The Texas Education Agency's Social Studies Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills results show an achievement gap between males and females for every criteria on every test given since 2003. The most dramatic achievement difference is in the area of "traditional" U.S. History. The Texas results mimic a gender gap reported by College…

As engineers contribute to solving the increasingly complex problems facing our society, there is a growing need for the engineers graduating from undergraduate programs to deeply understand the context within which they are solving problems. There is a particular need for engineers who recognize the complexities of global and societal issues and…

Over a 27-year teaching career in schools in North London and the Zambian bush I have relished the challenge of helping the disaffected or reluctant learner. Most of my teaching was in the area of business and vocational education, where learners have often been placed not through choice but because they were not seen as high enough achievers to…

Literacy is an increasingly important factor as schools focus on improving student achievement. Literacy skills in reading and writing are critical components needed for both access to the general curriculum and for successful academic achievement. A key component of reading and writing is word identification, a skill deficit for many adolescent…

Students who engage in the writing process learn to write. Period. And yet many teachers, including Lain when she was a beginning teacher, don't know how to make the time for it, how to structure it, and how to evaluate it. Here, Lain offers us the help we need by focusing on the teaching tools for introducing students to this format, the…

Ten high-school students of English as a second language (ESL) intensively studied the modified version of "The Cay" (retold by Strange, 1997). During their study the teacher asked questions designed to elicit students' comprehension and understanding of racism and prejudice as the main themes of "The Cay". Analysis of classroom discourse data…

In the present study, we reject the view that computer use can be studied as an isolated variable in a learning environment. Our main objective is to develop an instrumental tool to measure different types of educational computer use in the classroom. This builds on a comprehensive review of the literature about computer use in education. This…

This study investigated personality and neurobehavioral differences between 16 children with Asperger's Disorder, 15 children with High-Functioning Autism (HFA), and 31 controls, all ranging in age from 5-17 years, M age = 10.7 years, SD = 3.0. Parents rated their children's behaviors on a 44-item autistic symptoms survey and on the 200-item…

Students with special needs and disabilities are often unprepared to handle the transition from school to work and/or school to post secondary training. They often lack direction and knowledge of the world of work or of the barriers they may face as they move beyond high school. School counselors can be instrumental in assisting with this…

How is the quality of teaching portfolios being assessed in summative assessment contexts? This question is of special importance in the growing debate on standards and criteria in assessment. In our study we looked for contexts in which portfolios are used for summative assessment purposes and gauge the issues raised by assessors with respect to…

This study sought to explore the teaching practices of lecturers within one department of a university-level institute of education in Hong Kong. A sample of 19 teachers were interviewed in the study. Short interview schedules were designed to elicit teachers' descriptions of how they taught and the thinking behind their pedagogical practices. A…

A questionnaire was administered to 313 teacher education students of the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore to examine their conceptions about teaching and learning. Two dimensions were identified, viz. traditional and constructivist conceptions about teaching and learning. While both conceptions were…

This study examined the relative benefit of three interventions (i.e. physiological, behavioural, and pragmatic) designed to facilitate speech recognition software use. Participants were 15 adults with dysarthria associated with a variety of aetiological conditions, including cerebral palsy, Parkinson's disease, and motor neuron disease. Results…

The effects of a parent-implemented naturalistic intervention on the communication skills of a 4-year-old boy with autism using an alternative and augmentative communication (AAC) system were investigated. The child's mother was taught to use 4 naturalistic teaching strategies that incorporated a picture communication system during 2 typical home…

The purpose of this study was to report the results of a nationwide survey of Taiwanese high schools students' understandings about electric circuits. The study involved two stratified random samples consisting of 7,145 students in Grades 8 and 9, and 2,857 students in Grade 11, accounting for about 2.3% of the total enrolment in the corresponding…