North-South educational partnerships can potentially alleviate the scarcity of health work force in the South. A model program with the objectives of sustainability, high trainee retention, quality education, and capacity building is the goal of many similar programs. To achieve these goals a program of postgraduate clinical specialty training was…

In this study, we explored how major theoretical principles and concepts in the mediation strategies of Vygotsky's sociocultural theory are realized in an Arabic-Hebrew preschool in Israel. The aim of this study was to examine how teachers encourage children to use their second language (L2) during teacher-child conversations. In particular, as a…

Turkey is now on its way to reforming compulsory education and having a more effective and efficient education system by creating more accountable schools. This research has been designed in a causative pattern to discover the effects of external academic performance pressures on school accountability policies and school accountability responses…

Hoping to spur dramatic school turnaround, the federal government channeled resources to the country's lowest-performing schools through School Improvement Grants (SIG). However, prior research on SIG effectiveness is limited and focuses primarily on student achievement. This study uses a difference-in-differences strategy to estimate program…

Despite recognition that youth civic engagement is multidimensional, different modeling approaches are rarely compared or tested for measurement invariance. Using a diverse sample of 2,467 elementary, middle, and high school-aged youth, we measured eight dimensions of civic engagement: social responsibility values, informal helping, political…

Research has identified a number of linguistic features that influence the reading comprehension of young readers; yet, less is known about whether and how these findings extend to adult readers. This study examines text comprehension, processing, and familiarity judgment provided by adult readers using a number of different approaches (i.e.,…

This study sought to determine if there was a relationship between teacher perceptions of educational change and student achievement. Teacher perceptions of change represented the independent variable and the dependent variable consisted of eleventh grade math Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills scores, cohort completion rates, and math…

National calls for improving science education (e.g., "Vision and Change") emphasize the need to learn disciplinary core ideas through scientific practices. To address this need, we engaged small groups of students in developing diagrammatic models within two (one large-enrollment and one medium-enrollment) undergraduate introductory…

Aim/Purpose: To identify and rectify the learning difficulties of online learners. Background: The major cause of learners' failure and non-acquisition of knowledge relates to their weaknesses in certain areas necessary for optimal learning. We focus on e-learning because, within this environment, the learner is mostly affected by these…

Science education research has revealed a number of student mental models for atomic structure, among which, the one based on Bohr's model seems to be the most dominant. The aim of the current study is to investigate the coherence of these models when students apply them for the explanation of a variety of situations. For this purpose, a set of…

High failure and dropout rates are reported in introductory programming (IP) courses in different studies despite extensive research attempting to address the issue. In this study, we introduced an ADRI (Approach, Deployment, Result, Improvement) approach in the teaching and learning process of an IP course to improve learning and success rates.…

The direct, retention, and transfer effects of repeated word and pseudoword reading were studied in a pretest, training, posttest, retention design. First graders (48 good readers, 47 poor readers) read 25 CVC words and 25 CVC pseudowords in ten repeated word reading sessions, preceded and followed by a transfer task with a different set of items.…

In response to pedagogical challenges in higher education, blended learning has become a prevalent practice in colleges and universities. Flipped learning (FL) represents a newly emerging form of blended learning, where students individually watch online lectures prior to class and then engage in classroom learning activities interacting with…

The researchers in this study examined the influence of questions designed with the Practical Inquiry Model (PIM), compared with the regular (playground) questions, on students' levels of cognitive presence in online discussions. Students' discussion postings were collected and categorized according to the four levels of cognitive presence:…

Low reading skills constitute a serious achievement problem. Although there are remedial support in schools, between 2% and 6% of the student population continues to show persistent reading difficulties despite intensive intervention. The research problem in this study addressed the lack of effective reading interventions for students who were in…