Tomorrow's agricultural workforce will face challenges in the form of complex problems that transcend disciplinary boundaries, including food security. Addressing these complex issues requires professionals to work within and across disciplines in ways that may not have been required in previous generations. Teaching using an interdisciplinary…

Surface approaches to learning materials and tasks are a commonplace challenge to teachers, and they prove difficult to shift, even among students who are otherwise talented or motivated to learn. The present study investigates a theory that surface approaches are triggered by a suboptimal, aversive response to learning stimuli, which overrides…

In the past decade, a number of personalized learning systems have been developed and they mainly focus on learners' prior knowledge. On the other hand, previous research suggested that gender differences and cognitive styles have great effects on student learning. To this end, this study examines how human factors, especially gender differences…

Technology-rich learning environments (TREs) provide opportunities for learners to engage in complex interactions involving a multitude of cognitive, metacognitive, and affective states. Understanding learners' distinct learning progressions in TREs demand inquiry approaches that employ well-conceived theoretical accounts of these multiple facets.…

Research indicates that increasing teacher-directed opportunities to respond (TD-OTR) positively impacts student outcomes. Prior reviews of the empirical literature focused on outcomes for students with emotional behavioral disorders or on TD-OTRs as one of many classroom-management practices; however, prior reviews did not examine effects of…

Do individual-level student characteristics affect appreciation for, and benefit from, the use of student response system technology? We investigate the usefulness of in-class electronic student response systems ("classroom clickers") to understand if it benefits some college students more than others. Specifically, we investigate…

Discrete trial instruction or naturalistic, incidental teaching: How do you choose which approach to use with young children with autism? Now there's no need to "pick a side"--this groundbreaking book helps professionals skillfully blend the best of both behavioral approaches to respond to "each child's individual needs". Developed by one of the…

Four instructional treatments differing in structure and student responsibility were used with 60 abstract-thinking and 60 concrete-thinking students. A differentiated outcomes hypothesis is offered to account for the findings. (Authors)

In this article, the authors examine pre-service special education teacher reaction to and experience in a collaboratively taught higher education course. Forty-three full-time postbaccalaureate students participate in a course designed to examine critical issues in special education, taught by two faculty members, one specializing in mild and…

To explore what social and educational infrastructure is needed to support classroom use of student response systems (Roschelle et al., 2004), this study investigated the ways in which student characteristics and course design choices were related to students' assessments of the contribution of clicker use to their learning and involvement in the…

A 22-item question preference test was developed and administered to different age and ability groups in an attempt to identify "describer/explainer" question preferences. All groups preferred "explainer" questions, but there was a highly significant difference between low and high ability groups. Implications for the classroom are considered.…

Responses to a three item questionnaire administered to 105 seventh grade students indicated that less than 40 percent favored greater individualization of their science classes. (PB)

An instructor's experiences in teaching an introductory anthropology course organized around films are presented. Following a description of the atmosphere at the community college in New York City and the characteristics of the students, a rationale is provided which cites films as a means of breaking down the traditional barriers to learning of…

This paper focuses on motivating online learners. Online instruction has presented teachers with new methods of instruction. At the same time, online instruction has the potential to depersonalize the teacher-student relationship and impede the teacher's ability to understand their students. This study attempts to begin translating the traditional…

This study tests the effects on student achievement and attitude of two methods of reviewing homework problems in mathematics. One review procedure involved solving and explaining each homework problem the day after an assignment was made. In the second procedure, only the problems that students requested to have reviewed were covered. Two Algebra…