As part of a study on planning in early grades social studies, teachers' unit plans were examined for evidence that reading and discussing a research report about what young children knew about the production, distribution, and consumption of food influenced their choices of curricular goals and instructional practices. Unit plans were…

This study explores the usefulness of an online platform for capturing field experiences of inservice teachers enrolled in a graduate level literacy course. Four lessons related to the online field experience are offered: (1) instructors cannot adequately assess teachers without visual examples; (2) teachers and instructors need detailed…

There has been a policy push in several countries to encourage more evidence-based practice in education, although current knowledge shows that the relationship between education research and policy-practice is problematic. In spite of this, educational organizations have to respond to the challenges of globalisation with new pedagogic models to…

This article uses a functional view of language to frame and analyze issues of language and content in mainstream classrooms. Describing a Western Canadian grade one/two science class, it examines how a teacher and her class of young ESL students were able to build up a simple theory of magnetism in a scientific register, link its technical terms…

Elementary and middle school children (n=105) completed measures of reading achievement and cognitive abilities. Factor analysis produced three empirically and theoretically derived factors, auditory processing, visual processing/speed, and memory. Together the three factors combined predicted 61 to 85% of the variance associated with different…

When teachers participate in professional development and learning opportunities it enables them to reconceptualise their assessment and teaching practices with the support of facilitators and researchers. National programmes of professional development and research, such as the three year Enhancing Effective Practice in Special Education (EEPiSE)…

In this article, the authors aim to present and discuss competing accountability approaches, or models, designed to systematically indicate how a school's students are performing academically. Within the framework of the current federally mandated accountability legislation, increased interest in models measuring school performance has caused…

Representing a dramatic shift in education thinking, converging evidence now supports a reliance on findings from rigorous scientific research to guide education policy initiatives in the United States. Particularly for early reading instruction, scientific research has provided the framework for establishing the most effective measures for the…

This article argues cultural anthropology would make a good partner to service-learning pedagogy because it offers students a theoretical approach for understanding community life and its power structures. Anthropologists have been dealing with power vis-a-vis the people they study using concepts relevant to the reflection process in…

The Anthropology Department at Western Michigan University has sponsored an annual archaeological field school since the mid-1970s. Over the past decade, students have worked with community and government organizations, learning to apply archaeological methods to real world problems to preserve and interpret significant heritage sites. They come…

As is true for human resource development (HRD), the field of organization development (OD) draws from numerous disciplines to inform its theory base. However, the identification and selection of theory to inform improved practice remains a challenge and begs the question of what can be used to inform and guide one in the identification and…

Occupational socialization in schools is a known factor counteracting attempts at educating innovative teachers. In this study, findings are reported from a longitudinal study conducted among 357 students, 128 cooperating teachers, and 31 university supervisors from 24 graduate teacher education programs. Quantitative survey data as well as…

This article examines a group of New Zealand preschool teachers' perspectives on their early childhood curriculum--"Te Whariki: He Whariki Maatauranga mo ngaa Mokopuna o Aotearoa" (Ministry of Education, 1996). In this discussion we focus on the teachers' understandings of the meaning, value and focus of this curriculum document. This is…

Arguably, living and working in rural communities can pose significant challenges for human service practitioners--challenges that are different from those encountered by their urban counterparts. Human services employers, like many other employers in rural areas, have difficulty in recruiting and retaining staff. There is now considerable…

Previous research has indicated that the transfer climate of work organisations is an important factor in determining the degree to which knowledge, skills and abilities gained in training transfer to the workplace. In particular, workplace social support from supervisors and coworkers is consistently cited as an important factor that can…