The goal of this study is to investigate the purposes of pioneers and describe their main achievements, who have worked on training methods of humanity. The article presents the scientific achievements of A.E. Kondratenkov in theoretical and practical pedagogy, among which a special role is given to the rural school as a kind of center for the…

STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) disciplines are considered key to the scientific and economic improvement in the United States. As noted by the Carnegie Corporation of New York (2011), we need a nation in which "all" teachers and thus, all students, are "STEM-capable" (p. 2), that is, equipped with a broad…

This article examines the relevance of humor to student engagement in outdoor education. A sociocultural framework is applied to this examination, based on a view of learning as constructed, cognitive, embodied, and affective. A set of affordances of outdoor education as a contextually situated learning activity is identified along with related…

The National Study of Charter Management Organization (CMO) Effectiveness is a four-year study designed to assess the impact of CMOs on student achievement and to identify effective structures and practices. An earlier report from this study documented the substantial variation in CMO student achievement impacts as well as variation in CMOs' use…

We propose that Disability Studies in Education (DSE) offers a framework that (a) grounds policy and practice in the experiences and perspectives of people with disabilities, (c) challenges practices/ policy that isolate, de-humanize individuals, and (c) leads to new questions to pose. In this session, we describe the pedagogy that we used to…

The author discusses the use of the open-ended discussion as a teaching strategy. The intended outcomes for students are listed along with a brief delineation of the teacher's role, including focus setting, structuring, accepting, and clarifying. (RP)

This response to Gersten and Dimino (EC 606 357) claims a lack of clarity in their understanding of whole-language instruction and confusion of the approach with its implementation. The response stresses the need to empower special education teachers so that they are able to make decisions about teaching and not merely follow directions in…

Educators in gifted education should be involved in the School Reform Movement because of the need of gifted learners for positive changes in education and because of the potential of the field to contribute to improved education for all students. Philosophical contributions, instructional contributions, and pedagogical contributions of gifted…

An innovative educational program for children from kindergarten to the sixth grade, an outgrowth of the Wave Hill program, that has been incorporated in five community schools and one parochial school is detailed in this book. The program is an alternative to the traditional method; it is not considered as a total school program with which to…

This article on inclusive education proposes a continuum of "explicit" to "implicit" instructional approaches, which expresses a range of amounts of teacher assistance provided and levels of expected student responsibility for learning. Research on such a continuum is reviewed and implications are drawn for instructional design in reading and…

The paper argues that prevailing models of teaching in special education rely on a technical conception of teaching, whereas technical skills should play a subsidiary role in service to teachers' broader understanding of the meaning of education and to their creative skills in bringing about experiences rich in educational potential. (JDD)

The transcript of a four-part radio program on learning disabilities (LD) focuses on issues involving the definition, identification, and education of LD children. Definitional concerns are voiced by J. Gallagher, S. Kirk and S. Richardson. Controversy over prevalence estimates is discussed. Teachers of LD children comment on effective…

The second of two documents designed to train paraprofessionals to work with mainstreamed mildly handicapped children presents a teacher's guide approach to inservice and preservice training. The following four topics are covered in the section on preservice training (sample subtopics in parentheses): the teacher (forming a good working…

The booklet is intended to provide regular class elementary and early childhood teachers with basic information about types of handicaps and teaching strategies to use with exceptional children. An initial section considers the nature of handicaps and the degree of severity of conditions. Reviewed are the following types of exceptionalities:…