This article focuses on the experience of a bilateral educational aid project concerning a continuing professional development (CPD) programme for teachers with specific reference to Guinea-Bissau. The authors were keen to understand how teachers and school principals perceived the impact of this CPD programme on the quality of teaching and…

Purpose: This paper aims to describe the results of a qualitative case study of three beginning elementary teachers' knowledge-in-practice of multicultural science education. Design/methodology/approach: Data included interviews, focus group discussions, audio-recorded lessons and daily field notes through the course of a month-long summer science…

Cloud computing applications have a profound presence in educational institutions, yet educators may not be utilizing the digital tools to their full potential. This study helped fill a gap in current literature regarding secondary teachers' acceptance and use of cloud computing applications in instruction. The purpose of this qualitative…

The problem addressed is that inclusive classrooms lack consistent, collaborative learning opportunities for students with an identified learning disability (LD). A qualitative narrative inquiry was completed to collect teachers' stories and experiences. This study was framed by Vygotsky's social development theory, Bandura's theory of…

Mary Colson is an eighth-grade Earth science teacher at Horizon Middle School, and Russ Colson is a professor of geology and Earth science education in the Department of Anthropology and Earth Science at Minnesota State University Moorhead, both in Moorhead, Minnesota. Since her first year in teaching eighth grade Earth science, in 1986,…

Is anything more refreshing than going for a nice, long swim? The math scenarios presented in this article will take the reader back to hot summer days and remind the reader what a cool dip in the water feels like. Solving these problems is enjoyable and encourages the solver to think of the many ways that math is all around--even in the middle of…

To improve access to STEM curriculum, an activity was planned that presents the opportunity to design and build using gears and other tools. In this challenge, preservice elementary school teachers were asked to mathematically analyze gears and create an amusement park ride that uses gears to spin. Although this lesson was implemented with…

In the 21st century, the need to develop creative potential through education is more critical than ever. Invention-gifted education is one approach that can both foster creativity and develop inventive talent. Invention-gifted education in the Republic of Korea is distinctive in its systematic approach to talent identification and talent…

In this work the authors investigate the effectiveness of robotics in education. Rather than creating excitement for children when playing with robots in games, they are examining the overall learning environment where a robot acts as a teaching assistant. They designed a suitable lesson plan when groups of teenagers participate in activities…

More than a decade ago, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies observed that teachers in the United States focused more on "high-interest activities" (games, dramatic presentations, humor, and so on) than on the development of challenging concepts. Since then, the authors have worked with many teaching teams to shift…

Whether a teacher loves it or dreads it, lesson planning is a crucial step in the teaching process. Done effectively, collaborative lesson planning--in which teachers work together to design lessons--leads to increased professional learning, higher job satisfaction for teachers, and better lesson plans. The process poses challenges for both…

With a teacher's busy schedule, it is easy to get stuck in the lesson planning doldrums. However, as this is an era when teachers can easily learn from and share with educators all over the world, and are interacting increasingly with connected and tech-savvy students, their interest in all things digital can be leveraged for learning by teachers…

Place-based and place-responsive approaches to outdoor learning and education are developing in many countries but there is dearth of theoretically-supported methodologies to take a more explicit account of place in research in these areas. In response, this article outlines one theoretical framing for place-responsive methodologies for…

Mary Colson is an eighth-grade Earth science teacher at Horizon Middle School, and Russ Colson is a professor of geology and Earth science education in the Department of Anthropology and Earth Science at Minnesota State University Moorhead, both in Moorhead, Minnesota. Since her first year in teaching eighth grade Earth science, in 1986,…

The present study compared the effectiveness of two types of just-in-time support for lesson planning. Both types contained the same technological information but differed regarding pedagogical and content information. The first type presented this information separately (i.e., separate support); the second type presented this information in an…