This book presents results from a four-year project addressing the central question: What factors, challenges, and contexts contribute to and constrain literacy achievement among at-risk adolescent learners with culturally diverse backgrounds? Researchers consider the importance of several, interrelated factors that support the development of…

Young people are often referred to as digital natives, who are familiar with digital technologies such as computers, the Internet and mobile phones for communication, entertainment and accessing information. As a result scholars have called for an educational approach that bypasses the traditional unidirectional lecture teaching style, and applies…

This quantitative and qualitative interpretive exploratory case study investigates whether exposure to an Internet based "Extended Cyberhunt" strategy enables teachers to attain a set of outcomes similar to Prensky's "Essential 21st Century Skills" and the "Critical Outcomes of the South African National Curriculum…

This article begins by revisiting an old dispute between the children's writer Chukovsky and the child psychologist Vygotsky on whether and how child literature should mediate development. It then considers child language language lessons in South Korea for clues about how such mediation might happen, and finds the development of rote language,…

For parents looking to see their children develop into the self-reliant, critical thinkers John Taylor Gatto described in his essay, "Against School," and other works, a combination of unschooling and the Charlotte Mason method would have the best chance of overall success. Research shows any method of homeschooling produces standardized test…

Members of Generation Y (those born between 1977 and 1995) have been characterized as creative, innovative, self-confident, highly educated, and educationally minded. They like to share what they've learned in small groups and are dissatisfied with workplaces that are technologically inferior. They have a strong moral drive to make a difference in…

Examination of the "digital divide" has increasingly gone beyond the study of differences in physical access to computers to focus on individuals' use of technological tools for empowered and generative uses. In this research study, we investigated the relationship between access to tools and experience with creative production…

The purpose of this article is to briefly describe the design and piloting of a branched, online placement and credit examination that measures receptive as well as productive and creative language abilities in the heritage language of college students entering the Spanish for Heritage Learners Program at the University of Houston, a major…

Creativity and innovation, critical thinking and problem solving, initiative and self-direction--these are just some of the 21st-century skills teachers strive to develop in students. Meaningful projects, student-centered learning, differentiation--these are some of the strategies used to help students learn in the 21st century. But, how do these…

Music has a significant impact on the daily lives of adolescents. This article provides music interventions that school counselors can use with adolescents: music listening/sharing, lyric revision, improvisation, and use in classroom guidance lessons. Also provided are the benefits, limitations, and ethical considerations for using music…

This article focuses on current examples of project or design-based learning at the secondary school level in the context of the increasing importance of creativity and innovative thinking in the twenty-first century. The authors argue that students today learn more effectively in pedagogical practices that emphasise holistic thinking, active…

A study of over 5,000 students in 13 high-achieving public and private middle and high schools in the United States found evidence of disengagement and poor physical and mental health. The students in the study were exhausted, many getting significantly less than the recommended nine hours of sleep each night. More than 70% of the high school…

For the thirty-ninth time, the Research and Theory Division of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) is sponsoring the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented at the annual AECT Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Proceedings of AECT's Convention are published in two volumes.…

While the great scientists of the past recognized a need for a multidisciplinary approach, today's schools often treat math and science as subjects separate from the rest. This not only creates a disinterest among students, but also a potential learning gap once students reach college and then graduate into the workforce. "Cases on…

The effects of play-like, verbal-feedback, and nonverbal-feedback testing conditions on three creative ability measures and the reliabilities of those measures were studied using 175 lower-class preschool children. The creativity measures were found to be largely unaffected by variations in testing conditions; but at the same time, different forms…