Summer Enrichment Workshop (SEW) is a 3-week enrichment program held at The University of Alabama (UA) Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for students identified as gifted and talented. The faculty of the College of Education, Program of Gifted and Talented (GT), formed a partnership with a College of Engineering faculty member who mentored the graduate student…

In this wide-ranging interview with Educational Leadership, Stanford University Professor of Education Linda Darling-Hammond discusses the kind of preparation and support new teachers need to survive their critical first years in the classroom. Among her central recommendations are more intensive mentoring that lasts through the first year of…

Knowledge of Diverse Learners (KDL) is increasingly recognized as an essential component of knowledge base for effective teaching as in today's schools, teachers must be prepared to teach a diverse population of student (Banks et al. 2005). In other words, teachers need to be aware that their students in a classroom are and always have been…

The goal of the overall study was to evaluate the potential of Math Recovery (MR), a pullout, one-to-one tutoring program, to increase mathematics achievement among low-performing first graders, thereby closing the school-entry achievement gap by enabling them to achieve at the level of their higher-performing peers in the regular mathematics…

Having gained independence in 1991, Kazakhstan is making major adjustments in its educational system to meet the demands of its changing workplace. To that end, the Ministry of Education has mandated that critical thinking be incorporated into all levels. Given the importance of this goal, the authors surveyed teachers' understanding and use of…

One aspect of scientific inquiry that appears to be particularly challenging to learn is how explanatory models are developed and used in science. It is even more challenging to learn to teach through methods that engage young students in building and using explanatory models. In part, this is because to do so requires that teachers make real-time…

The new majority of faculty in today's colleges and universities are part-time, yet sizable gaps exist in the research on their needs, interests, and experiences. Further, the peer-reviewed scholarship is largely quantitative. Principally, it focuses on the utility of the adjunct work force, comparisons between part-time and full-time faculty, and…

Though the term dyslexia is familiar to the American public and is frequently seen in the media, it often is misunderstood, even in the educational setting. The International Dyslexia Association established the following definition of dyslexia: Dyslexia is a specific learning disability that is neurological in origin. It is characterized by…

The teacher as the classroom's ringleader, trying to fulfill the needs of all of her/his learners, at times, can seem like a three-ring circus. Just as enjoyment comes from the frenetic activity of the circus, benefits can stem from differentiating instruction for one's learners. These benefits include a sense of self-efficacy, increased content…

The introduction of a National Curriculum to England and Wales in 1988 provided the first compulsory framework for music education. Writing in 1996, Mills suggested that in ten years time the impact of this change would result in primary school student teachers needing refreshment, and not development, of their musical knowledge. This five-year…

This study examines the impact of a nationally disseminated professional development program, Developing Mathematical Ideas (DMI), on teachers' specialized knowledge for teaching mathematics and illustrates how such research could be conducted. Participants completing 2 DMI modules were compared with similar colleagues who had not taken DMI.…

As a result of continuous global immigration to the United States, several microcultures coexist within the country. Today's classroom should provide an interface where individuals from different cultural backgrounds have the potential for sharing a rich place of learning--a place where the teacher embraces and celebrates individual differences,…

Improving education systems is an elusive goal. Despite considerable investment, international studies such as the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) project of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the McKinsey Report, "How The World's Best Performing Schools Come Out On Top", indicate that improving…

Research has identified the value of learners using technology to construct their own representations of science concepts. In this study, we investigate how learners, such as preservice elementary teachers, design and make a narrated animation to represent their science knowledge. The type of animation exemplified is called a "Slowmation"…

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of an experimental elementary mathematics field experience course, we have designed a new assessment instrument. These video-based prediction assessments engage prospective teachers in a video analysis of a child solving mathematical tasks. The prospective teachers build a model of that child's mathematics…