The International Society for Technology (ISTE) in Education promotes the use of a specific tool--the ISTE Classroom Observation Tool (ICOT)--to measure and improve the use of instructional technologies in Adult Basic Education (ABE) classrooms. The purpose of this article is to describe an application process for the use of the ICOT instrument…

The Peer-to-Peer Learning Environment (P2PLE) is a proposed approach to helping learners co-construct their learning environment using recommendations about people, content, and tools. The work draws on current research on PLEs, and participant observation at the Peer-to-Peer University (P2PU). We are particularly interested in ways of eliciting…

This research investigated the rough-and-tumble play of 17 five-year-old children in two early childhood settings. The study resulted in an increased understanding of the forms of rough-and-tumble play displayed by young children. This study demonstrates that both boys and girls are engaged in a variety of rough-and-tumble play behaviours.…

Middle school students can develop and enhance their observation skills by participating in teacher-guided scientific inquiry (NRC 1996) activities where they observe animals that tend to act in known, predictable ways. Madagascar hissing cockroaches ("Gromphadorhina portentosa") are one such animal. This article presents beginning, intermediate,…

We have investigated preservice science teachers' qualitative understanding of circuits consisting of multiple batteries in single and multiple loops using a pretest and post-test method and classroom observations. We found that most students were unable to explain the effects of adding batteries in single and multiple loops, as they tended to use…

Having been personally involved in several examinations of productivity in various sub-disciplines of psychology, I read with great interest the articles in this special issue. I commend the authors for engaging in this activity, as I feel that a field benefits from occasional self-examinations. In this commentary, I caution against placing too…

This study evaluated the impact of housing services among child welfare-involved families using observational data. Propensity score matching with data from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being compared intact families (n = 183) who received housing services 12 months after initial investigation to nontreated families balanced on…

Parson's programming puzzles are a family of code construction assignments where lines of code are given, and the task is to form the solution by sorting and possibly selecting the correct code lines. We introduce a novel family of Parson's puzzles where the lines of code need to be sorted in two dimensions. The vertical dimension is used to order…

Children are ubiquitous imitators, but how do they decide which actions to imitate? One possibility is that children rationally combine multiple sources of information about which actions are necessary to cause a particular outcome. For instance, children might learn from contingencies between action sequences and outcomes across repeated…

Many schools are implementing multitier response-to-intervention (RTI) models to reduce reading difficulties. This study was part of our larger ongoing longitudinal RTI investigation within the Florida Learning Disabilities Center grant and was conducted in 7 ethnically and socioeconomically diverse schools. We observed reading instruction in 20…

The process of taking a high-stakes test stretches well beyond the day of the test itself; indeed, months may be spent preparing for such a test. Strategy research has proved to be a fruitful means of investigating the test-taking process, but it has typically relied on only one research approach at one contact point. This study explores three…

This paper provides an auto-ethnography or narrative of self related to the development of international experiential education programmes in nature developed by Vacation School Lipnice (VSL) in the Czech Republic. The paper provides the cultural background that influences the course design and provides examples, through participant observation,…

Drawing on data from three English classrooms at two Chinese universities, this paper documents the turn-taking patterns that the teachers and students developed over time and explores how these patterns affected students' opportunities to participate in classroom discourse. The data were collected through observations, audio- and video-taping,…

Early social withdrawal and protective parenting predict a host of negative outcomes, warranting examination of their development. Mothers' accurate anticipation of their toddlers' fearfulness may facilitate transactional relations between toddler fearful temperament and protective parenting, leading to these outcomes. Currently, we followed 93…

The purpose of this study was to better understand teacher tensions in professional development. The population under study was practicing mathematics teachers engaged in a week-long professional development institute. Data sources included observations, interviews, and teacher products (such as registration forms, surveys, journals, and…