Robertson discusses the "perceived dichotomy" that permeates science teaching: teachers can either stress inquiry learning with lots of hands-on experiences or stress content knowledge and swap hands-on inquiry for direct instruction. Although a curriculum of unstructured hands-on science activities leads to shallow content knowledge, it is…

In sixth grade, students understand that Earth gets visible light from the Sun, but students may also believe the Earth gets heat from the Sun. This last part is incorrect because the Sun is too far from the Earth to heat it directly. So, how does the Sun heat the Earth? When light strikes an object, it can be reflected or absorbed. Absorbed light…

At first glance Sioux Lookout is a typical northern Ontario town, situated within an intricate lake and river system, socially focused on year-round outdoor activities, and enveloped by kilometres and more kilometres of undomesticated Canadian Shield landscape. One might think this would be an ideal spot for outdoor education, just as these…

The use of visual representation to learn science can be traced to Louis Agassiz, Harvard Professor of Zoology, in the mid-19th century. In Agassiz's approach, students were to study nature through carefully observing, drawing and then thinking about what the observations might add up to. However, implementation of Agassiz's student-centered…

Learner-centred approaches follow the prevailing tendency in modern University reforms which are primarily concerned about "how people learn". The methodologies can be learner-centred in the sense of placing the student as the main actor of the teaching-learning process by increasing his interactivity and participation, but also…

This paper presents the systematic development of a "Uses and Gratification Expectancy" (UGE) conceptual framework which is able to predict students' "Perceived e-Learning Experience." It is argued that students' UGE as regards e-learning resources cannot be implicitly or explicitly explored without first examining underlying communication…

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) poses constructivist ideas in its "Principles and Standards for School Mathematics" (2000). NCTM supports mathematics instruction that takes a developmental perspective; starts and builds on what children know; and leads children to construct relational understanding, problem-solving…

Higher education policy is seeking, in the interest of "quality assurance", to reward teaching and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). Academic language and learning (ALL) advisers, who work closely with students to improve their performance in their courses of study, have much to contribute to SoTL. ALL advisers who adopt…

Autonomously developing organisms face several challenges when learning reaching movements. First, motor control is learned unsupervised or self-supervised. Second, knowledge of sensorimotor contingencies is acquired in contexts in which action consequences unfold in time. Third, motor redundancies must be resolved. To solve all 3 of these…

Many educators look upon schools as the exclusive site at which meaningful learning can take place. Those educators would benefit from seeing the possibilities offered by non-school environments. This paper argues that the museum is a full-fledged educational institution, and focuses on how the museum may be seen as a site for the inquiries of…

In learning environments which provide little structure (e.g., hypermedia systems) students have an especially strong need to regulate and control their own learning. However, a review of the literature indicates that merely providing learners with flexible learning environments does not necessarily mean that they will effectively explore and…

The Parallel Alternate Curriculum (PAC), a model providng regular content courses, in regular classes, to secondary students with learning problems, combines basic skill instruction with alternative teaching strategies. PAC, a mainstreaming implementation program, is designed to provide inservice training emphasizing the process of how students…

In response to a recent wave of reports by Goodlad and his colleagues on their study of teacher educators, this study suggests that there are research questions to be asked of teacher education that go beyond the programmatic level. Using one teacher's teaching as an example, the document explores some of the aspects of this teacher's students'…

Like any apparently novel approach to the basic epistemological problems of "knowledge," the constructivist ideas that have spread in the last 20 years continue to generate a host of negative as well as a few positive reactions. This document focuses on some aspects of Radical Constructivism, as distinct from "trivial"…

The purpose of the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) Learning Style Profile is to provide educators with a well-validated and easy-to-use instrument for diagnosing the cognitive styles, perceptual response tendencies, and study/instructional preferences of middle level and senior high school students. The Learning Style…