This paper explores the case method as a model for teaching education students about play. The case method may contribute to an examination of the barriers to children's play expression within school and create more effective classroom practice. Within the model, students can consider cases which have been carefully constructed from actual…

This paper discusses various aspects of conceptual change instruction and research related to conceptual change strategies. The role played by teachers in the conceptual change process has been neglected in the research and understanding that role requires that: (1) the Conceptual Change Model of Posner provide a reasonable framework for thinking…

A study examined 49 students' use of distance education (DE) technology in a telecommunications course about the social and economic impacts of information technology. The originating site was a specially equipped television studio on the home campus. Aside from study guide readings, students wrote reaction journals and a paper about an…

"Sharing the ownership of knowing" (a constructivist concept of motivation for literacy learning) is a dynamic classroom interaction in which a teacher's constructivist epistemological stance facilitates students' sense of their own construction of meaning and the integrity of their own thinking. Sharing the ownership of knowing was one…

There is widespread agreement that theories of teaching, learning, and assessment should be consistent with a certain theory of learning, whether it be constructivism or some other theory. This paper describes the creation and development of the working draft of the assessment standards for school mathematics published by the National Council of…

Since assessment is intimately linked with instruction, it too is changing under the wave of numerous efforts at reforming mathematics and science education. From this new perspective, the learner actively constructs personal meaning from information and experiences by linking new information with his or her pre-existing knowledge and…

Recent research has focused on the use of reflection to examine teaching practices of preservice and inservice teachers. Limited research, however, has been done by university science educators on their own practice. This study involved two university science educators collaboratively participating in such an activity with an inservice teacher. It…

The essence of the computer revolution is yet to come, for computers are essentially generators of realities. Virtual reality (VR) is the next step in the evolutionary path; the user is placed inside the image and becomes a participant within the computational space. A VR computer generates a direct experience of the computational environment. The…

This paper reports on a study that consists of the analysis of the discourse of mother-child dyads (N=32) as they interacted during the performance of three science activities that increased in difficulty. Partial dialogues of three high achieving dyads during the solution of the task are presented and examined for evidence of semiotic uptake. The…

This Digest discusses Problem-Based Learning (PBL), a method developed by H.S. Barrows (1986), and originally created to prepare medical students for real-world problems by letting them solve medical problems based on real cases. The Digest contends that PBL can situate language learning in the real world by posing problems like those found in…

A study examined students' reactions to the Student-Directed Discussion technique (an attempt to develop a class "text" from the students' joint construction of meaning) as used in a methods course on language development. The students (25 of 27 were present the day of the survey) responded anonymously concerning whether they thought the…

An action research project described a program for teaching spelling strategies to increase the application of spelling skills in students' writing. The first half of the targeted population consisted of gifted first grade students from numerous, stable, upper-middle-class communities in a large Midwestern city and the surrounding suburbs. The…

Constructivism has received considerable attention in educational scholarship, practitioner preparation, and policy formation. This Digest identifies major forms of constructivism, considering issues and challenges that surface when implementing constructivist approaches to preservice and inservice teacher education. Constructivism is an…

This paper explores the effects of infusing writing-to-learn strategies into an inquiry-oriented science unit on simple machines, inventions and inventors. This study used an intact group pretest and posttest design to capture the ecological validity of a classroom of grade 4 students and teacher. The design incorporated quantitative research…

This script, which portrays a discussion by a five-person committee about whether to grant tenure to a faculty member, is a vehicle for discussing the meanings of scholarship and standards, the nature of truth and realism, and the constructivist view of learning. The argument about the quality of the faculty member's scholarship leads into a…