Building on existing research applying app maps (Israelson, 2015), the authors take an ideological orientation to broaden app evaluations and consider participatory literacies, social and communicational practices relevant to children's everyday digitally mediated lives. Drawing from their North American elementary classroom studies on children's…

This paper describes a method for teaching planetary retrograde motion, and the Ptolemaic and Copernican accounts of retrograde motion, by means of a series kinesthetic learning activities (KLAs). In the KLAs described, the students literally walk through the motions of the planets in both systems. A retrospective statistical analysis shows that…

The central role that tasks play in student learning has become clearer in the last decade. As a result of calls for a structured design process, task design has become one of the main fields of investigation in mathematics education. Here, we propose five design considerations (deciding on the mathematical content, choosing the context, deciding…

How do teachers decide what leadership work to engage? This exploratory study examined the leadership activities and responsibilities that National Board Certified Teachers identified prior to and after achieving National Board Certification. We conducted structured interviews with a diverse group of 15 National Board Certified Teachers from a…

Agricultural education has traditionally provided rich learning experiences for secondary school students; however, less attention has been paid to the learning experiences preservice agricultural education teachers utilize and provide secondary school students during the student teaching internship. This study sought to describe the learning…

When solving mathematical problems, many students know the procedure to get to the answer but cannot explain why they are doing it in that way. According to Skemp (1976) these students have instrumental understanding but not relational understanding of the problem. They have accepted the rules to arriving at the answer without questioning or…

The stars closest to Earth are not particularly remarkable or exciting. They are average stars typical of the spiral arms of our Milky Way galaxy. In fact, until recently, most astronomy and Earth science textbooks ignored all but the largest of them to focus on distant, more exotic objects like red supergiants or black holes. The recent discovery…

The importance of developing reasoning and justification has been highlighted in "Principles and Standards for School Mathematics" (NCTM 2000). The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSI 2010) further reiterates the importance of reasoning and proof in several standards for mathematical practice. Students of all grades are…

The National Curriculum for England has been revised and the statements on energy have some new phrasing and some new ideas. In this article, I will reflect on how these changes might be beneficial, relieving some of the strictures of previous drafts and providing opportunities to talk about energy in new, more constructive ways. I will discuss…

The study of functions has traditionally received the most attention at the secondary level, both in curricula and in standards documents--for example, the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSI 2010) and "Principles and Standards for School Mathematics" (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics [NCTM] 2000). However, the…

This article analyzes the collaborative problem solving activities and learning outcomes of five groups that worked on two different complex cases in a virtual professional training course. In this asynchronous virtual learning environment, all knowledge management content was delivered virtually and collaboration took place through forums. To…

Unit conversion need not be boring. If students see that the skill is necessary, both their motivation to learn and their appreciation of the process can be enhanced. As a result, students become actively engaged and construct understanding and computational skills that they will retain over time. The activity described here makes use of scale…

Carl Williams writes in this article that effective teachers possess a repertoire of critical skills associated with student achievement. As one might expect, these skills relate to planning, implementing, and evaluating instruction. However, there is one indispensable component that is not a skill in the traditional sense; nonetheless, it is an…

For most professors, dealing with academic integrity issues ranks alongside grading and committee work as one of the most unpopular faculty responsibilities. Confronting the perpetrator can be unpleasant. It can also create significant intangible costs for the accusing professor, not the least of which are stress-induced sleepless nights and a…

This paper is about the experience of teaching Assembly for Disassembly to fourth year architect students within the module of sustainable design. When designing a sustainable building one should take into consideration the fact that the building is going to be demolished in some years; thus the materials should be assembled in such a way so that…