Noting that in elementary schools teasing and bullying are daily occurrences that negatively affect instruction and that students want adults to become more involved in resolving teasing and bullying, this guide was written to address teachers' concerns and to provide teachers in grades kindergarten through third grade with a proactive,…

Noting that everyday creativity often requires imaginative insight, this book provides opportunities for children and adults to invent and problem solve by confronting puzzling scenarios that invite visual imagination. Each of the 71 activities in the book begins with a scenario that promotes speculative imagination. In the creative- and…

Children and adolescents are prone to develop a range of social problems in family and peer relationships, mental health, substance abuse, and school performance. With a reduction in support available to them in many family environments, peer relationships become increasingly important. A number of the social problems children and adolescents face…

Using the premise that skills for living successfully are learned, not inherited, this book details for parents and teachers specific skills that parents can teach that will make a difference in children's lives. The skills have been consistently named by researchers, parents, experts, and educators as critical to success, and pilot-tested at…

This book teaches educators how to expand their teaching abilities, using positive language to get positive results. The book helps teachers focus students on solving problems, not making excuses. Students are taught to develop a solutioning mindset and empowered to create their own successes. Chapter 1, "Pack Your Bags," introduces the…

To add to previous research on gender differences in mathematics ability and achievement, this study was designed to investigate gender differences in problem-solving strategies for two extended constructed-response mathematics questions in grade 3. It is a followup to a study of gender differences on constructed-response and multiple-choice items…

The Bridging Cultures Project is a collaboration among several researchers and teachers (n=8) to design professional development activities on the topic of cross-cultural understanding. During the fall of 1996, participating teachers will be given a pre-assessment and post-assessment. The assessments are designed to give some information on how…

This paper describes one model of school reconstruction, which includes a professional development school, being implemented at Celebration School in Celebration, Florida. The description highlights the educational practices and daily learning experiences of students at Celebration. The narrative provides a picture of the philosophical foundation…

This article discusses a project that investigated a student-based problem-solving model for reducing crime in the nation's schools. A quasi-experimental research design was employed that captured data in three waves from more than 450 students attending 11th grade social studies classes in two schools in the Charlotte-Mecklenberg Public Schools…

The Internet-Based Shared Environment for Expeditions (iExpeditions) is both a development effort of the Center for Technology Innovations in Education, University of Missouri, Columbia, and a research project conducted in partnership with Motorola, Inc. and a researcher at Brigham Young University (Utah). The project seeks to develop and…

The benefits of high-level mathematics packages such as Matlab include both a computer algebra system and the ability to provide students with concrete visual examples. This paper discusses how both capabilities of Matlab were used in a multivariate calculus class. Graphical user interfaces which display three-dimensional surfaces, contour plots,…

Research has shown that although university instructors of English as a Second Language are aware of the benefits that active learning can bring the student, teacher-centered, traditional lecture method classes are still the norm. Resistance to change is due in part to large class sizes, limited instruction hours, and the perception that proactive…

Self-efficacy is mediated by individuals' beliefs or expectations about their capacity to accomplish certain tasks successfully or demonstrate certain behaviors. When individuals have low self-efficacy expectations regarding their behavior, they limit the extent to which they participate in an endeavor and are more apt to give up at the first sign…

Parent Effectiveness Training (PET) began almost 40 years ago as the first national parent-training program to teach parents how to communicate more effectively with their children and to offer step-by-step advice to resolving family conflicts. This book, a revised and updated edition, presents the PET model for parent training, including the…

This paper explains the importance of disposition as an essential aspect of critical thinking and suggests how instruction can be designed to promote learners' development of the dispositional side of critical thinking. Topics addressed include: (1) the dispositional bottleneck between opportunity and action, i.e., sensitivity to occasion; (2)…