This article reports on an exploratory study of instructional issues encountered in the teaching of Mandarin as a foreign language at the university level. The research reveals the sometimes conflicting views held by teachers, researchers, students, and institutions with respect to instructional methods and types of classroom interaction,…

This paper reports on an investigation into the first time implementation of a technology education unit of work by a beginning primary school teacher. The researchers monitored the teacher's implementation of the unit across a 6 week period using an interpretivist research approach. A variety of data sources were drawn upon including teacher and…

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…

A poorly performing school is like a complex puzzle with its pieces haphazardly scattered. To achieve coherence and improve performance, a principal must have a vision of how the completed puzzle should look. Schools that have effectively implemented instructional models have principals that are puzzle solvers. To fit diverse needs into place and…

Although disordered eating behaviors are relatively common among college women, many questions about their etiology remain. In the present study, structural equation modeling was used to investigate potential mediating associations among variables previously found to be associated with the continuum of disordered eating behaviors in a large sample…

The purpose of this paper was to examine explanatory mechanisms of differences in children's internalizing problems between ethnic minority (i.e., Indian) and ethnic majority (i.e., English) children living in Britain. Fifty-nine English children (31 girls) and 66 Indian children (30 girls), and their parents constituted the sample of this study.…

This standard lesson on identifying salt and sugar crystals expands into an opportunity for students to develop their observation, questioning, and modeling skills. Although sugar and salt may look similar, students discovered that they looked very different under a magnifying glass and behaved differently when dissolved in water. In addition,…

Rates of overweight children and adolescents have nearly tripled over the past 30 years. Many barriers exist to healthy eating and physical activity for children and adolescents, including factors in the school and community environment. It is these modifiable school environmental factors that led to the development of the Nutrition Friendly…

Although many countries offer school-based HIV/AIDS prevention programs, little is known about how teachers feel about being part of these programs. This paper presents the views of primary school teachers in Malawi regarding their potential role in HIV/AIDS prevention. Data come from two focus groups with 12 male and 12 female primary school…

Understanding the basic principles of structural biology is becoming a major subject of study in most undergraduate level programs in biology. In the genomic and proteomic age, it is becoming indispensable for biology students to master concepts related to the sequence and structure of proteins in order to develop skills that may be useful in a…

This article focuses on findings from the author's dissertation study on 100 teachers (K-12) from 13 states, who were beginning a video-based distance learning Master's Program at a western United States university during summer term 2000. The purpose of the study was to find out if a specially designed orientation booklet of activities that…

The Language Vocabulary Acquisition (LVA) Approach is a revolutionary method of reading instruction for emergent and developing readers. It is an intense reading program with high levels of student participation, engagement, and interaction with print text, that yields high outcomes in phonological awareness, reading and writing fluency, and…

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 title echoes the well-known phrase "the idea of the university", and European universities have always been seen as institutions with a strong international dimension, developing according to common patterns. In their case, it was the "Humboldtian" model embodied in the University of Berlin founded in 1810 which prevailed.…

The Virtual Museum of Minerals and Molecules (VMMM) is a web-based resource presenting interactive, 3-D, research-grade molecular models of more than 150 minerals and molecules of interest to chemical, earth, plant, and environmental sciences. User interactivity with the 3-D display allows models to be rotated, zoomed, and specific regions of…