As discipline-based astronomy education researchers become more interested in experimentally testing innovative teaching strategies to enhance learning in undergraduate introductory astronomy survey courses ("ASTRO 101"), scholars are placing increased attention toward better understanding factors impacting student gain scores on the…

Teachers are often required by their administrators to implement Sustained Silent Reading (SSR) into their daily routines. Although there is research to support wide reading, there is little to support the specific practice of SSR. Recent researchers have suggested modified versions of SSR to better address the needs of struggling readers,…

Desert Elementary is a suburban Phoenix K-5 school. The school has undergone a significant change in its approach to reading instruction due to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) instructional shift of building knowledge through content rich nonfiction. Teachers implemented this shift in their classrooms through a 16-month professional…

The Bechdel test, the author's student Marley explained, is named for the US graphic novelist and cartoonist Alison Bechdel. To pass the test, a work of fiction must contain at least one scene in which two or more women (preferably named characters) discuss something other than a male. Students who read from the canon of works regularly encounter…

Zapata and Maloch feature pedagogical considerations for teachers as they plan for engaging and generative informational text experiences for young children.

Educators are often overcome by the daily concerns of the classroom so they tend to focus on what has worked in the past. It seems a luxury to take the time to ask the more fundamental question: what is learning? Yet this question lies at the fore of our profession and defines our choice of teaching methods. It has become a truism that social…

We want all children to love reading, and Which Book and Why demonstrates how effective guided reading for children in Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 can help teachers make this happen. Balancing theory and practice, this book explores how schools and teachers can implement guided reading more confidently and more effectively. Which Book and Why…

This paper explores the recent policy decision about the teaching of Ottoman Turkish at high schools in Turkey and unpacks its historical, political, and social undercurrents. It theoretically rests upon Spolsky's [2004. "Language policy". Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. "Language management." Cambridge: Cambridge…

From 2006 to 2008 UK-based primary school teachers in the "No Outsiders" project explored possibilities for addressing sexualities equality in their classrooms. What all teachers had in common was a resource pack that included 27 children's books exploring themes of gender and sexuality diversity either directly or indirectly (i.e. by…

Background: In developed countries, it is challenging for teachers to select pedagogical practices that encourage students to enrol in science and technology courses in upper secondary school. Purpose: Aiming to understand the enrolment dynamics, this study analyses sample-based data from Finland's National Assessment in Science to determine…

The reading development of children depends on various sensory stimuli, which help them construct reading contexts and facilitate active learning and exploration. This study uses sensory stimuli provided by picture books using various forms of media to improve children's concentration performance. We employ picture books using four forms of media:…

In an attempt to facilitate and foster idiom retention and recall, this study investigated the effect of pictorial and etymological treatments on Iranian undergraduate students' idiom learning. The paired-samples experimental design was used to study 26 students who had registered for the Use of Idioms course at the University of Bojnord (UB). One…

For most Americans, the high school years played a pivotal role in shaping what they know about subjects such as U.S. history, world history, literature, geometry and biology. For many, the high school years provide one of the last opportunities to gain valuable life-enhancing insights, for example, reading a classic novel such as "To Kill a…

According to the author, as our abilities to combine image and text become more sophisticated and ubiquitous, digital storytelling is a powerful means for sharing those stories. Digital storytelling is a perfect way to remix stories. To present American literature as relevant to students' lives, the author rewrote their curriculum using backwards…

Purpose: Community and technical college student employability is a pressing concern in the United States and China. Policy makers focus on developing students' human capital in the form of credentials and cognitive skills. However, the focus on completion overlooks the role that noncognitive skills and contextual factors may play in student…