In this era of high-stakes testing, many teachers feel forced to aim instruction toward what will be assessed and ignore what students really want to learn. Publishers create materials guaranteed to boost students' test scores, but they neither broaden students' understanding nor increase their interest in learning. When the textbook becomes the…

Motivated by concerns about the quality of accounting education and calls for a broader, more active approach to learning by numerous accounting educators and practitioners over the past 2 decades, the authors of this article sought to provide a framework and example materials to address those issues. The framework makes use of broad, economic…

In the United States, people get very little news about Africa, and what news they do get is about war or famine, with little historical information or context. In this article, the authors describe how they developed and implemented a Pan-African Summit simulation project in order to give their approximately 100, 9th-grade students (in five World…

As part of an NSF funded project we developed new course materials for a general introductory statistics course designed to engage students in statistical discovery. The materials were designed to actively involve students in the design and implementation of data collection and the analysis and interpretation of the resulting data. Our overall…

Contemporary education theory (and official South African policy) underwrites learner-centredness. I analyse learner-centredness as a possible piece of the puzzle about why it is proving so difficult to improve academic achievement. Learner-centred ideas are grounded in the belief that cognitive abilities develop spontaneously in accordance with a…

K-12 students enter physical education with many naive conceptions or misconceptions of how motor skills are acquired. One goal of physical education is to teach concepts that will help students learn and perform motor skills, but many practitioners don't know how to provide experiences that will teach students to apply their knowledge…

Geology is an ideal subject in which to introduce the "discovery" method of learning. Available from: National Institute of Adult Education (England and Wales), 35 Queen Anne St., London W1M OBL England. (BP)

This report discusses four different types of instruction which enable learning disabled or low achieving students to learn well enough to transfer the skill to a novel situation. After asserting that generalization depends on systematic instruction, the paper describes the four procedures: (1) teacher-directed generalization; (2) direct…

Intended for secondary teachers in rural areas, the paper examines ways to implement a learning center approach to meet a range of students' needs, including mainstreamed special needs, students, regular students, and gifted and talented students. The first section considers B. Bloom's Taxonomy as a basis for developing learning centers.…

The progression from simple interest to compound interest leads naturally and quickly to the number e, involving mathematical discovery learning through writing programs. Several programs are given, with suggestions for a teaching sequence. (MNS)

A plea is made that mathematics should be taught the way that mathematicians do it, using an exploratory approach rather than rule learning. (MNS)

The use of invertebrates as classroom "pets" can develop students' skills in scientific inquiry and instill respect for science. Few materials are needed for projects involving invertebrates. Suggested activities using snails, crickets, earthworms, crayfish, and guppies are offered. (DF)

Outdoor education is often delivered through games and activities such as nature hikes or observing an ecosystem within a 1-foot circle on the ground. Often, participants look closely at the earth only for that brief moment. Wilderness survival is another way to teach about the outdoors. It offers skills that encourage participants to become more…