Children bring a variety of cultural, linguistic, and social backgrounds into the preschool classroom. When teachers consider these backgrounds, they are better able to create environments that reflect children's cultures and to design learning experiences that build on children's prior experiences. This qualitative study examined how children's…

This study utilized a tool-oriented perspective on the uptake and use of digital technology in three exemplary upper secondary schools, to determine how the school leaders viewed leadership in the development of information and communication technology (ICT)-enriched environments for teaching and learning, and how they utilized technology in their…

Background: Learning processes are usually characterized by students' misunderstandings and misconceptions. Engineering educators intend to help their students overcome their misconceptions and achieve correct understanding of the concept. This paper describes a misconception in digital systems held by many students who believe that combinational…

Prompted by changing demographics, economic pressures, and global competition, Texas and members of the Southern Regional Education Board adopted policies to boost minority enrollment and success in higher education around the turn of the century. This study draws upon IPEDS graduation rate data for a benchmark year, 2002, and for 2006 through…

Research on teacher stability typically focuses on the extent to which teachers remain in the same school, district, or the teaching profession from one year to the next. I investigate another facet of stability--whether teachers remain in the grade they teach. Drawing on administrative data from a large district in California, I find that high…

Questioning and discussion techniques are effective instructional methods, but there is often inconsistent implementation of these instructional methods. This case study explored teachers and evaluators' perceptions regarding exemplary questioning and discussion techniques. Participants included 9 teachers who earned exemplary marks on their…

Borrowing student loans can be confusing and intimidating, enough so that these feelings can influence how students go to college or whether they even enroll at all. Colleges have a responsibility to provide loan counseling to federal student loan borrowers--which, when done intently, can produce a potentially clarifying and empowering experience.…

This paper discusses Multi-Feature Hierarchical Sequential Pattern Mining, MFH-SPAM, a novel algorithm that efficiently extracts patterns from students' learning activity sequences. This algorithm extends an existing sequential pattern mining algorithm by dynamically selecting the level of specificity for hierarchically-defined features…

As science teacher educators attempt to prepare teachers to underscore the aims of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States, 2013) alongside the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (NGAC and CCSSO, 2010), they must pay close attention to the intersection of these two content areas. To address this challenge, the authors (a…

Finding the most interesting correlations among items is essential for problems in many commercial, medical, and scientific domains. For example, what kinds of items should be recommended with regard to what has been purchased by a customer? How to arrange the store shelf in order to increase sales? How to partition the whole social network into…

We introduce a novel data structure, the Interaction Network, for representing interaction-data from open problem solving environment tutors. We show how using network community detecting techniques are used to identify sub-goals in problems in a logic tutor. We then use those community structures to generate high level hints between sub-goals.…

Cognitive Systems Engineering (CSE) has a history built, in part, on leveraging representational design to improve system performance. Traditionally, however, CSE has focused on visual representation of "monitored" processes--active, ongoing, and interconnected activities occurring in a system of interest and monitored by human…

The first step in developing or updating a licensure or certification examination is to conduct a job or task analysis. Following completion of the job analysis, a survey validation study is performed to validate the results of the job analysis and to obtain task ratings so that an examination blueprint may be created. Psychometricians and job…

Regression analysis is a conceptually simple method for investigating relationships among variables. Carrying out a successful application of regression analysis, however, requires a balance of theoretical results, empirical rules, and subjective judgment. "Regression Analysis by Example, Fifth Edition" has been expanded and thoroughly…

We investigated the effects of two types of nonweight-bearing exercise on changes in bone-specific alkaline phosphatase (BAP) and pro-collagen type 1 C-peptide (P1P). BAP is a specific marker of bone synthesis, whereas P1P reflects synthesis of type 1 collagen in other organs as well as bone. Eight participants performed static and dynamic…