Kindergarten students in a Title 1 elementary school are lacking school readiness skills. When students enter kindergarten unprepared to learn, they may experience difficulties with approaches toward learning skills related to physical, language, social, emotional, and cognitive development, which are reliable predictors of subsequent academic and…

Professional learning provides educators with tools to meet the changing needs of students. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to investigate the relationship between self-efficacy (Bandura, 1997) and personalized professional learning as demonstrated by Pre-K-8 parochial school educators' interest in attainment of Google for Education…

For many educators and their students, homework is part of standard school practice. Homework as an exercise is not nearly as important as its intended purpose. The common intent for assigning homework is for students to practice recently obtained skills and knowledge as well as expanding individual understanding. Unfortunately, changes in…

Mathematics concepts in early childhood education are often predictors later outcomes for student success, because mathematics is a foundational area of academics. The purpose of the research is to engage educators in conversations regarding experiential learning opportunities in early mathematics through curriculum planning and instructional…

In this first chapter, the editor explains why she feels this volume's topic is important and timely, and describes some of her own epiphanies regarding what is needed to make learning meaningful for students.

In this article we report on a study that explored undergraduate accounting students' experience of team teaching. In particular, we assessed and analysed the students' perspectives of the relative advantages and disadvantages of teaming, as a form of team teaching, in contrast to the more widely adopted equal status model of team teaching. The…

Urban students are increasingly diverse in race, culture, language, and background knowledge. Educators must consider how students' differences affect learning and align pedagogies that address this diversity. Universal design for learning (UDL) has provided educators with a framework for differentiation to address learner differences. Using UDL…

Although orchestral playing is a dominant practice within Western classical music, and one that many students participate in from a young age, some students do not have adequate opportunities to participate. Since harp students often come to orchestral playing later than other instrumentalists, harp teachers are concerned with enabling their…

A well-known hypothesis in education and amongst the general public is that matching instructional method with an individual's modality-specific learning style improves learning and cognitive performance. Several critical reviews in the past decade, however, have shown that the hypothesis has not been properly evaluated with appropriate…

The objective of this dissertation is to empirically test the effects of personalized gamification on individuals' performance. In order to achieve this objective, multiple experiments and case studies are conducted, and methods to help in the design of personalized and adaptive gamified applications are presented. Gamification aims to implement…

Learning systems can utilize many practice exercises, ranging from simple multiple-choice questions to complex problem-solving activities. In this article, we propose a classification framework for such exercises. The framework classifies exercises in three main aspects: (1) the primary type of interaction; (2) the presentation mode; and (3) the…

As school districts, major cities, and entire states in the United States adopt personalized learning as a reform strategy focused on the co-construction of learning opportunities between teachers and students, educators face shifting roles. This study examined the roles of teachers in personalized learning environments within a policy context of…

To broaden the appeal of social studies and English content, the authors share how they use multimedia storytelling to increase student engagement, differentiate instruction, and consider multiple viewpoints.

With young children, there is often an instructional focus on naturalistic interactions between the child and environment. In special education, there are times when direct instruction (di) and discrete trial training (DTT) are both needed, requiring a balance of explicit DTT and child-initiated instruction. This article discusses what…

This paper is aimed at resolving the problem of inadequate level of foreign language proficiency of students in non-language institutions of higher education and discussing effective approaches and methods to improve foreign language instruction at tertiary schools. An analysis of the problem by means of mixed research methods revealed the need to…