A 4-year-long action research project involving curriculum development in education for sustainable living as part of home economics in a university teacher education course is described and analysed. Design experiments were used to develop the curriculum and promote learning. The design experiments emphasised an integrating approach to action…

Since the publication of Fodor's (1983) The Modularity of Mind, there have been quite a few discussions of cognitive modularity among cognitive scientists. Generally, in those discussions, modularity means a property of specialized cognitive processes or a domain-specific body of information. In actuality, scholars understand modularity in many…

This paper presents a generally applicable method for characterizing subjects' hypothesis-testing behaviour based on a synthesis that extends on previous work. Beginning with a transcript of subjects' speech and videotape of their actions, a Reasoning Map is created that depicts the flow of their hypotheses, tests, predictions, results, and…

Considers effective dialogue between teacher and student essential for promoting meaningful learning in the classroom. Effective dialogue enables teachers and students to be active in the construction of shared understanding by making explicit the overlap between the perspectives held by students and teachers. Suggests that concept maps provide a…

Four groups (three engineering students in each group) were videotaped while constructing concept maps in Linear Algebra. There are two aims of this study. The first is to characterize the discourse in the groups by addressing the following research questions: Do the students communicate in an "effective" way? Do the students'…

The article presents empirical evidence for the effectiveness and efficiency of a modified version of Trochim's (1989a, b) concept mapping approach to define the characteristics of an adaptive learning environment. The effectiveness and the efficiency of the method are attributed to the support that it provides in terms of elicitation, sharing,…

Middle school students examine data from the Great Lakes region, assess impact of climate changes, and relate climate and water processes in a concept map. After learning how lake water levels will likely decline, they listen to a story about a grandparent revisiting the lakeshore with a grandchild. In the role of the grandparent and then of the…

This article examines the division of music styles according to the conventional categories of classical, traditional and popular, and proposes the term "vernacular" as a complementary way of viewing various types of amateur music-making among diverse groups in modern societies. "Vernacular", as it is used here, includes the…

In this article, the author shares insights derived from her journey as an evaluation practitioner and as a capacity-building evaluation facilitator committed to demystifying evaluation as a core development resource. The author weaves in some foundational stories that have shaped and informed her path. Through her work and praxis, she has been…

A number of elements of scaffolding are identified that contribute to the operationalization of real world video production projects as authentic learning environments in which students can learn the intellectual television production skills necessary for working in the television industry. Three key elements are identified. Firstly projects must…

This paper interrogates the role children's indigenous games of Africa can play in the development of fundamental movement skills relevant in modernized sports. On a daily basis, children in Africa play varieties of traditional games that vary between tribes, communities and distances. However, the efficacy of these games in the development of…

This article condenses the milestones of a long project. The ambition of the project has been to seek a balanced view of early childhood education, where both the adaptive and agentive nature of action is considered. A model based on the relationships between perception and environmental change serves as the project's theoretical foundation. The…

Positive behavior support (PBS) represents an empirically driven concern with quality of life (QOL), support through systems change, and linkage to multiple behavioral, social, and biomedical sciences. The major impediments to QOL are problem behavior, skill deficits, and dysfunctional systems. A model for addressing dysfunctional systems is…

This paper reports on a quasi-experimental study which examined the effectiveness of concept mapping as a revision tool in enhancing pupils' examination performances in primary science. The research objective seeks to determine whether there are significant differences in achievement between the concept mapping and traditional method of revision…

More young children and their families have access to early years services than ever before in Britain. Within these settings practitioners and parents need to work closely together for the benefit of the child. Yet the relationships within the childcare and education triangle (child, parent, practitioner) are highly complex and sometimes fraught…