The cornerstones of special education law are the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504), and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). One of the main purposes of these acts was to provide a national mandate to eliminate discrimination against disabled students in the workforce and in an…

This paper concisely chronicles the evolution of the concept of expertise since the 1960s. After presenting the key themes of expertise throughout the years, we propose a breakdown of the evolution into three waves: information-processing wave, speed/problem solving wave, and emotional intelligence/ways of expertise wave. We then show the…

In this study, 230 licensed social workers participated in a cross-sectional survey to examine participants' self-perceived change in knowledge, attitude, and behavior (KAB) following formal and informal continuing professional education (CPE). Self-perceived change scores were significantly higher for informal than formal CPE. Higher motivational…

This article describes the experience of teaching structural bioinformatics to third year undergraduate students in a subject titled "Biomolecular Structure and Bioinformatics." Students were introduced to computer programming and used this knowledge in a practical application as an alternative to the well established Internet bioinformatics…

High school teachers must not use that time devoted to the study of the mass media to "beat up" on the press or to "frighten" students with stories which exaggerate the power of the mass media industries. At the same time the potential enormous impact of the contemporary mass media must not be ignored. This means that teachers must not overstate…

Industrial culture focuses mainly on the production of "things"--of static objects. Knowledge, on the other hand, is constantly in flux, like a flowing stream. Conventional industrial notions lead policy makers to believe that the addition of a knowledge-based industry to an existing industrial base makes a knowledge economy. This is not the case.…

England's Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA) requires that students, in order to qualify for teacher status, must undertake the study of law. This article reviews the TDA standards and considers its rationale for the selection of law. Such selection and the need, if any, to study law are contrasted with texts written for teachers…

This study investigated the effects of a training seminar and selected background variables on Greek music teachers' attitudes and self-evaluation regarding research. Public school, university, and conservatory teachers (n = 41) participated in 16 hours of seminar instruction over a two-week period at a Greek university. The seminar provided an…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to describe parents' perceptions of their 5th grade child's physical education program. Twenty seven parents were interviewed regarding the types of information they currently have and the sources from which that information came. Results indicated that many parents possessed inaccurate information…

Multiple literacies, multiple ways to look at the world, impact how students make connections to and understand their world. Referring to students' reading of their world using the term multiple literacies validates that students actually add knowledge to the academic conversation. Referring to the wealth of knowledge students bring as only skills…

Based on empirical findings and theoretical considerations related to the field of expertise research, the importance of "types" and "qualities" of knowledge in relation to problem solving in physics was investigated. The students (N = 138) in this study had a level of competence that corresponds to an intensive beginner college course in physics.…

This paper describes an exercise that frames the choices made in creating measures of knowledge as problematic--making clear that the difficulties in interpreting the survey response are not limited to opinion items but apply to questions about factual information as well. Ambiguities in question wording and response options can invite multiple…

All advocates of curriculum reform talk about an increased emphasis on conceptual understanding in mathematics. In this article, the authors use many examples to address the following issues: What does conceptual understanding mean, especially in introductory courses such as college algebra, precalculus, or calculus? How do we recognize its…

Factors affecting performance on base-10 tasks were investigated in a series of four studies with a total of 453 children aged 5-7 years. Training in counting-on was found to enhance child performance on base-10 tasks (Studies 2, 3, and 4), while prior knowledge of counting-on (Study 1), trading (Studies 1 and 3), and partitioning (Studies 1 and…

Previous studies of community colleges have shown that instructors play a vital role in the plans and actions of students who transfer to 4-year colleges and universities (Britt & Hirt, 1999; Cejda & Kaylor, 2001; Cuseo, 1998; Gaskin, 1999; Tatum, 2001). The purpose of the current study was to obtain information from the faculty on the extent of…