Early childhood, elementary, exceptional education preservice teachers' levels of mathematics anxiety mathematics were investigated before and after a methods course. Data from informal discussions and questionnaire-guided narrative interviews revealed constructivist approaches within the methods course were instrumental in reducing preservice…

Student-centered classrooms, where the focus is on the way students learn concepts and skills rather than the way a teacher delivers the lessons, is a popular theme in current classrooms at all levels. A clear distinction must be made between student-centered teaching as a philosophy and student-centered teaching as a specific set of instructional…

In this article I explore how certain pedagogic practices construct students' ability as visible. The concept of ability is viewed as constructed, put into place by specific educational practices, rather than a fixed trait of the students. Conducted in two primary classrooms, this study employs observational methods complemented by audio-video…

Reading Recovery (RR) is a constructivist reading intervention used to provide tier 3 instruction to struggling readers in the first grade. The program has been previously evaluated and found effective by Evidence for ESSA (John Hopkins University), What Works Clearing House (intervention report institute for education sciences 2013), and in a…

Critical thinking of students is needed in 21st century learning, the fact is the acquisition in the field is still low. Therefore this study aims to improve students' critical thinking skills using the inquiry model assisted with the ethnoconstructivism module. Methodology uses a quantitative design of a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest…

Purpose: Critical thinking and student attitudes are pertinent to 21st century learning of cultural values which is still very low. Research with a focus on improving these skills and attitudes using inquiry-based approaches are very limited. This research aimed to improve critical thinking and student attitudes of elementary school teacher…

Following Indonesia's 1998 reform, value education in the form of a specific subject is no longer applied. The results of the 2006 national discussion recommended new education programs loaded with values. Therefore, the value education integration in learning activities has been carried out since 2007 and was updated in 2011, 2016, and 2017. The…

The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the decisions and adaptations that literacy specialists make before, during, and after literacy intervention instruction. The theoretical framework for this study included social constructivism (Dewey, 1933), metacognition theory (Flavell, 1976), and adaptive expertise (Hatano & Ingnaki,…

This case study investigates the variety of constructivist approaches to teaching evident in classroom practice. Teaching practices associated with constructivist perspectives have been prevalent in curriculum reforms for some time. Meanwhile, constructivist approaches have been critically discussed in scholarly literature, revealing problematic…

Disciplinary literacies in dance and drama are underrepresented in classrooms and in scholarship, especially at the elementary level. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine how preservice teachers constructed meaning of the disciplinary literacies in dance and drama. The theoretical framework guiding this study was drawn from…

This article explores how preservice elementary teachers change their negative beliefs toward mathematics into positive ones after taking a mathematics methods course that follows the Concrete-Pictorial-Abstract (CPA) instructional method. Also explored is the relationship between those beliefs and sociomathematical authority. By administering…

Dual-language programs are becoming increasingly popular among educators and the public in general. In these programs, students aim at attaining full proficiency in English and another language while reaching an academic achievement at or above grade level. This article describes a series of pedagogical practices in the context of dual-language…

Assessment and evaluation constitutes an important dimension of education. If education is the process of creating the desired changes in an individual's behaviors, evaluation then is the process of making judgments about whether those desired changes are acquired by the individual or not. The existing curricula in Turkey were put into practice…

It has been suggested that the new National Curriculum for history in primary schools should focus on content and on knowing the dates of English kings and queens rather than on the process of historical enquiry, in order to promote a shared sense of identity. Charlotte Mason was a very patriotic, nineteenth-century British educationalist who saw…

Elementary education has theoretical underpinnings based on cognitive psychology. Ideas from cognitive psychologists such as James, Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky coalesce to form constructivism (Cooper, 1993; Yager, 2000; Yilmaz, 2011). Among others, the Montessori Method (1912/1964) is an exemplar of constructivism. Currently, public education in…