As public relations professions advance toward new media platforms, one traditional tool--the backgrounder/position paper (more technically termed white paper) remains a compelling vehicle to impart enduring professional competencies. Moreover, the skills requisite to produce a white paper can be deployed in a variety of new and traditional media…

Knowledge of group dynamics and leadership activities is a component of the CORE Standards for the Master's degree curriculum in Rehabilitation Counseling. A group experience is often included as a learning activity in rehabilitation counselor education curricula as an instructional method of imparting knowledge of group dynamics. Group experience…

Knowledge of Diverse Learners (KDL) is increasingly recognized as an essential component of knowledge base for effective teaching as in today's schools, teachers must be prepared to teach a diverse population of student (Banks et al. 2005). In other words, teachers need to be aware that their students in a classroom are and always have been…

One aspect of scientific inquiry that appears to be particularly challenging to learn is how explanatory models are developed and used in science. It is even more challenging to learn to teach through methods that engage young students in building and using explanatory models. In part, this is because to do so requires that teachers make real-time…

This article examines the way student teachers make sense of conceptual tools when writing cases. In order to understand the problem-solving process, an analysis of the interactions is conducted. The findings show that transforming practical experiences into theoretical reflection is not a straightforward matter. To be able to elaborate on the…

Studies of learning in school settings indicate that many students frame activities in science classes as the production of answers for the teacher or test, rather than as making new sense of the natural world. A case study of an episode from a class taught by the first author demonstrates what productive and unproductive student framing can look…

In the UK, speech and language therapists (SLTs) work with teachers to support children with language impairment (LI) in mainstream schools. Consultancy approaches are often used, where SLTs advise educational staff who then deliver language-learning activities. However, some research suggests that schools may not always sustain activities as…

The authors discuss the notion of Rapid Collaborative Knowledge Building (RCKB) in classroom settings. RCKB seeks to harness the collective intelligence of groups to learn faster, envision new possibilities, and to reveal latent knowledge in a dynamic live setting. It is characterized by the notion of rapid cycles of knowledge building activities…

Constructivism has constituted a predominant philosophical trend in mathematics education, but its implementation in the classroom has proven to be "far more difficult than the reform community acknowledges". This difficulty may be due in part to administrative cultures that might insist on more procedural types of instruction aimed at testing, in…

This paper describes recent developments in the field of history education and human rights education in Morocco. Educational reform in Morocco is ongoing and includes measures such as mandating that all schools create after-school Human Rights Clubs. These developments are then related to the possibility of teaching about the history of the…

Connecting stories to qualitative coordinate graphs has been suggested as an effective instructional strategy. Even students who are able to "create" bar graphs may struggle to correctly "interpret" them. Giving children opportunities to work with qualitative graphs can help them develop the skills to interpret, describe, and compare information…

The decision by the Minister of Higher Education, that Malaysian post-secondary institutions should move to outcomes-based teaching and learning (OBTL), involves a change in teaching in over 1,000 institutions. This massive changeover would be accomplished using the "Train-the-Trainers" model in a series of workshops. We are proud to…

We report on a German-Indonesian design research project, which aims to significantly increase the mathematical skills of secondary school students. Since results of international comparative studies have shown that there exists a relationship between metacognition and learning success, a learning environment for the beginning with secondary…

Child care is the first out-of-home learning opportunity for many children. For low-income children, a high-quality child care placement can provide many of the experiences and skills that help build a foundation for later school success. Among the many measures of child care quality, some closely linked to later success in school are those…

In this essay, Susan Engel argues that curiosity is both intrinsic to children's development and unfolds through social interactions. Thus, it should be cultivated in schools, even though it is often almost completely absent from classrooms. Calling on well-established research and more recent studies, Engel argues that interactions between…