Failure to attain handwriting competency during the school-age years often has far-reaching negative effects on both academic success and self-esteem. This complex occupational task has many underlying component skills that may interfere with handwriting performance. Fine motor control, bilateral and visual-motor integration, motor planning,…

The Department of Mathematics at the University of Food Technology, Plovdiv, Bulgaria, has introduced the Computer Algebra System DERIVE into the Mathematics courses with a view to increasing student motivation and understanding of the material taught as well as the efficiency of the teaching process. With the aim of investigating the effect of…

University-workplace partnerships are strategies increasingly called for in higher education. This article reports on collaborative knowledge production between employed professional chemical engineers (registered for higher degrees) and their university-based supervisors (researchers in the field of chemical engineering). The study draws on a…

Over the past decade, listening comprehension tests have been converting to computer-based tests that include visual input. However, little research is available to suggest how test takers engage with different types of visuals on such tests. The present study compared a series of still images to video in academic computer-based tests to determine…

This paper reports aspects of a large-scale project conducted in rural and remote regions of Australia. The study was designed to assess teaching and learning practices in early childhood programs with a particular focus on literacy, numeracy and the use of information and communication technologies. Programs had been specifically designed for use…

In this article, the author discusses how she uses formative assessments of information literacy skills in the high school IMC. As a result of informal observation and conversations with individual students--a form of formative assessment itself--the author learned that students were not using indexes to locate relevant information in nonfiction…

In an attempt to uncover differences in student behavior as a function of class size, the author observed a small class and a large class for 15 hours each and conducted interviews with eight students who were members of both classes. Two trends emerged from these qualitative data. First, a "diverge-converge" pattern was evident in the small class…

The aim of the current article is to review the peer-reviewed research literature on cues and concerns published between 1975 and 2006. To be included, articles had to report observational studies based on patient-physician consultations and report findings on patient expressions of cues and/or concerns. Quantitative and qualitative studies from…

In this study of the multiple determinants of professional caregiving, 237 caregivers (age range: 18-56 years) from 64 Dutch child care centers were extensively observed during their interactions with the children (0-4 years) in their usual care group. The choice of potential determinants of the caregiving quality was guided by Belsky's [Belsky,…

Target language competence of EFL teachers is an important aspect of EFL teaching and teacher expertise, and a case of ESP which is often not acknowledged as such. This paper presents a target language needs analysis for EFL teachers, carried out in Slovenia between 2003 and 2005. A survey of the literature shows that such studies are rare, even…

Research within a constructivist approach often relies on interview data, which are used to reveal beliefs held by the interviewee or to expose conceptions or conceptual structures that are supposed to reside within the interviewee. From a sociocultural perspective, severe criticism has been leveled against the neglect of the problems of inferring…

Research suggests that children's understanding of text can be improved by the explicit teaching of those comprehension strategies that are used implicitly by skilled readers, particularly the use of self-regulating strategies to generate questions about text. This study of the teaching of comprehension in 51 London Key Stage 2 classrooms explores…

Children with autism often have difficulty successfully applying newly acquired skills to novel situations. Naturalistic teaching procedures have been developed to help address this problem with generalization. These naturalistic procedures promote generalization through the use of natural consequences, diverse training, and the incorporation of…

This article examines the role of intergenerational relationships in the lives of experienced poets and writers ("soldiers") and emerging poets and writers in what the author terms Participatory Literacy Communities (PLCs). Drawing from Wenger's (1998) concept of communities of practice, the author uses data from two examples of PLCs--Black…

The combination of new instructional methods and new accountability pressures puts many in a quandary in evaluating math instruction. There is much for principals to learn about how and under what conditions new instructional methods work in math classrooms, how to support teachers as they develop new instructional skills, and how to integrate a…