Because of the increased influence of the whole language approach at the elementary and middle school levels and the increased emphasis on enriching instruction through reading across the curriculum, one alternative approach to teaching science which has received some attention from science and science education organizations is the use of…

This creative philosophical essay demonstrates Vygotsky's principles in the form of an extended fictional thought-experiment, in which the author is "interviewed" by a fictional Ukrainian reporter, Natasha. The introduction, "Squaring Russian Theory with American Practice," gives some background in Vygotsky's and Davydov's…

The theme for the Association for Counselor Education and Supervision (ACES) 1993-94 was to promote professionalism, collaboration, and advocacy. To facilitate these goals, the ACES president, Barbara Griffin, engaged the members in a dialogue about change--a change supportive of collaboration and advocacy, a change that called for a strong…

Memory work has potential usefulness as a method of helping students explore their relationship to science. Students have multiple early experiences with the natural world, but often these experiences are divorced from their school-based learning. It is known, however, that students use their informal experiences of the natural world in their…

The overall intent is to clarify relationships between psychological constructivist, sociocultural, and emergent perspectives by grounding them in attempts to understand what might be happening in a variety of teaching and learning situations. The first part of the paper outlines an interpretive framework developed in the course of a…

This book gives a definitive theoretical account of radical constructivism., a theory of knowing that provides a pragmatic approach to questions about reality, truth, language and human understanding. The chapter are: (1) "Growing up Constructivist: Languages and Thoughtful People," (2) "Unpopular Philosophical Ideas: A History in…

Arguments are presented for conceptualizing validity within a postmodern approach. Validity, reliability, and generalizability have been a holy trinity of social science research, and standard definitions of validity have been taken from criteria developed for psychometric tests. From a postmodern point of view, validity is sometimes discarded as…

There are the only two studies available on the types of solutions--unsaturated, saturated, supersaturated, dilute and concentrate--in the related literature with respect to students' understanding. But, no study focuses on remediation of students' alternative conceptions with regard to the aforementioned concepts, based on the assumption that…

This paper expands on a poster presentation about the results of research in PBL in distance education environments integrated in the PBL design model as defined by traditional literature. The results will be laid out as they are relevant to each stage of the process. Research on discrete aspects of its design process is necessary to enlighten…

When an adult outside the classroom learns history, it almost always begins with some connection or personal interest. The learning may be haphazard, but it will probably include movies, primary sources, trips to historical sites, and contacts with others with similar interests. The result is an understanding that is actively constructed, not just…

Environment-based education (EBE) focuses on the interdisciplinary integration of the subject by using constructivist, team teaching, self-learning, and student-centered instructional approaches. This report defines environment-based education and discusses advanced developments in learning skills and character education. Contents include: (1)…

This issues paper, the second in a series of eight, is intended to distill formative evaluation questions on topics that are central to the development of the higher and further education information environment in the United Kingdom. Issues Paper 1 introduced a framework for thinking about "good" learning. This paper complements Issues…

Educators are often hesitant to use techniques of public relations and marketing communication to attempt to alter undesirable understandings of the rationale and processes of education held by external constituencies. This paper shows that contemporary practice in public relations and marketing communication can be conceptualized as an…

This report contains conference papers on geometry teaching. There were five plenary talks given and a review of Hungarian geometry teaching. The plenary talks addressed background theories of the psychology of learning such as constructivism, perceptional psychology, and motivational psychology. The themes of the 21 short talks were on a varied…

Three groups of children aged 8-10 who scored below the 22nd percentile on the PATests were taught basic math skills for 16 hours. One group received individual instruction using Precision Teaching and Direct Instruction, the second group received group instruction using Precision Teaching and Direct Instruction, and the third group received group…