We describe the implementation of evolving concept maps in two different graduate-level educational psychology courses: "The Adolescent Learner" and "Theories of Learning and Cognition." We provide an explicit description of how we used evolving concept maps as instructional and assessment tools in our respective classes, changes in the…

This lesson plan is designed to stimulate awareness and reflection on personal attitudes toward gender expression and sexual orientation. Participants are guided to identify and analyze how external influences from various socialization agents shape gender and sexual orientation norms and, consequently, personal attitudes about gender expression…

Research skills are a valued commodity by industry and university administrators. Despite the importance placed on these skills students typically dislike taking research method courses where these skills are learned. However, training in research skills does not necessarily have to be confined to these courses. In this study participants at a…

Studies which examine how educational leadership in faith-based schools is understood and practised are few and far between in the research literature. This is surprising given the important role faith-based schools play within the Australian school system and the controversy that has often surrounded them. Taking into consideration the gap in the…

Mobility, broadly defined as movement in all of its forms from ambulation to transportation, is critical to supporting optimal aging. This article describes two projects to develop a framework and a set of priority actions designed to promote mobility among community-dwelling older adults. Project 1 involved a concept-mapping process to solicit…

Instructional design is an integral part of a balanced approach to teaching vocabulary instruction. This article presents several instructional procedures using research-based vocabulary strategies and explains how to design and adapt those strategies in order to reach desired learning outcomes. Emphasis is placed on research-based principles that…

The concept of liminal space has recently been applied to ways of learning: the learning journey through this space encounters difficulties and misunderstandings, that are resolved as knowledge is mastered. Since 1992 the MirandaNet Fellowship, a growing international community of educators, has investigated the ways in which this relates to the…

In April 2007, what has been incorrectly called the first cyber war and since then referred more correctly as a cyber riot, an attack on the domain name systems and the various servers of Estonia occurred. It was perpetrated by ethnic Russians living in Estonia who were incensed by the movement of a bronze war memorial for Russian soldiers to a…

Prior learning assessment (PLA) students enter academia with different types of concepts--some of them have been formally accepted and labeled by academia and others are informally formulated by students via independent and/or experiential learning. The critical goal of PLA practices is to assess an intricate combination of prior learning…

Learners, particularly lifelong learners, often find it difficult to determine the scope of their expertise. Formative feedback could help them do so. To use this feedback productively, it is essential to then suggest to them the remedial actions they need to overcome the gaps in their knowledge. This paper presents the design considerations of a…

The use of concept mapping as a tool to measure the meaningful learning of students is the focus of this study. The study was carried out with 24 last year students (22 years old) from the Department of Chemistry Teaching at Fatih Faculty of Education, Karadeniz Technical University (KTU). Prospective Chemistry Teachers (PCT) were asked to create…

Are there ways to document interdisciplinary learning, specifically the forms integration takes? This article reports on stage two of a Carnegie scholar project on interdisciplinary teaching and learning in learning communities at Holyoke Community College. In the first stage, the author used the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome (SOLO)…

This article highlights how English language learners' (ELLs) prior knowledge can be used to help learn science vocabulary. The article explains that the concept of prior knowledge needs to encompass the ELL student's native language, previous science learning, native literacy skills, and native cultural knowledge and life experiences.…

The main aim of this study is investigating metaphors developed by the students regarding the concept of "map" at private institutions which provide them with specialized courses (Dershane). About 338 students in one of these private courses in Istanbul city center accepted to participate in the research within 2012 to 2013 academic…

Research in contemporary biology has become increasingly complex and organized around understanding biological processes in the context of systems. To better reflect the ways of thinking required for learning about systems, we developed and implemented a pedagogical approach using box-and-arrow models (similar to concept maps) as a foundational…