The majority of learners in southern Africa receive their education through the medium of a second language, English. Although teachers of English play a crucial role in helping learners to acquire language skills in the medium of instruction, we argue that subject content teachers' lack of attention to the teaching of the four language skills may…

This study was designed to increase student empowerment through the use of formative assessment. The targeted population consisted of first and fifth grade students in the same school. Evidence for the existence of the problem included teacher observation, students' lack of knowledge and skills to complete classroom assignments, and low test…

The gap between researchers and teachers has minimized the impact that research should have on school development. Using teachers as researchers is one way of empowering them to adopt the perspective of the researcher. Research-oriented activity is then seen as one promising means of improving the teachers' pedagogical expertise. It is assumed…

Research in Bahrain has demonstrated that children in educationally-oriented day care centers made significantly greater gains in cognitive, social, and emotional measures than children in care-oriented centers or at home. This study provided further data and addressed the question of whether there are differences in the daily learning experiences…

The eight chapters in this book explain a teaching model to help students develop their kinesthetic intelligence through purposeful movement education. The major focus is the kindergarten through third grade child, but because in movement one can be a "beginner" at any age, movement experiences of both older and younger learners are occasionally…

This study examined regulatable quality and teacher-child interaction and, their influences on the quality of the attachment relationship developed by preschool children with their day care teachers. Observation and interview procedures were completed in 12 classrooms serving 194 preschoolers. Regulatable quality variables included teacher-child…

This document reports on a small-group teaching experiment whose goal was to understand how fourth- and sixth-grade children develop concepts of common and decimal fractions. Both the Grade 6 and the Grade 4/5 children were taught common and decimal fractions through discussion and by using manipulatives, beginning with basic concepts of common…

This report explores the use of reading comprehension instruction as a gateway for developing oral-language proficiency in language-minority students. Based on classroom observations, analyses of videotapes of literacy teaching sessions, conversations with teachers and administrators, and analyses of teaching demonstration lessons, six…

This book, a research-based text, describes peer observation and assistance (POA), a method designed to isolate behaviors and skills shown to raise student achievement levels and the process by which teachers can help their peers improve performance in these areas. The volume is organized into 10 chapters: (1) Teachers Helping Teachers: The…

The Environmental Improvement Project at Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting in Flin Flon, Manitoba, presented a unique opportunity for field observation and assessment. Field observation of the approximately 70 carpenters employed with various companies provided information on the types of communication used and the circumstances in which the…

A Future Teachers' Autobiography Club discussion group/research project invited six elementary teacher candidates to read, write about, and discuss ethnic autobiography in order to foster and investigate the potential of peer discussion in teacher learning. Using a selected list of six autobiographies, the researcher hosted monthly dinner…

This paper develops the idea of "the authority of experience" to explain the unease about teacher education represented in comments of 19 graduate students enrolled in a preservice physics education methods course which combined on-campus classes and teaching placements. Interviews with the student teachers after the first half of the…

To assist instructors with software development efforts, the Behavioral Learning Center at Pennsylvania State University's Smeal College of Business implemented a method to pilot test instructional software. The developed method was required to collect multichanneled information and was not limited to students' verbal responses to questions.…

This study sought to determine how retained first grade students function in a whole language classroom after meeting with failure in a traditional first grade setting. Data collection for the five retained students, plus six "at-risk" students, involved naturalistic observation. Reading began from language experience stories that the students…

This study examines parenting in 290 of the 2,322 families studied in the New Chance Demonstration, a national research and demonstration program operated between 1989 and 1992 in 10 states. The demonstration project sought to improve the economic prospects and overall well-being of low-income young mothers (ages 16 to 22) and their children…