This study investigates the social studies teaching practices of sixty-seven elementary teachers who are part of an alternative master's degree program in New York City. The respondents' program emphasizes constructivist and inquiry based teaching practices in its social studies methods courses. The findings are from an exit survey that was…

Noting that current discussion of the best way to accomplish the goal of "No Child Left Behind" has focused on the value of play versus a structured program for early education, this paper uses science education as a model for examining how children learn and the problems arising when artificial lines are drawn between work and play. The paper…

The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics emphasizes that young children need play-based opportunities to develop and deepen their conceptual understanding of mathematics. From a social-constructivist perspective, learning is more likely to occur if adults or more-competent peers mediate children's learning experiences. Emphasizing both the…

The purposes of this study were to investigate changes of science teaching and to explore the factors which influenced changes of three first grade teachers when implementing an in-service project. The researcher, the leader teacher and three first grade teachers built a collaborative relationship to hold a teacher development group. The leader…

The implementation of Taiwan's nationwide constructivist-approach elementary mathematics curriculum has been ongoing for 5 years. From the perspective of systems thinking, Taiwan elementary educational system's mindset as a whole is troubled, and is unable to coordinate with the surrounding community in order to better educational standards. The…

Written for those who will educate future counselors and psychotherapists, this book marks out a vision for counselor and psychotherapist training for the postmodern era. The book details specific practices that are grounded in constructivist and developmental principles including approaches to classroom instruction, field supervision, curriculum,…

This book sets out a constructivist, inquiry-based approach to instruction. The approach builds on clear understandings of children's current levels of knowledge, where their learning should progress to, and the means by which children learn early numeracy topics. The methods presented in this book have been used extensively by practitioners in…

The purpose of this applied dissertation was to examine the effects of constructivist pedagogy when addressing the issues associated with below proficiency scores in basic skills in mathematics on the state exit exam. Scores of thirty-four 11th and 12th grade students who did not perform at the state-mandated levels of proficiency in basic skills…

This is a continued study of the attitudes, perceptions, and philosophies of secondary education science teachers pre-serviced in constructivist teaching methodology over their first five-years of teaching. The following trends came out on reviewing all of the data concerning the attitudes; perceptions and philosophies of five teachers in were…

The purpose of this study is to describe the assessment environment in constructivist-oriented science, technology, and society (STS) classrooms. Data were gathered from in-depth interviews and subjected to a constant comparative analysis associated with a grounded theory model. Three themes emerged from the analysis: (1) a description of the…

The natural teaching method is active and student-centered, based on schema and constructivist theories, and informed by research in neuroplasticity. A schema is a mental picture or understanding of something we have learned. Humans can have knowledge only to the degree to which they have constructed schemas from learning experiences and practice.…

This document contains the full and short papers on interactive learning environments from ICCE/ICCAI 2000 (International Conference on Computers in Education/International Conference on Computer-Assisted Instruction) covering the following topics: a CAL system for appreciation of 3D shapes by surface development; a constructivist virtual physics…

This exhibit was developed through an interactive display against a traditional phenomenological approach. The research report addressed in this paper focuses on informal science learning and points out the need for analyzing the large-scale data gatherings of museums and their visitors. The paper addresses the methodology involved in…

According to the National Science Education Standards, science curricula should emphasize understanding, reasoning, and problem solving. In order to align with the standards, the learning environment should be an active learning environment rather than a lecture-centered format in postsecondary education. This study evaluates a new format for an…

With the advent of constructivist oriented instruction in learning institutions comes an enormous challenge, that of structuring individual-centered learning within a community of learners. Within this instructional framework, struggles to satisfy both individual and group learning needs can lead to one canceling the other out. Tendencies towards…