Learning the Chinese tone system is a major challenge to students of Chinese as a second or foreign language. Part of the problem is that the spoken Chinese syllable presents a complex perceptual input that overlaps tone with segments. This complexity can be addressed through directing attention to the critical features of a component (tone in…

In Volume 23(2) of the "Australian Senior Mathematics Journal," Boncek and Harden present an exercise in fitting a Markov chain model to rainfall data for Darwin Airport (Boncek & Harden, 2009). Days are subdivided into those with precipitation and precipitation-free days. The author abbreviates these labels to wet days and dry days.…

As education policy in the U.S. focuses increasingly on the quality of classroom instruction, there is a growing need to identify valid constructs and develop reliable tools that measure student opportunities to learn academic knowledge and skills. The purpose of this study is to examine the relative contributions of two different classroom…

The ultimate purpose of school lies in the success and achievement of its students. Therefore, efforts must be made to continuously improve achievement for every student. What the teacher knows and can do in the classroom is the most powerful factor in increasing a student's achievement (Cunningham & Allington, 2003; Darling-Hammond, 2000;…

The aim of this longitudinal research is to explore the way teachers treat students with diagnosed ADHD syndrome within the process of education. The research has been conducted on a sample of 45 students, medically diagnosed with ADHD and attending five elementary schools in the area of the city of Zagreb, school year 2008./2009, and 45 control…

The purpose of the present study was to determine the coping strategies of medical students and to investigate the effects of coping strategies on student satisfaction and academic achievement with different instruction methods. A total of 152 medical students was followed throughout the first 2 yr of medical education between 2008 and 2010.…

Many school districts are using research-based strategies to increase student achievement. The "No Child Left Behind Act" of 2001 was created and implemented to assist all students becoming proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014. One strategy many school districts implemented includes an after-school program. One school district…

The aim of this study is to optimize CALL environments as a learning tool rather than a gloss, focusing on the learning of polysemous words which refer to spatial relationship between objects. A lot of research has already been conducted to examine the efficacy of visual glosses while reading L2 texts and has reported that visual glosses can be…

This paper researches the computer languages taught in the first, second and third programming courses in Computer Information Systems (CIS), Management Information Systems (MIS or IS) curricula as well as in Computer Science (CS) and Information Technology (IT) curricula. Instructors teaching the first course in programming within a four year…

Recent years have seen increased interest in data-driven decision making in education; that is, using various types of data, particularly quantitative assessment data, to inform a range of decisions in schools and classrooms. At the same time, districts, states, and schools have invested resources in tools designed to provide teachers, principals,…

Three experiments explored how pictures in award-winning children's storybooks contribute to their cohesion. In Experiment 1, one group of college students read storybooks with pictures, and another group read them with the pictures removed. Both groups answered questions inserted periodically. The source for about one half of the questions was…

The authors tested whether students can be taught to better understand conventional representations in diagrams, photographs, and other visual representations in science textbooks. The authors developed a teacher-delivered, workbook-and-discussion-based classroom instructional method called Conventions of Diagrams (COD). The authors trained 1…

Research has shown that the underlying teaching beliefs or theories of any particular teacher have generally been considered relatively stable and static throughout his or her career. However, this study investigates how one teacher's beliefs regarding both teaching and learning were changed during a short-term study and immersion program abroad.…

The primary purpose of this study is to provide solid quantitative data demonstrating how teachers are perceived to change in a one-to-one laptop environment, both as a whole and by subject area, during a laptop initiative that includes significant investments in professional development. The main research question is "Do teachers change their…

The author reports on an experimental study of performance-based teacher compensation conducted in the U.S. which shows that a nationally watched bonus-pay system had no overall impact on student achievement. Nearly 300 middle school mathematics teachers in Nashville, Tennessee, voluntarily took part in the Project on Incentives in Teaching, a…