One week after Secretary of State Colin Powell declared that the killings, rapes and other atrocities committed in Darfur amount to "genocide," in mid-September the United Nations' World Health Organization issued new figures saying 6,000 to 10,000 people are dying per month there in one of Africa's worst humanitarian crises. Powell had…

The Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument-Preservice (STEBI-B) has been used in many studies to measure science teaching self-efficacy and outcome expectancy in preservice elementary teachers. Since its development in 1990, there have been no studies that have re-examined its internal validity and reliability. The purpose of this study was…

Walk into any primary grade music class in the U.S., and you will likely hear teacher and students singing a musical greeting, such as "Good morning boys and girls" (sol-mi-mi-sol-sol-mi) and the response "Good morning Miss Purdy" (sol-mi-mi-sol-mi-mi). Since about the 1970s, teachers have been beginning and ending music class for young children…

When the editors of The Voice of Evidence in Reading Research, Ms. McCardle and Ms. Chhabra, decided to edit a book and to invite authors to contribute to it, they wanted it to be a book for teachers. As stated in the first chapter, their motivation was to empower teachers to judge research worthiness for themselves. They feel that it is important…

The challenge for educators today is to overcome this barrage of media and technology and find innovative ways to help students learn. But, how can teachers compete for student attention when this is the challenge? How can they improve learning experiences and make them relevant to our students' lives? Integrating technology into the music…

The author's inspiration for this lesson for her fifth- and sixth-grade students came from an article on Peruvian-style retablos in the December 1998 issue of SchoolArts. She wanted a multicultural theme for a three-dimensional assignment that incorporated many art-making and higher-order thinking skills. She prepared a packet or kit for each…

Tracey Hunter-Doniger is an elementary visual arts teacher who is fortunate enough to work in a school that realizes the value and influence art has on technology. Twice a year, her first-through fifth-grade classes meet in the computer lab to create computer-generated works of art. the class discusses the importance of art in technology, such as…

This study explores the practices of three beginning secondary science teachers. The teachers were in their first year, worked with primarily Hispanic students in rural and urban schools, held undergraduate degrees in science, participated in postbaccalaureate certification programs of varying lengths, and had different cultural backgrounds from…

In some ways America's response to the murderous surprise attacks of September 11, 200l, resembled that of previous wars. The nation was mobilized and its military directed to hit back as soon as possible. Unlike past wars, however, the enemy proved to be a shadowy terrorist organization with a religious identity, a long-term strategy, and no…

A recent survey examining student learning in the college classroom found disruptive student behavior to be a major learning inhibitor. Compounding this is the realization that most college faculty are ill prepared to handle this problem. This article discusses the results of the survey as well as identifies the various types of disruptive…

Reading, as one learning activity in science lessons and units of study, needs to be assessed to notice needs of pupils. The science teacher needs to be thoroughly grounded in science content and methodology and yet also needs to be an instructor of reading. For pupils to do well in reading science subject matter, there needs to be continuous…

This article begins with a brief overview of the psychological research on the pedagogical efficacy of questions and describes how recent research has led to a reevaluation of the role of questions within the framework of a theoretical model of discourse comprehension processes and knowledge representation. A computer-based tutor for reading…

This paper is focused on primary trainee teachers' conceptualization of the vision process and image formation in a plane mirror. The study involved 55 non-specialist, undergraduate trainee primary teachers on a 4-year programme of initial teacher training. The process incorporated tracking trainees' ideas during university-taught sessions through…

Issues of older adults are often ill-structured and complex, requiring the application of insights from different disciplines to be adequately addressed. Gerontology has often used a multidisciplinary rather than an integrated interdisciplinary approach. Interdisciplinary and problem-based learning (PBL) provide pedagogical tools which teach…

This article describes the light-based science circus the authors developed and tested with a fifth-grade class at Blackwell Elementary School in Richmond, Virginia. A science circus is a set of activities done in any order that together illustrate complementary properties of a science topic. As in a traditional circus, several "performances"…