Supporting students' mental health needs is critical in high-poverty urban school districts where many students are at risk for mental health problems. Although teacher-student relationships are at the core of student mental health promotion in the classroom, many teacher preparation programmes do not adequately prepare pre-service teachers…

Feedback provides a vehicle for integrating all components of formative instructional practices: clear learning targets, evidence of student learning, and student ownership in the process. Feedback is the keystone to formative instructional practices as it is one of the most powerful instructional tools available. This paper (a) describes the role…

With many states adopting new standards and evaluation systems, teachers must adopt effective instructional strategies and assessment methods aligned to the rigor of new standards and assessments. One way to improve student achievement is through supporting student ownership of learning, a core component of formative instructional practices.…

Pedagogically, the term "bottleneck" refers to a moment when students may face barriers to understanding content in the process of learning. As instructors identify "bottlenecks" within their courses, they are faced with the challenge of how to best assist students in overcoming them. Further, most instructors want to know what selected teaching…

The purpose of this article is to describe the Quality Educators Academy (QEA), a year-long training for K-8 classroom teachers that was funded by a NC ESEA Title II-A Improving Teacher Quality (NC QUEST) Grant. Key features of the project as well as the design and content of the training contributed to success in recruiting, retaining, and…

Achievement motivation is something that all members of the school community want to support in students, however few may recognize that it is influenced by culture. The very meaning of "achievement" is culturally variable, and the motives that students have for achieving may be quite different, depending upon their cultural background.…

This pedagogical innovation aims at discovering new ways of interaction that go beyond the unidirectional relationship that is presented in the classrooms most of the times. The innovation considers peers to be active agents in the construction of knowledge and proposes new ways to arrange groups in the classroom so that the arrangement can…

This article discusses how new and familiar computer technology tools can be used in a communicative language classroom. It begins by outlining the benefits and challenges of using such technology for language teaching in general, and it describes some sample activities that the author has used. Readers are shown how to implement various computer…

Describes an experiment in "reflective teaching" used to develop a Directed Reading-Thinking Activities approach for improving reading comprehension with a group of third grade students. Includes an 11-item list of instructional materials and examples of student-developed materials. (FMW)

Discussed is the application of the computer to instructional management with special emphasis on classroom management via computer-managed instruction of aurally handicapped children. (BD)

The purpose of the awards program is to initiate a new merger between economics and education by sharing innovative methods with all Illinois teachers for the teaching of personal economics. Personal economics is defined as the study of the individual's decision-making process and his/her participation in economic life in the roles of consumer,…

A project at Indiana University of Pennsylvania to improve the speaking skills of 36 secondary school French and Spanish teachers is described. The project consisted of a total immersion workshop for strengthening oral skills, learning classroom techniques, and developing innovative curricula, and teacher projects to incorporate innovations into…

An attempt to diversify the classroom experience at Simon Fraser University's Department of Geography has taken two thrusts: the large classroom integrative media use, and the student prepared multimedia "essay." The traditional lecture technique, which ignores the entire media revolution, is deplored. The first of two ways of conveying more…

The present study describes and discusses the use of a virtual community to build language and culture skills. According to the National Standards Project (2004), "The United States must educate students who are linguistically and culturally equipped to communicate successfully in a pluralistic American society and abroad." Through the…

This conference proceedings includes the text of 15 of the 27 presentations made at the third annual Conference on Undergraduate Teaching of Psychology. In addition to a conference program, the proceedings includes the following papers: (1) "Multiethnic, Crosscultural Illustrations for Psychology Courses," by Judith Gray; (2) "A Computerized…