The increased interest in basing teaching on disciplinary thinking has had a profound impact on the syllabus for history in Sweden. Within this context, we examine how students demonstrate one aspect of disciplinary thinking in history, namely reasoning about historical sources. The material used is written answers to an assignment about…

This article examines the socio-cultural activities that have direct and indirect impacts on critical thinking practices in primary science classrooms and what kinds of teachers' activities help to foster the development of critical thinking practices in children. Meanwhile, the constructivist and the socio-cultural theoretical dimensions have…

Cultural and literary texts are used in the foreign language classroom to support learners' language development, cultural awareness, and reading comprehension. While classroom activities frequently facilitate a literal understanding of facts and events, these texts offer another potential level of analysis: symbolic dimensions, which focus on how…

Group singing is a common feature of classroom-based music education, and has often been proposed to have benefits that extend beyond acquisition of music skills, primarily in academic achievement. However, potential social and emotional well-being benefits have been under-represented in these discussions. This article proposes that an…

Anthropological approaches to studying the contextual specificity of mathematical thought and practice in schools can productively inform descriptions and analyses of mathematical practices within and across different teaching and learning contexts. In this paper I argue for an anthropological methodological orientation that takes into…

Orphans are considered a minority and they should be given a greater emphasis so that they do not feel left out and can build their own lives without a sense of humility. This does not mean that the orphans should be pampered instead they should be given the confidence and motivation to strive for success in later life. Humility among orphans can…

Simulation and modeling activities, a key point of computational thinking, are currently not being integrated into the science classroom. This paper describes a new visual programming tool entitled the Simulation Creation Toolkit. The Simulation Creation Toolkit is a high level pattern-based phenomenological approach to bringing rapid simulation…

The challenge study is a project based learning curriculum at Technical High School aimed at the construction of a wireless communication system. The first period was engineering issues in the construction of an artificial satellite and the second period was a positional locating system based on the general purpose wire-less device--ZigBee device.…

Arts educators recently have found themselves in unfamiliar and sometimes-frustrating situations regarding their performance evaluations. The push for value-added models, effectiveness ratings based on schoolwide test score averages, portfolios, student learning objectives, and other measures of teacher effectiveness has dramatically changed arts…

Students love to hate group projects. Not surprisingly, one of the most ubiquitous complaints about college on social media often centers on group projects. Despite the seemingly deep-rooted distaste for group projects, instructors and employers alike agree that students must be equipped with the skills of communication, teamwork, and critical…

In this study of 227 students enrolled on 30-day backpacking courses, we examined how certain demographic factors relate to status within the task (goal-related) and social (interpersonal) domains of group functioning. Of particular interest were socioeconomic status (SES) and gender. Using a mixed methods approach, we found that female students…

Alderson teaches us that, "progress should be the aim of all learning". With the purpose of ensuring progress and enhancing first year students' learning of Italian as a second language, research into feedback and repair was undertaken at The University of Western Australia. The research--funded by the UWA Centre for the Advancement of…

It has been asserted that mathematical tasks play a critical role in the teaching and learning of mathematics. Modification of tasks included in intended curriculum materials, such as textbooks, can be an effective activity for prospective teachers to understand the role of mathematical tasks in the teaching and learning of mathematics; designing…

Teaching offensive security (ethical hacking) is becoming a necessary component of information security curricula with a goal of developing better security professionals. The offensive security components extend curricula beyond system defense strategies. This paper identifies and discusses the learning outcomes achieved as a result of hands-on…

This current study proposes a comparative method of teaching authorial style, using four versions of "Exemplo XI," an often-anthologized tale about the "mago" of Toledo, Don Illán, from the "Conde Lucanor," a series of interlinked tales by the early fourteenth-century author Don Juan Manuel. Teaching a medieval text…