Presents preliminary results from a continuing study of academic locus of control (ALOC). Describes ALOC differences between development/nondevelopmental students, males/females, and based on class status and number of developmental courses taken. Reveals a more highly developed sense of internal control among nondevelopmental students. Includes…

Discusses a report in which eight dyslexic, eight mentally disabled, and eight normal readers were asked to rank nine qualities both of their classroom teacher and of an ideal teacher. Discovers that comparisons of ideal and actual teacher ratings within each group demonstrated significant concordance for the normal and disabled groups, but not…

Effects of 3 different types of instruction (use of manipulatives, use of diagrams, and use of symbols only) of rational number content and teaching techniques were compared for 75 preservice teachers in a course in elementary mathematics. Only the manipulatives group showed significant improvement pretest to posttest. Implications are discussed.…

Compared the longitudinal effects of phonics and whole-language instruction on kindergartners' reading and writing task performance over one year. Found that the whole-language group made more progress in reading and writing, and with more developmental coherence, than the phonics group. (JPB)

Examines differences between undergraduate distance-learning students and traditional students in terms of their motivation, wants, and what they receive from their educational experience. The differences between the two groups was found to be small. The major difference was that distance-learning students are more satisfied with what they receive…

Presents a theoretical framework for understanding mass media news influence; explores the concepts of agenda setting, priming, framing, asymmetrical selection, binary oppositionalism, and institutional hegemony in a survey of literature in journalism and communications; and outlines a teaching strategy that highlights one news event and compares…

Investigates the effects of three formats of computer-based homework and paper-based homework, on the achievement, retention, attitudes, and time-on-task of lower secondary school students. Students who completed drill-and-practice homework scored higher on a test right after the treatment and 12 weeks later. Implications for how teachers can help…

The story of John Henry provided the setting for sixth-grade class to participate in a John Henry Day of mathematics experiments. The students collected data from experiments where students competed against machines and technology. The student analyzed the data by comparing two box plots, a box plot of human data, and a box plot of machine or…

This paper reports on a study that compared the practice of corporal punishment in ten basic schools in the Greater Accra District in Ghana. Five of the ten schools were designated as inclusive project schools (IPS) and the other five as non-inclusive project schools (NIS). The primary purpose was to find out if the inclusive project schools were…

This quantitative study compared the instructional effects of two web-based animation strategies against static graphics by high and low prior knowledge participants. One strategy used animation to gain attention; the second to gain attention and provide elaboration. Participants were 111 college student volunteers. Two-way multiple analysis of…

Contemporary theories of learning postulate one or at most a small number of different learning mechanisms. However, people are capable of mastering a given task through qualitatively different learning paths such as learning by instruction and learning by doing. We hypothesize that the knowledge acquired through such alternative paths differs…

In this article, the authors report on two international case studies that used comparable applications of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and were undertaken in comparable academic areas and levels of study. In the two cases, the authors explored faculty resistance to the use of ICTs for teaching and learning in higher…

This study investigates features of interaction between children that are linked to the development of understanding of mind, and asks whether these associations are evident across different relationships. Comparisons are made of the naturally occurring conversations in a sample of 43 4-year-old children, each observed with a sibling and with a…

This study compares two methods of instruction in practical school biology. The content remains the same but two teaching methods are used, one based on workstations (Group 1) and the other a conventional approach (Group 2). The content was a regular 9th grade syllabus issue: visual perception. Method 1 included a phenomenological introduction,…

Practical arts is a subject that not only promotes learners' better understanding of work in their daily lives, but also enables them to find ways to solve work-related problems by fostering basic skills and attitudes necessary for performing the work. The teaching of practical arts as a subject should be focused on developing creativity and…