Describes an activity in which students examine hypothetical exposure to toxins by being showered by different colored pieces of confetti over several visits to exposure sites. Students record quantities of confetti that stick to packing tape. Colors correspond to different toxins posing different health problems. Students process their findings…

Describes an inexpensive method for analyzing the cost-effectiveness of a liberal arts college's journal collection, based on measurements of journal use, journal subscription prices, and course enrollment by academic department. Explains data collection methods and presents results of collection analysis. Discusses the benefits of empirical…

Analyzes video recordings of postgraduate seminars in the Arts Faculty at a South African university in order to define the nature of this practice in South African tertiary institutions. This article exposes these seminars as sites of competition for the floor with significant imbalances in participation by different groups, reflecting different…

Presents descriptions and examples of processes used by French-as-a-Second-Language instructors to teach vocabulary, reporting qualitative analyses of classroom transcripts and pedagogical materials used to teach. Teachers emphasized semantic aspects of lexis; lexical instruction in analytic and experiential classes was characterized by similar…

Achievement test scores were analyzed in relation to individual- and school-level factors in a national sample of 10th graders (n=2,535) to investigate the relative importance of school and individual factors in determining science learning. Hierarchical linear analyses showed that individual measures accounted for most of the variance. Previous…

This study shows how users access relevant information in a visualized document space and determine whether BiblioMapper, a visualization tool, strengthens an information retrieval (IR) system and makes it more usable. BiblioMapper, developed for a CISI collection, was evaluated by accuracy, time, and user satisfaction. Users' navigation…

In a collaborative project, two mathematics education professors, a third-grade teacher, and her students collected information from the students as they thought through how to ask, collect, and then answer their own data-driven questions. Findings indicated the students exhibited a growing understanding, sophistication, and comfort with the use…

Discusses the development of a data analysis activity used with 8th grade students at the beginning of the school year. Groups of students collected a variety of data about a specific population. (DDR)

Several Colorado schools hired data analysts to help with school improvement efforts. The analysts are teachers who participate on school leadership teams and who support school action research teams. They collect and organize baseline data, help teams measure results of proposed changes, and evaluate results after implementation. Because they are…

This paper has arisen as a result of teaching Models in Biology to undergraduates of Bioengineering at the Gediminas Technical University of Vilnius. The aim is to teach the students to use a fresh approach to the problems they are familiar with, to come up with an articulate verbal model after a mental effort, to express it in rigorous…

This study explores seventh graders' use of inscriptions in a teacher-designed project-based science unit. To investigate students' learning practices during the 8-month water quality unit, we collected multiple sources of data (e.g., classroom video recordings, student artifacts, and teacher interviews) and employed analytical methods that drew…

The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) is working with local education agencies throughout the Commonwealth to create a culture of teaching and learning in every school that is student-centered, data-informed, personalized, and results-focused. Each of these elements have been supported seamlessly by systems, resources, technology, and…

At the Orange County Public School District in Orlando, Florida, assessing reading skills among the youngest students used to be quite a process. Relying on rudimentary products such as paper and pencils, the strategy hinged on the bubble sheets teachers administered to students once a year. After teachers scored the exams, they sent them to the…

This study reports the results of a comprehensive survey (59 fixed and 3 open-ended response items) of a stratified (by grade) random sample of K-5 teachers in Indiana (n = 594; response rate = 49.5%). Results indicated that social studies is becoming increasingly marginalized in the K-5 curriculum relative to other core subject areas (e.g., math…

As political mandates in the United States continue to demand increasing levels of literacy by all young children, the importance of identifying factors that influence novice teachers' development over time become more critical. In this article, we explore Phase I of a longitudinal study, which describes the evolving literacy beliefs and practices…