Where adults go, children follow. The reality of a globalized, interconnected world, characterised by the mobility of people, goods and knowledge, across physical and virtual spaces and time, has had a significant impact on children's early experiences of language, literacy and identity. Children are not peripheral to, but constitute an integral…

This investigation employed exploratory methods to examine career aspirations in 141 students in Grades 4, 6, 8, 10, and 12 from an international school in Bangkok. Students specified the jobs that they were most likely to pursue as adults, rated the importance of potential influences in making career decisions, and drew a picture of themselves in…

This article discusses learning that occurred during primary school visits to the UK National Marine Aquarium (Aquarium). Before visiting, children were asked to independently create a drawing of marine life off the Devon coast and a drawing of tropical reef marine life, allowing an assessment of prior knowledge. Post-visit, children created…

Rurality is an active agent and central to the lived experiences of children growing up on a farm and attending a farm school. It is a key to their everyday experiences, and influences family life, schooling and their future. Previous studies elsewhere in the world have explored the notion of childhood in rural contexts, but there is a dearth of…

The underwater ecosystem of the ocean is a topic that is explored extensively by first-grade students in the author's school. By engaging students in literature and science, the author was able to introduce the topic of endangered sea life and the ways students can make a difference to protect the oceans. (Contains 1 online resource.)

The author likes to have her middle school students work with pens, patterns and textures. Because she was tired of the usual texture project she had been using, Shirley Laird began looking for a new approach. While searching for an inspiration, she ran across some old calendars that had excellent photos of teddy bears dressed up in different…

In this article, the author describes a texture and pattern project. Students started by doing an outline contour drawing of an animal. With the outline drawn, the students then write one of their names to fit "inside" the animal.

Over the past two decades, educational scholars have seen major shifts in how literacy is viewed. One of these shifts has been toward conceptualizing literacy as a set of social practices (Street, 1995) that people embody and value. To disrupt current definitions of literacy, the valued practices that keep those forms of literacy in place must…

The author is always on the lookout for new ideas, and found one with her state's new "grade-level expectations" in art. She had printed the expectations from the state department and bound them in book form for herself and other art teachers in her district. When the author was flipping through the booklet thinking, two things caught her eye:…

Enabling learning through meaningful classroom experiences has always been a challenge for teachers. Bringing about a balance of the "conceptual" and the "hands-on", along with contextual embeddedness in problem-solving situations, broadly characterises the experience of development and trials of three Design and Technology…

This article describes a cooperative project between eighth graders and first graders called "Going Green in the Neighborhood." The project entailed the first grade students sketching home designs on paper to make a model community, and the eighth grade students taking those drawings and making them into 3D computer models and then…

Word play is an important skill allowing product names, show titles, jokes, poetry and other writings or orations to be interesting, entertaining and well-remembered. This pretest--posttest counterbalanced study compared two instructional approaches for teaching second and third grade students (n = 71) word play skills. Students at a public…

Using a sociocultural framework to approach intergenerational learning, this inquiry examines learning processes used by families during visits to one nature center. Data were collected from videotaped observations of families participating in an environmental education program and a follow-up task to draw the habitat of raptors. Based on a…

At one Title I K-4 elementary campus located on the Gulf Coast of Southeast Texas, there seemed to be a prevalent problem of minority students, particularly male students, receiving office referrals at a higher rate than their non-minority counterparts in past years. Research from a 2010 Children's Defense Fund report indicates that…

This paper presents a cross-level study of German student teachers' beliefs about teaching and learning chemistry. It covers different stages of their teacher training program. The study is based upon drawings of teaching situations, which were analyzed using an evaluation pattern developed using grounded theory. The qualitative scales analyze…