With the advent of the British National Curriculum, computer-based modeling has become an integral part of the school curriculum. This book is about modeling in education and providing children with computer tools to create and explore representations of the world. Members of the London Mental Models Group contributed their research: (1)…

This report documents the content and impact of an in-service program designed to enhance elementary school teachers' competence in narrative writing assessment. The program "Writing What You Read" was designed to help teachers and students make substantive assessments of texts. The program, which focused on a portfolio approach, was conducted…

National education policy reforms often do not translate into changes at the classroom level. This paper presents a conceptual framework developed for Sub-Saharan Africa to assist policy-makers in bridging the gap between school practice and national policies. It also describes how the framework was applied to current school-improvement efforts in…

The case study, the use of ethnography, and phenomenological methods and techniques of research are introduced as approaches to qualitative research in the area of educational technology. Both ethnography and phenomenological research are interpretive and descriptive forms of research. The ethnographic investigation focuses on the social…

Science is viewed as a neglected subject in many U.S. elementary schools. Many elementary school teachers feel unqualified and uncomfortable when asked to teach it. A study looked at a teacher who is enthusiastic about teaching science at the elementary school level. The constraints the teacher faced and ways in she dealt with them in her teaching…

In the tradition of critical ethnography, this study demonstrates the development and use of a structured approach to the qualitative study of an urban alternative public high school. It responds to the need for research that begins to connect the language of possibility in critical educational theory with an emerging language of possibility in…

The methodology developed for the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications' evaluation of the "New Pathways to a Degree" projects funded by the Annenberg/CPB Project is described. This methodology provides an approach for conducting a valid, reliable evaluation effort that is sensitive to specific institutional issues and…

This study discusses the development of a qualitative assessment to profile prosodic skills of Cantonese-speaking children with speech defects, and correlates it with a quantiative assessment of productive skills. The study entails the use of the Visi-pitch to provide objective data for assessment. The aim is to devise a comprehensive description…

This study used weekly conversations with 25 freshmen at Boise (Idaho) State University (BSU) and analyses of students' journal entries to examine reasons for BSU freshmen leaving school during or after their freshman year. The 13 students who were successful (reenrolled in the spring and following fall semesters and maintained satisfactory…

This paper presents the initial findings from an ethnographic case study, focusing on the mixed-method research strategy used in the MacArthur Comprehensive Child Development Project Follow-up Study. The aim of the study was to expand the understanding of children's developmental trajectories as they traverse the elementary school years.…

This paper summarizes responses of students in kindergarten and grades 1, 2, 4, and 5 to questions about Native Americans. The paper draws on findings from two studies, both done in a suburban school system deemed "average" on a variety of educational and socioeconomic indicators. In each study, samples of students stratified by gender…

Qualitative methods were used to study: (1) the effect of engaging in a mathematics teaching experience in an alternative high school program, the Transcend program, on preservice teachers' beliefs; and (2) the effects of a guided preservice teaching experience on at-risk learners' beliefs, self-concepts, and mathematical development. Five…

A cross-national study of learning environments in Taiwan and Australia is one example of research that employs both qualitative and quantitative methods. This paper describes the part of that study related to the development and validation of an instrument called the Teacher Student Interaction (TSI) which assess student perceptions of teacher…

This paper reports a study to address two questions concerning children's understanding of average: How do children construct and interpret representativeness within the context of data sets? and How do children think about the mean as a particular mathematical definition and relationship? Twenty-one students (seven each of 4th, 6th, and 8th…

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) recently published two documents, "Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics" (1989) and "Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics" (1991), (the "Standards Documents"), that recommend departure from conventional forms of instruction and…