"Hands-on Current Electricity" gives K-8 teachers the opportunity to experience inquiry learning about current electricity by (1) experimenting with current electricity through a variety of activities, (2) discovering preconceived mental models of electricity used to understand their observations, (3) creating new mental models that have greater…

The educational literature shows that formative assessment is highly conducive to learning. The tasks given to students in formative assessment generally require open-ended responses that can be given, for example, in essay-type format and that are assessed by a human marker. An essential component is the formative feedback provided by the marker…

Opinions differ on the desirability of paying attention to intercultural education in schools and on the opportunities to do this. Theoretical agreement and conceptual clarity on the concept are hard to find. The theoretical debate on intercultural education is far removed from daily practice in the classroom. Ideally, experience-related ideas and…

Despite common moves in a number of countries to raise the quality and visibility of early childhood services (for example, through the introduction of curricular frameworks), both professionalisation policies and understandings of the professional role remain distinctly variegated across Europe and beyond. Whereas early childhood systems with…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of pair problem solving technique incorporating Polya's problem solving strategy on undergraduate students' performance in conceptual and algorithmic questions in chemistry. The subjects of this study were 89 students enrolled from two first year chemistry classes. The experimental group was…

This report lays out the design for the Evaluation of Reading Comprehension Interventions, which is assessing supplemental reading comprehension programs for fifth-grade students in Title I schools. The key design parameters are described. The report itself provides the rationale for these decisions and discusses design and measurement issues,…

One of the major roles adopted by libraries is the long-term preservation of selected material within their collections. Traditionally, this role comprised identifying individual physical objects or collections based upon the library's own view of its role and the significance of items in its collections. With the rapid growth of digital materials…

Using the US national sample from the 1995 Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), this study examined students' competence levels in understanding the matter concept at grades 3, 4, 7, 8 and high school graduation, and compared them to the expectations in the US national science education standards. It was found that…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to set the scene for some radical epochal thinking about the approach and future strategic directions in the management of organisational learning, following the author's earlier editorial theme concerning the need for exploration and innovation in organisational learning management.…

Purpose: Across mainstream educational leadership literature, the term vision has had two primary definitions: (a) a leader?s image of the future and (b) change goals. Translating vision into practice has become increasingly difficult, however, as educators have been bombarded with conflicting images and goals for schools. This article is…

Purpose: This U.K. study explored how older adults with depression (treated and untreated) and the general older population conceptualize depression. A multicultural approach was used that incorporated the perspectives of Black Caribbean, South Asian, and White British older adults. The study sought to explore and compare beliefs about the nature…

An influential proposal about aquiring mathematical knowledge is that it entails linking instruction-based concepts to intuitions derived from informal activities. In the case of non-positive numbers, informal knowledge is unlikely to emanate from observing physical objects, because non-positive objects or sets of objects do not exist. However, it…

The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual foundation for the development of hypermedia as an instructional tool for addressing individual learning style differences. Various learning theories and their relationship to hypermedia are examined, including information processing theory, semantic networks, concept webbing/mapping,…

Graphs of objects in motion are frequently used in introductory high school or college physics courses since they offer a valuable alternative to verbal and algebraic descriptions by offering students another way of manipulating the developing concepts. If graphs are to be a valuable tool for students, then the level of the students' graphing…

Growing populations of older adults, ethnic minorities, and the low-literate create unique concerns for the design of visual information. Those for whom text presents a barrier will respond most to legibility, use of familiar formats and symbols, and simplification. Guidelines for those processes are needed, and this paper, in particular,…