This study clarifies the basic structure of student teachers' reflective thinking. It presents a constructivist account of teacher knowledge through a detailed analysis of various patterns of reflection in student teacher portfolios. We aim to gain a greater understanding of the process and outcomes of portfolio writing in the context of teaching…

This study describes the phenomenon of how first-year teachers learn to evaluate students learning by (letter) grades. Grades seem simple enough; but in reality, each grade carries serious consequences with it--for either good or bad. For example, grades affect benefits/consequences at home; they affect placement in remedial or advanced courses;…

This paper presents findings from the large-scale study "Literacy Teacher Educators: Their Backgrounds, Visions, and Practices" that includes 28 literacy/English teacher educators (LTEs) from four countries. The participants were interviewed three times and shared their course outlines. Six pre-service LTEs who use a constructivist…

Creating an online music course afforded developers at Ocean County College an opportunity to build learner-centered, media-rich lessons and assessments. Guided by constructivist learning theory and using free resources, Music Fundamentals was designed to introduce students to music notation while demonstrating real-world application of concepts.…

The present quasi-experimental study aimed at investigating the impact of trained and untrained peer feedback on students' written comment types and writing quality. Significant differences were found in terms of comment types provided: trained students provided a significantly higher number of comments focused on organization and content (global…

While primary and secondary teachers are legally required to adhere to inclusion guidelines for students experiencing disabilities, instructors in higher education have had more leeway to operate under a more traditional paradigm which can marginalize rather than include students in the classroom. Furthermore, students experience exclusion for…

Based on the constructivist learning principles, self-assessment has been a targeted topic for many studies in the field of teacher education. Its importance and its leading to learner empowerment have been discussed for long. This current study in this line tries to move one step further by adding a correlative comparison between instructors' and…

Students with disabilities are less likely to graduate from high school and tend to score lower on standardized tests than their general education peers. Although use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can improve these outcomes for traditional students, it has been unclear whether its use positively affects learning gains for the…

Over the past decades, the trends in demographics for community colleges have changed dramatically causing more diversity (language, age, race) in student enrollment (Turcotte, 2015, p.3). As a result of the enrollment population shifting, community colleges evolved more comprehensively by expanding access, which allowed service to more students.…

Constructionism can be a powerful framework for teaching complex content to novices. At the core of constructionism is the suggestion that by enabling learners to build creative artifacts that require complex content to function, those learners will have opportunities to learn this content in contextualized, personally meaningful ways. In this…

Educational researchers and academics cannot ignore the ever-present call for education, and schooling in particular, to reflect the needs of the twenty-first century knowledge economy. Since the 1990s, national curricula and education systems have reflected this call in their focus on technology and shifting pedagogy to increasingly…

Background: Despite increasing interest in teachers' and students' conceptions of learning and teaching, and how they influence their practice, there are few studies testing the influence of teachers' conceptions on their students' learning. Aims: This study tests how teaching conception (TC; with a distinction between…

Master narratives frame students' historical knowledge, possibly hindering access to more historical representations. A detailed analysis of students' historical narratives about the origins of their own nation is presented in terms of four master narrative characteristics related to the historical subject, national identification, the main theme…

We propose a systemic-constructivist perspective for analyzing knowledge construction. In contrast to theories that focus on individuals as actors, the systemic-constructivist approach emphasizes the relevance of social systems and regards the construction of knowledge as a self-referential process that takes place in social systems. We propose…

This article offers a critical interpretation of the current trends in instructional models for English language learners in California. We review key instructional models and analyze them from traditional (teacher-centered), progressive (student-centered), and critical orientations (society- and power-centered). These instructional models share…