Struck by his students' often hostile and apathetic responses to assignments and instruction and hoping to contribute to the knowledge of motivation, Dan LaSalle began to take an inquiry stance on his own practice. He studied his practice on three fronts with the help of an off-site teacher research group: (1) how his inquiry question changes as a…

The purpose of this study was to determine the value that graduate students place on different types of instructional methods used by professors in educational leadership preparation programs, and to determine if master's and doctoral students place different values on different instructional methods. The participants included 87 graduate…

This paper reports on a study which investigated the effectiveness of an explicit instruction approach in a Japanese university setting with third-year science and technology students in an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course. The two aims of this study were: 1) to explore changes in students' attitudes and understanding of summary writing,…

This study investigates the usefulness of a Dynamic Geometry Task Analysis Framework for indicating task quality in dynamic geometry environments in general, and The Geometer's Sketchpad in particular. This research sought to first establish the validity of the framework for indicating task quality, and to second explore the effects of the…

In Elizabeth A. Dagrosa Harris' high school English classroom, the writing assignment that inspires the most dread in her students is the literary criticism paper, a common assessment usually assigned in the second semester of the British literature curriculum. This assignment is grounded in solid and time-tested standards that describe research…

Portfolios are an essential tool for demonstrating professional accomplishments and documenting professional growth in a variety of professions. Because of the competitive job market for new graduate nurses in health care, the development and use of an ePortfolio can be an essential tool for the application and interview process. The purpose of…

Athletic training students need real-time patient experiences in order to transfer the knowledge and skills learned in the classroom into clinical practice. The objective is to present a description of an assignment that could be incorporated into a therapeutic exercise course giving the student an opportunity to evaluate a patient, design a…

This article seeks to provide some modest insights into the pedagogy of higher-order thinking and metacognition and to share the use of color-coded drafts as a best practice in service of both higher-order thinking and metacognition. This article will begin with a brief theoretical exploration of thinking and of thinking about thinking--the latter…

Parents in the United States expect their students to have homework; and students, especially in middle school and high school, expect daily homework assignments from their teachers. However, it is difficult to create effective homework assignments. Despite the challenges involved, the authors believe that homework "can" be an important…

This paper explores how to teach English writing to big classes in China from the task-based perspective. Based on a comparison between the traditional 3Ps approach and the tasked-based approach, the paper proposes a practical linear procedure as to how to teach English writing in the task-based classroom to big classes. An empirical study is…

Drawing on sociocultural perspectives on educational design, this article presents a qualitative study investigating how religious texts emerge as educational objects and mediating artefacts in Norwegian textbooks of religious and moral education. The article describes how the distribution of text references in textbooks influences the formation…

Typical business communication courses provide significantly more opportunities for students to hone their skills in writing compared with speaking. This article outlines an impromptu speech assignment and explains a course-level strategy for providing each student with more than 30 significant speaking opportunities during a term. This approach…

As diversity in higher education increases, the one-size-fits-all, teacher-centered, traditional model of lecture-style teaching sets students up for failure. In addition, the strategic rhetoric of blaming students for academic failures keeps the systemic power in place, justifying the current system. In contrast, differentiated instruction, a…

This article describes the use of "Writing to Learn" assignments in a course on the Theology of the Protestant and Catholic Reformations. These short, informal assignments promote active learning by focusing on writing as a process for critical thinking and as a way to learn the content of the course. They help students creatively engage…

This article advances the discussion about "Going paperless," how it will save ink and paper, perhaps even a tree over the course of a semester. The author mentions that the sustainability task force on campus may present an award, while eco-conscious students may applaud the willingness of faculty to "go green." Still other…