Describes teacher education practice aimed at promoting reflection in novice practitioners, and reflects on an exercise used in teaching a class of preservice secondary teachers. The author draws on student journal entries data in understanding the students' reflective thinking and demonstrates the efficacy of having students keep focused…

This article illustrates how classwide peer tutoring (CWPT) is used to orchestrate classroom processes related to gains in at-risk students' academic performance. The article discusses such classroom process variables as engaged time, success rate, monitoring, and questioning, and reviews CWPT's effectiveness in relation to each variable.…

The Writing-across-the-Curriculum movement has been encouraging instructors in a wide range of disciplines to consider writing as a tool for learning. This chapter discusses why writing can be a powerful tool but also why the movement is having problems in implementation. (Author/MLW)

Explains that trial and error learning is an important way for children and adults to learn. Open-ended activities have great opportunities for error and eventual feedback for error reduction. (PR)

A self-regulated learning inventory was developed for the study and was administered to 160 college students. Factor analysis found that self-regulated learning and self-efficacy account for the majority of the variance. The importance of self-regulated learning in college academic achievement is supported by these results. (SLD)

Recommends strategies to engage students in science tasks including match games, scavenger hunts, and science songs. Uses an interdisciplinary approach in the science activities. (YDS)

At times, the whole-language approach to language teaching has been misunderstood. It is a philosophy more than a method or an instructional trend and is more than its separate elements: thematic, authentic, integrated, interactive. Many teachers who embrace the philosophy underlying the approach see their teaching not as promoting whole-language…

This tribute to Samuel Kirk, an early leader in the field of learning disabilities, describes his prominent achievements in reading instruction, including research in remedial reading and identification of reading instruction principles such as stages of reading development, importance of prereading abilities, and the need for explicit, systematic…

Discusses problems that educators face in attempting to emphasize high-level cognitive skills in their curriculum. Identifies four elements of informal learning that guide the creation of these skills, through a comparison of the characteristics of formal and informal learning environments. Notes benefits for development of students' conceptual…

Interviewed 12 computer studies faculty in Hong Kong about their perspectives on teaching computer programming; organized data into themes. Concluded that teachers rely on a "mind as container" understanding of knowledge and learning that would be better replaced with a connectionist view of the mind. (EV)

Describes a study that was conducted to characterize the approaches to teaching of university lecturers and to examine the relationship between lecturers' approaches to teaching and their conceptions of good teaching. Highlights include a model relating beliefs, teaching and learning; motivational distinctions; accommodation for student…

Focuses on defining constructivism, which includes learning as an active process of knowledge construction and instruction as a process of supporting that construction. Discusses 10 constructivist assumptions about learning. Describes 11 actions that define the constructivist teacher. (AEF)

Reviews literature on children's use of metaphors, focusing on how metaphorical language is used in the learning process and the implications for teachers in helping their students use metaphorical language and thereby build knowledge of the world. Asserts that teachers need to speak metaphorically and that conversation, writing, and literature…

This chapter presents a brain-based model of adult learning and connects the model to practice.

For over 30 years this author has been involved in the teaching and learning of mathematics and numeracy in Australian schools, teaching in high schools (Years 8-12) for more than 20 years at different school settings ranging from rural and remote to inner city, high socio-economic status schools to schools of students mostly from poorer, lower…