Over the past few years, the author has often been invited to speak to various audiences on topics related to the development of English-language proficiency. The audience response and the kinds of questions asked led her to share the framework that she has adopted, some visual representations that illustrate the key concepts embedded in the…

If, as has been widely claimed, our attitudes and beliefs are reflected in the language we use, it should be possible to gain some insight into teachers' views of English-language coursebooks from the metaphors they use to describe them. A small collection of teacher metaphors (and similes), drawn largely from Hong Kong, is presented and…

The study describes the nature of pre-service teachers' idiosyncratic metaphors for the concept of statistical sample. These metaphors were investigated because of their potential to provide insight about individuals' content knowledge and how that content knowledge is enacted during teaching. Personal metaphors were elicited from 54 pre-service…

In this paper our first purpose is to outline a way of thinking about organizations and administration that has recently been gaining ground among theoreticians and practitioners, one that is portrayed frequently as a replacement for the well established newtonian or systems perspective. This way of thinking is the quantum perspective. Our second…

Being a first-year teacher in New York City is not easy. The author received much of the same preparation and advice that he and his colleagues give their students. But even the best education courses and a positive student teaching experience do not seem to be enough to take the edge off of a year he remembers barely surviving. The author…

Cambodian refugees represent a severely traumatized population living in the United States. In this paper, we describe the modification of a cognitive-behavior therapy program to facilitate delivery of an exposure-based treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder while addressing some of the challenges brought by differences in language and…

This paper proposes a methodology to calculate both the difficulty of the basic problems and the difficulty of solving a problem. The method to calculate the difficulty of problem is according to the process of constructing a problem, including Concept Selection, Unknown Designation, and Proposition Construction. Some necessary measures observed…

Education in China, in its various forms and levels, is widely conceptualised as integrating the cultivation of "human souls" with the provision of students with knowledge. The English word "education" is "jiao yu" in Chinese, which means "teaching [and] cultivating". The analogy "shi nian shu mu, bai…

The purposes of this paper are twofold. First, we argue that the rationalistic assumptions on which dominant conceptions of the coaching process rest are rather unrealistic. We therefore hold that they have relatively limited potential either for a theoretical understanding of coaching or for guiding practitioners. Second, we tentatively offer the…

The role and performance of the engineering and scientific institutions in the UK have been undergoing gradual change in response to external, State and global influences. Consequently, the institutions are having to adapt and in the process of doing so the traditional balance between learned society and qualifying association activities is now in…

One important challenge for researchers is to understand what happens inside classrooms that make the environment available for children's learning. This study develops the margin|centre dialectic as a general framework for describing participation of very young children in science-related activities. It employs a cultural-historical approach that…

This study involved fourth grade children as co-researchers of their engaged, aesthetic reading experience. As members of the "Readers as Researchers Club," they documented their engagement with text--how they create, enter, and sustain the story world. The children, who self-identified as avid readers, explored the activities central to their…

In order to achieve middle school literacy success over time in an urban school district with a high poverty rate and a growing population of English language learners (ELLs), the Chicago Public School (CPS) System has adopted a pedagogical strategy that relies on instruction that is data-driven (formative and summative), standards-based…

Designed to give children a sense of the cultural heritage that fairy tales represent, this instructional unit was originally developed to motivate eighth-grade low-level readers and was later adapted for English as a second language classes and for a variety of elementary and secondary school learning levels. Objectives of the unit are to help…

THIS BOOK PROVIDES TEACHERS WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR STIMULATING YOUNG WRITERS TO CREATE IMAGINATIVE COMPOSITIONS CONTAINING VERSATILE VOCABULARY WORDS AND GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS. THE SUGGESTIONS ARE GROUPED INTO FIVE CHAPTERS--(1) "SPINNING IMAGINATIVE THOUGHTS" IS DESIGNED TO ASSIST TEACHERS IN FOSTERING PUPILS' FLEXIBLE THINKING PROCESSES TOWARD THE…