This article outlines a learning intervention which the authors call Learning by Design. The goal of this intervention is classroom and curriculum transformation, and the professional learning of teachers. The experiment involves the practical application of the learning theory to everyday classroom practice. Its ideas are grounded in pedagogical…

Gives a history of traditional and audiolingual methods of language teaching. Reports on one Swedish and two U.S. long-term experiments. The two methods are found to be of about equal value. The most recent publications reveal a tendency to synthesize the two. (Text is in German.) (IFS/WGA)

Psychology departments in U.S., Canadian, English, and Irish universities were asked to describe their practices concerning student participation as subjects in experiments. Experimental participation as a requirement, with other options to fulfill that requirement, has become the most popular form of subject pool. The educational value is…

Prefaced by an interpretation of American preschool studies, a semihistorical approach is used in presenting findings from preschool experiments from the West Riding Educational Priority Area project in England, with a purpose being to suggest some alternatives and to sketch a framework for explaining the conflicting results. (ND)

Changes in the British education system are discussed and the weaknesses of the British and American systems are seen to result from common causes. These causes are described as the hours spent watching television, children conditioned to expect entertainment, and educational experiments including open classrooms and "new math."…

Second language instruction in the U.S. and Europe is in difficulties. The choice of a second language is artibrary and the motivation dubious. In Europe and now also in the U.S., attention has turned to the planned interlanguage Esperanto, which offers a maximally regularized structure, is considered "easy" by learners, and has the…

Efforts to establish a library for laboratory instructional materials is being initiated by a group of concerned university educators. The main function of this library will be to collect descriptions of biological systems and supporting materials that are effective in laboratory instruction. Contributors are being solicited. (Author/MA)

To examine how conceptual knowledge about fraction magnitudes changes as students' learning progresses, 5th and 7th-grade students were asked to solve fraction magnitude problems that entailed finding a fraction between two given fractions and then to evaluate solutions for similar problems that were modeled for them. When the given fractions…

Norenzayan, Smith, Jun Kim, and Nisbett (2002) investigated cultural differences in the use of intuitive versus formal reasoning in 4 experiments. Our comment concerns the 4th experiment where Norenzayan et al. reported that, although there were no cultural differences in accuracy on abstract logical arguments, Koreans made more errors than U.S.…

Based on current theories of chemistry learning, this study intends to test a hypothesis that computer modeling enhanced hands-on chemistry laboratories are more effective than hands-on laboratories or computer modeling laboratories alone in facilitating high school students' understanding of chemistry concepts. Thirty-three high school chemistry…

This book contains seventeen thumb-nail sketches of schools in Europe, the United States, Asia, Britain, and Australia, as they appeared in the eye of the author as a professional educator and a journalist while travelling around the world. The author considers the schools described to be good schools, and not necessarily the 17 best schools in…

Over the past 25 years, the author has had the opportunity to study the subject of solar energy and to get involved with the installation, operation, and testing of solar energy systems. His work has taken him all over the United States and put him in contact with solar experts from around the world. He has also had the good fortune of seeing some…

Japanese lesson study, in various adapted forms, is becoming increasingly significant in professional development of mathematics teachers in the USA. Our goal in the research reported in this paper was to investigate, in a three-tiered teaching experiment, the cycles of learning of two researchers, six teachers, and the students in three grade 4…

Senator Edward Kennedy, from the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, submitted this report in accompaniment to United States Senate Bill 2969 (S. 2969), which was introduced by Senator Kennedy and Senator Gregg on September 19, 2002. S. 2969 provides for an office within the Department of Education to conduct high quality research…

Recent research in science education has recognized the importance of history and philosophy of science. The objective of this study is to evaluate the presentation of the Thomson, Rutherford, and Bohr models of the atom in general physics textbooks based on criteria derived from history and philosophy of science. Forty-one general physics…