of school performance, especially socially disadvantaged children who tend to lag behind their peers. Research on language teaching tends to focus on the average learner, thus leaving little room for…

Many of today's students are left disengaged by the direction of their literacy journey once they reach the middle grades, or at times, before they ever leave elementary school. The once enjoyable process of becoming literate becomes a past memory. Students are expected to take their literacy journey into an academic world that often lacks ways of…

Here, we report on the development of a theoretical framework for mathematics teaching that looks aside from common traditional/reform dichotomies. Attention is focused on managing the amount of new information students must attend to, while structuring that information in a manner that allows discernment of key features and continuous extension…