This work reviews curricular designs, providing educators a practical structure for making curricular decisions. Chapter 1, "Making Change in a Changing World," argues that an appreciation of the role of pressure groups and partnerships is essential to a quality education plan. Chapter 2, "Concept-Based Curriculum," explores the history of the…

This article describes one teacher's use of case studies with a class of secondary student teachers, examining her efforts to assess and better understand the effects of case method in teacher education. The challenges and possibilities of reflection on practice are discussed through the examination of case method. (Author/SM)

Discussion of models of information skills focuses on an evaluation of the use of the PLUS (Purpose, Location, Use, and Self-Evaluation) model in a secondary school physics class in England. Topics include constructivism; mental models; brainstorming; concept-mapping; student opinions; teacher opinions; and the school librarian's perspective.…

Outlines the use of concept maps as a tool for science curriculum development and discusses the changes that occur in the teacher's view of the curriculum with successive revisions of the maps. Describes and analyzes the maps created by sixth-grade teachers. (PR)

This research applied evolving conceptions of learning to examine how to represent and evaluate students' and experts' cognitive structures. High school history students completed several tasks. Direct comparisons of the quality of student maps with expert maps showed that experts' concept maps could be used to score students' concept maps…

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have become basic ingredients of, and competitive tools in, the information-intensive tertiary/higher education sector. Their increased and specialised use in teaching and learning, research, academic administration, institutional management and information provision translates into greater access…

Religious education students on initial teacher education programmes work in both school and university contexts that might be expected to produce different accounts of the nature of religion. This article explores the contested nature of religion and the ways in which student teachers negotiate their own understanding of subject knowledge. A…

Web-based learning has been proposed as a convenient way to provide professional development experiences. Despite quantitative evidence that online instruction is equivalent to traditional methods (Russell, 2001), the efficiency of this approach has not been extensively studied among teachers. This case report describes learning in an online…

College students learn differently than their professors. This disconnect between learning styles is not a new problem, however the problem has been magnified by the technology driven environment which exists in contemporary higher education. Students who grew up using computers and Playstations while surfing MySpace blogs and listening to their…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine whether memory support and elicited production differentially benefited fast mapping of new vocabulary (comprehension, production accuracy, and speed) in adolescents with Down syndrome (DS) compared with typically developing (TD) children matched for syntax comprehension. The study also examined…

The growth and development of the pedagogical schemata of 16 midwestern preservice teachers in a graduate-level, secondary alternative certification program was studied by examining: (1) pedagogical knowledge comprising the schemata as the program began; (2) pedagogical knowledge comprising the schemata at the end of student teaching; and (3)…

In an effort to contribute information for science teachers and curriculum developers in Maine, this study generated base line data on 4th, 8th, and 11th grade students' knowledge of marine science and natural resources principles in relation to the Gulf of Maine. Five concept maps representing 15 major content principles were developed. Two…

Reports on the relationship between students' propositional knowledge, measured by concept mapping tasks, and their study strategies, measured by self-report questionnaires, as it relates to the concept of photosynthesis as presented in a first-year biology course. Results indicate that involved, purposeful study strategies, prompted by relevant…

A critical first step in developing training systems is gathering quality information about a trainee's competency in a skill or knowledge domain. Such information includes an estimate of what the trainee knows prior to training, how much has been learned from training, how well the trainee may perform in future task situations, and whether to…

This research, conducted with an introductory sociology class at the University of British Columbia during the 2001-2002 academic year, explored community service-learning as a pedagogy and philosophy. The theoretical focus of this paper is Nancy Fraser's (1997) criticisms of Jurgen Habermas' (1992) bourgeois liberal model of the public sphere. We…