This paper examines changes in children's concepts of health and illness following an action-oriented health education intervention in Bondo district of Western Kenya. The study is a feasibility study exploring a specific educational approach, and it combines elements of health education research and anthropological research. Forty primary…

This Spanish contribution to the STTIS (Science Teacher Training in an Information Society) investigations of transformations of curriculum innovations studies the implementation of a particular innovative teaching sequence on energy degradation in Spanish secondary schools. The paper describes the transformations found in teachers'…

Despite the ubiquity of the term "inquiry" in science education literature, little is known about how teachers conceptualize inquiry, how these conceptions are formed and reinforced, how they relate to work done by scientists, and if these ideas about inquiry are translated into classroom practice. This is a multicase study in which 14 preservice…

This study describes high school students' conceptual development of the basic astronomical phenomena during real-time interactions with a Virtual Solar System (VSS). The VSS is a non-immersive virtual environment which has a dynamic frame of reference that can be altered by the user. Ten 10th grade students were given tasks containing a set of…

Despite the fact that most teacher education programs report that they have thoroughly incorporated diversity perspectives and multicultural content into the curriculum, external examinations often prove to the contrary. Likewise, synthesizers of the research on teacher education have consistently concluded that despite more than two decades of…

The aims of this study were considered under three headings. The first was to elicit misconceptions that students had about the terms "solute", "solvent" and "solution." The second was to understand how students' prior learning affected their misconceptions. The third was to determine if students were able to make a…

Inquiry training is a powerful teaching model for principals to know and teachers to implement. It is designed to teach students to engage in causal reasoning and to become more fluent and precise in asking questions. Further, inquiry training helps learners build concepts and form and test hypotheses in all curriculum areas. The current emphasis…

This article examines students' ability to use the balance model to solve for unknowns. A teaching experiment was conducted in four Year 3 classrooms. This experiment focused on exploring the application of the balance model as an analogue for representing equations and solving for unknowns. The teaching experiment promoted a shift by students…

The theme for this issue of "Every Child" is "Social and Emotional Development." Contents include an editorial by Alison Elliott, "Building a Quality Early Childhood Sector," a guest statement by Louise Tarrant, National Secretary of the Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union (LHMU), titled "Taking Big Steps…

The study of database systems is typically core in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes related to computer science and information systems. However, one component of this curriculum that many learners have difficulty with is database analysis and design, an area that is critical to the development of modern information systems. This paper…

Math can help children understand and think about the many aspects of their world through its connections to them. Teachers who see, and help children see, those connections enrich children's learning and development. Teachers know that building children's vocabularies helps them understand stories they hear and later will read. But by taking a…

Primary teacher preparation courses to need support students in developing not only science content knowledge, but also pedagogical knowledge appropriate to the effective translation and representation of subject matter for learners in classrooms. In the case of the generalist primary trainee, this constitutes a considerable challenge. This study…

This study investigated the struggles of two preservice elementary teachers in a mathematics methods course. Kay and Aaron elected mathematics as their content minor and indicated they had always been "good" in mathematics. In the methods course, they were challenged to rethink the nature of mathematics learning in a constructivist…

A constructivist framework can often appear vague and abstract to the novice counselor. The abstract and nebulous realm of meaning-making, which is central to constructivist approaches, can be frustrating for a linear, task-oriented counselor. This digest explains the approaches used in constructivist counseling. The need to use constructivist…

This paper reports on a study of primary-grade students (N=79) and their parents in an attempt to identify opportunities for enhancing the collaborative interaction between home and school when designing quality learning environments. In particular, the study looked at the children's print concept development, reading attitudes, and family…