Describes design features of group learning activities. Includes providing open-ended tasks, multiple ways to demonstrate competence, discipline-based content, creative and supportive interdependence and individual accountability, and clear evaluation criteria. (Contains 11 references.) (PKP)

Presents a model for designing student-centered, technology-rich learning environments (SCenTRLE) to help educators operationalize constructivist and student-centered approaches to teaching and learning. Highlights include facilitating knowledge construction and lifelong learning; technology use; student attitudes; levels of implementation;…

This year-long study exposed preservice elementary teachers in Fiji to pedagogy based on a constructivist view of learning in order to improve their content knowledge and provide them with greater confidence to teach science. Qualitative and quantitative analysis indicated that the constructivist-based teaching approach led to improved learning,…

Examines the following elements of scaffolding, providing insight into the librarian's role as educator: attention, ownership, collaboration, appropriateness, modeling, support, adjustment, and internationalization. A sidebar lists 10 ways to recognize a constructivist children's reference librarian. (AEF)

The use of constructivism in mathematics instruction for regular and special education students, including those with learning disabilities, is explored. Issues addressed include the explicit-to-implicit continuum of constructivism, perceptions of constructivism relating to teachers and students, the setting demands of a constructivistic learning…

Describes a method for teaching multiplication of fractions based on Piaget's constructivism. Instead of teaching the algorithm of multiplying the numerators and denominators, students are presented with many problems and ask to invent their own ways of solving them. (DDR)

Teachers possessing a thorough knowledge of their students are better able to engage them in formal learning. To facilitate this process, staff at Research for Better Schools developed the Urban Learner Framework, which envisions urban learners as capable, motivated, resilient learners able to build on their cultural strengths. Steps for…

Examines efforts at San Diego State University to develop preservice education courses in teaching with technology. Discusses failures and successes of particular courses, and describes the educational theory underlying those efforts. Suggests that a combination of learning strategies based on a combination of behaviorist, cognitivist, and…

Claims that mind and mental objects form a societal mental structure enabling children to assimilate the society and become co-constructing members. Cites evidence that competence to create mental objects, symbols, and meanings separated from action is the evolutionary evolved human capacity for society and culture. Vygotsky's "natural"…

Describes generalization activity as an opportunity to learn about seventh graders' understanding of functions. Findings indicate that the modeling efforts of students allowed them to analyze their understanding of representations of quantities, relationships among quantities, and relationships among the representations of quantities in both…

A study of the processes by which 24 grade-12 Australian physics students brought order to their observations and practices shows that the phenomena students construct from their laboratory work (not always accurate) develop from connections among the embodied practices of language and physical action, their world, and social relations. (SLD)

Explores ideas parents hold about issues underlying current constructivist school reforms. Summarizes semistructured interview data from 34 Midwestern parents concerning elementary schooling goals, how learning occurs, teachers' classroom roles, assessment of children's learning, and parents' roles in education. Parents agreed more on the means…

Discusses the use of Post-it Notes as effective teaching devices. Presents activities that use Post-it Notes including concept mapping, molecular modeling, group activities illustrating multi-step biological processes, and genetics activities. Highlights the use of the constructivist approach. (JRH)

Explores the various cultural perspectives present in mathematics education in China. States that the Chinese mathematics education has hidden problems and can learn from the Western mathematics education that utilizes approaches such as problem solving and constructivism. States that ethnomathematics should have an active role. (CMK)

This article focuses on understanding the teaching and learning of division from a constructivist perspective. An overview of constructivism is provided, followed by a discussion of division in the context of both computation and word problem solving. Suggestions are provided for teaching students with learning disabilities using a constructivist…