Observing young children at play is a very common and useful method for identifying the presence or absence of certain developmentally appropriate skills. Such observations can vary from general overviews of typical classroom activities to extensive and highly detailed data-collection systems. Although educators should use a series of…

The last twenty years have witnessed the explosion of a worldwide epidemic. AIDS is a syndrome that crosses national borders and renders obsolete the distinctions between the public and private spheres. Researchers and historians who try to understand the social nuances of AIDS often classify it as a cultural illness that underlines national…

This study explored teachers' pedagogical strategies for using multimedia simulation to structure and support secondary science teaching. Expertise was investigated across a range of classroom settings to analyse how specialist knowledge is situated within and adapted to the teaching and learning context. Analysis of data arising from 10 lesson…

Quality in primary education is currently high on the education agenda in developing countries. What is quality? How can we effectively measure it? How can we achieve it? How can we improve it? The author considers two suggestions to be critical to answering these above questions and engages with them in this article: (1) place what is happening…

We propose a computer-assisted cancellation test system (CACTS) to understand the visual attention performance and visual search strategies in school children. The main aim of this paper is to present our design and development of the CACTS and demonstrate some ways in which computer techniques can allow the educator not only to obtain more…

This article examines the strategies employed by four Singapore schools (two primary and two junior colleges) to manage barriers to information and communication technologies (ICT) integration. Based on the observations of ICT-mediated lessons and face-to-face interviews with teachers, ICT heads-of-department and school principals, six strategies…

Informal training is known to be the dominant skill acquisition strategy for the majority of workers in India and many other economically developing countries and there is much benefit in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of this form of training. A participant observation case study was undertaken in northern India to investigate these…

Early approach to research in industrial and organizational (I/O) psychology was oriented towards quantitative techniques as a result of influences from the social sciences. As the focus of I/O psychology expands from psychological test development to other personnel functions, there has been an inclusion of qualitative methods in I/O psychology…

The Mass-Observation Archive at the University of Sussex sends regular "directives" to its panel of volunteer correspondents around the UK asking them to reflect on various issues relating to the day-to-day lives of ordinary people. Two directives from the 1980s and 1990s relate to libraries, books and reading habits. These sets of…

Tasks with adult learners have been discussed extensively in the language learning literature whilst studies about children using tasks are less widespread. Children's ability to interact on tasks with each other grows steadily with age. This paper reports on the differences observed in the interactions of 10-year-old children and adult learners.…

In this paper, the author proposes that a social reconstructionist framework of reflective practice provides an important orientation for preservice teachers to more successfully negotiate the rapidly changing contexts in which they will no doubt teach. She first illuminates the influence others have had on her understanding of reflection,…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to record and summarize the tensions and problems experienced by a high school administrative team as they attempted to change supervision alongside instruction in a transition to a new block schedule. Design/methodology/approach: A case study method was used. As a case study, the research is contextual in…

Purpose: This paper examines the way social class influences the relationship between business mentors and small business owner-managers. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on the author's experience of mentoring businesses with The Prince's Trust. Three businesses were selected as cases. The methodological approach involved…

This article describes how a qualitative data analysis package, NVivo, was used in a study of authentic and constructivist learning and teaching in the classroom. The paper starts with a summary of the research study in which NVivo was used to analyze the data and overviews the methodology that was adopted in this study. It, then, describes how…

The alternative education program remains a viable response for engaging students who would otherwise be dropouts. Raywid (1994) synthesized and advanced an alternative school typology describing organizational characteristics with related effectiveness that appeared useful for considering and improving program practices. A Unique opportunity…