Why do adolescents and young adults lack a full and coherent understanding of a religion? This is a phenomenon of wide-ranging proportions. Using a cultural, theological, and philosophical analysis, the author argues that one important reason behind the lack of religious content knowledge is the reluctance of teachers to move beyond the…

This study examined the pedagogy of three online teacher professional development (oTPD) modules. Evidence of design features oriented to the "how people learn" framework was the primary research objective. An analytic framework was devised to code knowledge types, levels of cognitive demand, levels of interaction, and sensory details in the…

Like their counterparts in other disciplines, accounting educators are gradually moving away from talk-and-chalk lectures to project-based learning, real-world problem solving, and team collaboration. Slower to change are the ways in which the impact of these innovative teaching methods have been assessed, with student reactions and traditional…

This paper presents a positivist quantitative case study of four rural Queensland schools implementing the Queensland Studies Authority's outcomes based education curriculum. Queensland's school-based management system means that these schools are operating at distinctly different points along their implementation phase. This research shows how…

This self-administered self-study examined a high school teacher's thought processes during the planning and teaching of lessons, and after the lessons had been completed--identifying levels of reflectivity, interactive thoughts, and decisions. Video tapes, teacher journal entries, and peer interviews were used to help stimulate recall and explore…

Learning Network Design (LND) is a socially oriented methodology for construction of cooperative distance learning environments. The paper advances a social constructivist approach to learning in which learning and teaching are seen as a process of active communication, interpretation, and negotiation; offers a view of information technology as a…

The unique bond between mentors and mentees is a complex dyad with unusual strength and trust. It is a relationship of special importance to African American graduate students, who have cited mentor relationships as vital to their persistence in graduate school. African American graduate students do face great difficulties in finding adequate…

The view of learning that underlies standard test theory is inconsistent with the view rapidly emerging from cognitive and educational psychology. Learners become more competent not simply by learning more facts and skills, but by reconfiguring their knowledge; by "chunking" information to reduce memory loads; and by developing…

The left side of the brain has been said to process speech along with logical, rational, convergent, objective, and sequential tasks. The right side of the brain is thought to process nonverbal, spatial, musical, and analogical information. This paper discusses the research on brain hemisphericity from the perspectives of traditional and…

Supplemental Instruction (SI) has been firmly established as a tool for helping college students succeed in beginning writing courses. The SI model is based on a Piagetian-constructivist theoretical framework, which holds that learning is an active process in which learners "construct" their own knowledge, making it an essential part of…

This paper identifies a feature of human brain neural nets that may be described as the principle of ease of processing (PEP), and that, it is argued, is the primary force guiding a learner towards a target grammar. It is suggested that the same principle lies at the heart of Optimality Theory, which characterizes the course of language…

This study was designed to investigate the effects of a dynamic instructional environment, English proficiency, and visualization level, independently and interactively, on middle school students' construction of the concepts of reflection and rotation. The effects of a dynamic instructional environment and English proficiency on students' two-…

The primary purpose of this study was to understand what happens when some aspects of the constructivist approach, namely prediction, explanation, student-centered, and teacher-centered discussions, are applied to science teaching. The study involved 363 junior high school students in Taiwan. It combined the effectiveness of four alternative…

This paper examines the notion of whether computers can provide teachers with the necessary tools to alter the constraints of the traditional classroom and allow for constructivism and independent learning. The study was carried out at Methodist Ladies' College, a girls' school in Melbourne, Australia; information was collected through teacher…

A study identified four principles, based on transfer of learning research and cognitive theory, for guiding curricular decisions, instructional development, and teaching practices in ways that support transferable learning. The principles were as follows: (1) emphasize intermediate-level knowledge in curricular decisions; (2) create in the…