This article investigates how activity theory can help research a constructionist community. We present a constructionist activity model called CONstructionism Through ACtivity Theory (CONTACT) model and explain how it can be used to analyse the constructionist activity in knowledge building communities. We then illustrate the model through its…

Grounded in critical and culturally relevant theory, hip-hop-based education (HHBE) research documents the use of hip-hop in educational settings. Despite the richness of the emerging field, overreliance on teacher-researcher perspectives leaves much to be desired. Little is known of the extent and ways HHBE is used by nonresearching K-12…

College teaching across cultural norms and epistemologies has received little research attention, yet it is increasingly important to faculty work and student learning as enrollments continue to diversify. This article provides a review and critique of theory and research on teaching and learning across cultures in college. The author applies…

Over the past several decades, researchers have used economics to understand a number of issues in education policy. This article argues that some education researchers have defined economics too narrowly, neglecting several areas of economics research that cut across disciplinary boundaries. One subdiscipline of economics that might be of use in…

Previous research has examined differences between students and faculty regarding the weight of effort in assigning grades. Here, students and faculty responded to questions regarding the relative weight of performance and effort on final grades and what letter grades faculty should assign across different types of courses. The authors asked these…

This article presents the concept of "identity education" (IdEd) referring to the "purposeful involvement of educators with students' identity-related processes or contents." We discuss why educators may consider identity important to the realization of educational goals and choose to target aspects of students' identity in their pedagogical…

In this study, the authors examined the effect of taking a learning strategies course on grade point average, retention, and graduation rate of 351 first-year students over their first 4 terms in comparison with 351 matched non-course takers. The course taught 4 learning strategies and 8 substrategies to help students overcome procrastination,…

Drawings offer new possibilities to develop understandings about how pre-service teachers experience becoming a teacher. It is in drawings that often "those elusive hard-to-put-into-words" (Weber & Mitchell, 2004) aspects of the self appear to add to the developing story of what it is to become a teacher. Using a triangulated…

This study examines sample characteristics of articles published in "Journal of Applied Psychology" ("JAP") from 1995 to 2008. At the individual level, the overall median sample size over the period examined was approximately 173, which is generally adequate for detecting the average magnitude of effects of primary interest to…

This paper provides an account and a critique of the rise of the contemporary policy as numbers phenomenon and considers its effects on policy and for educational research. Policy as numbers is located within the literatures on numbers in politics and the statistics/state relationship and, while recognising the longevity of the latter…

This article outlines a new approach to the study of learning and the improvement of education. The approach consists of two elements: a theory of learning cultures and a cultural theory of learning. Learning cultures are different from learning contexts or learning environments in that they are to be understood as the social practices through…

Multilevel modeling (MLM) is rapidly becoming the standard method of analyzing nested data, for example, data from students within multiple schools, data on multiple clients seen by a smaller number of therapists, and even longitudinal data. Although MLM analyses are likely to increase in frequency in counseling psychology research, many readers…

Learning vocabulary is an important instructional aim for teachers in all content areas in middle grades schools. Recent research, however, indicates that vocabulary instruction may be problematic because many teachers are not "confident about best practice in vocabulary instruction and at times don't know where to begin to form an instructional…

This study examines the beginning of the conceptual understanding of the first number-words and what role language can play in developing the notion of numbers. To that end, 2 1/2- and 3 1/2-year-old Basque and Spanish monolingual children's (N = 131) basic numeracy skills are analysed by means of two different experimental procedures: "Give-N"…

It is not uncommon that researchers face difficulties when performing meaningful cross-study comparisons for research. Research associated with the distance learning realm can be even more difficult to use as there are different environments with a variety of characteristics. We implemented a mixed-method analysis of research articles to find out…