In English as first language contexts, clear requirement for critical thinking (CT) has been listed in teaching guidelines and assessment criteria in higher education. At present, fostering language learners to be critical thinkers is valued in English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching as well; yet how to achieve the objective remains a…

Proficient readers self-monitor and self-correct to derive meaning from text. This article reviews research on how students learn to self-monitor and self-correct and describes a Reciprocal Teaching (RT) instructional routine that was successfully used with early readers to build their metacognitive processes. The RT routine included teacher…

A bookmaking project in the pre-kindergarten classroom can teach a multitude of concepts related to literacy, but children can also be learning about themselves, their community, and their connections to the past when they create a book about their own personal history. Although pre-kindergarten-age students are unaware that their work could be…

Currency is a powerful cultural artifact; the imagery portrayed on bills and coins depict a nation's values and ideals. The process of selecting an American woman to appear on a U.S. Treasury bill began when a nine-year-old girl wrote to President Obama about her concern that no women were depicted on U.S. paper bills. The Treasury announcement to…

The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) reaffirms that an excellent education in social studies is essential to civic competence and the maintenance and enhancement of a free and democratic society. Thus, NCSS advocates that students should be provided with a social studies experience at all grade levels PK-12. In grades PK-5, every…

These days it is hard not to notice that there is an election going on. Whether glancing at a newspaper, flipping on the TV, or just walking down the street, we see ads and information nearly everywhere. In 2012, my research team's study involving hundreds of adolescents found that the mass media's increased attention to politics can contribute to…

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) have recently gained worldwide attention from educational institutes. MOOCs provide a new option for learning, yet measurable learning benefits of MOOCs still need to be investigated. Collecting data of three MOOCs at Yuan Ze University (YZU), this paper intended to classify learning behaviors among 1489…

Educational practitioners in the 21st century must respond to the availability of a wide array of data relating to student outcomes and student achievement. To make effective use of this data as well as be able to respond to the growing needs of the field, educational practitioners must be able to apply the knowledge they gain in the graduate…

All branches of anatomy (gross anatomy, histology, neuroanatomy, and embryology) involve significant amounts of visual identification. Understanding the spatial relationship and visual representations of anatomical structures forms the basis for much of anatomy education, particularly in laboratory courses. Students in these courses frequently…

Project-Based Learning (PBL) is a widely adopted pedagogy that ignites students' interest of a subject through the investigation of an authentic problem and cultivates their abilities of innovation and self-learning. Traditional PBL often involves a project of complexity and significant scale, which, under the time constraint of a course, is often…

This was a quasi-experimental study that examined two Project-Based Learning (PjBL) environments to determine the impact PjBL has on the changing perceptions of 21st century soft skills, and students' intrinsic motivation. Further, researchers were interested in evaluating the difference in results between an interdisciplinary PjBL experience and…

The overall aim of this quantitative non-experimental study was to investigate the degree to which content-focused professional development, active based-learning professional development and teacher self-efficacy predict student performance in reading, within persistently low-performing schools. The need to investigate professional development in…

The flipped classroom is an instructional model in which the students are initially exposed to subject matter concepts outside classroom through instructor-provided video lectures or other pre-class learning materials, and utilize classroom time for active learning, such as problem solving and group work. The Technology-Enabled Active Learning…

Analytical writing enhances retention of science learning and is integral to student-centered classrooms. Despite this, scientific writing in undergraduate programs is often presented as a series of sentence-level conventions of grammar, syntax, and citation formats, reinforcing students' perceptions of its highly prescriptive nature. The authors…

Students do not always realize that after graduating they will be expected to apply what they have learned. For accreditation purposes, most universities survey graduates to assess and evaluate the perceived relevance of the curriculum, but these assessments often occur years after graduation. Assessment of applied learning should occur earlier…