This article describes a project that studied 15 preservice teachers' perceptions of and reactions to responding to children's and young adult literature using a Ning blog. These perceptions and reactions provided insight into various practical aspects of using a social networking blog to facilitate literature response in a teacher education…

This article provides an overview of the Writers Matter program, which allows adolescents to use their life stories as a vehicle for self-expression and writing skill development. Evaluations of the program have show increased writing skills among participating students in the areas of focus, content, organization, and grammar. Additional benefits…

Research Findings: This study investigated the relationship of the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters (HIPPY) program to mothers' involvement in education at home and school, student school readiness in kindergarten, and student academic outcomes at 3rd grade. HIPPY serves a mostly minority, low-income family population and…

This study explores whether randomly assigning group membership enhances the student learning experience. The paper starts with a critical analysis of the approaches to student learning within higher education and how these approaches conflict with findings from applied psychology on group behaviour. The study adopts a serendipitous qualitative…

The promoting responsibility through education and prevention (PREP) program is an after school substance abuse and violence prevention program for at-risk fourth and fifth grade youths in St. Louis, Missouri. Staffed by licensed clinical social workers and professional volunteers, PREP offers cultural cooking classes, yoga, and art as well as…

The use of classroom capture systems (systems that capture audio and video footage of a lecture and attempt to replicate a classroom experience) is becoming increasingly popular at the university level. However, research on the effectiveness of classroom capture systems in the university classroom has been limited due to the recent development and…

The University of North Carolina at Charlotte's College of Education offers a 100% online teacher licensure program. One component of the licensure program is the Graduate Internship, which involves the observation of graduate interns' teaching. With many current and potential students located in more remote areas of the state, the remote…

Purpose/Objective: This case study identified common elements of three diverse New England school districts that were real-world models of improving school meals. Methods: School districts that had greater than 1,000 students, [greater than or equal to]3 schools, and [greater than or equal to]40% of students who qualified for free- or…

The effect of a 15- to 24-month in-service professional development (PD) program on state accountability mathematics test scores for middle school students was examined using a quasi-experimental design. Middle level mathematics teachers (n = 128) from 7 school districts and 64 middle schools volunteered for a PD sequence of content-oriented…

Although a large literature explores the achievement gap between minority and non-minority students, very little is known about whether disparities in access to technology are partly responsible. Data from the first-ever field experiment involving the random provision of free computers to low-income community college students for home use are used…

Institutions of higher education have invested heavily in learning management systems (LMS) for creating course websites. Yet, how to assess LMS effectiveness is not fully agreed upon. Based on institutional theory, this article considers student satisfaction as indicative of LMS success and proposes a lens of critical success factors (CSF) as a…

Working on What Works (WOWW) is a solution-oriented classroom management intervention. Following an outline of Berg and Shilts' WOWW programme in the United States, this paper reviews and evaluates WOWW, which has been implemented as a classroom intervention strategy in a Scottish local authority since 2007. Qualitative analysis of the comments of…

This paper explores peer-to-peer teaching and learning at a postgraduate level using the example of two NVivo workshops run by geography postgraduate students. The workshops took place in March and May 2011 and feedback was collected from all attendees in both sessions. This paper aims to provide a practical guide to organizing and facilitating…

The number of schools that have access to computers and the Internet has increased rapidly since the beginning of the 1990s. However, evidence of their effectiveness as pedagogical tools to acquire reading and math skills is still the object of debate. We use repeated cross-section data from Brazil to evaluate the effect of the availability of a…

With podcasting gaining more mainstream adoption in higher education, it's critical to examine its effectiveness in improving the student learning experience. To this end, this paper examines the effectiveness of podcasts integrated into the curriculum (PIC) versus podcasts as supplemental material (PSM). Considering recent empirical work on the…