A four-week summer project for 100 rural tenth graders in the University of Alabama's Biomedical Sciences Preparation Program (BioPrep) enabled students to acquire and apply social sciences research skills. The students investigated drinking water quality in three rural Alabama counties by interviewing local officials, health workers, and…

A study investigated classroom management from the students' perspective. Ninety-seven high school students (primarily ninth graders) were observed in one school for 15 weeks in five different classes. Data were collected from this observation, as well as from student and teacher interviews. The guidelines of the Constant-Comparative Method of…

The author discusses the meaning of communication and how changes in methods of communication are creating new classroom tools and educational techniques. The inquiry hypothesis is reviewed in terms of its four component elements which suggest relationships between learning and how people communicate. (1) Curiosity is the force that impels the…

This case study covers the process of developing a computer-assisted tutorial on how to write a research paper for returning adults at a community college. This paper discusses the need for faculty development and technical support for instructors who want to implement technology into their classrooms. Preliminary stages of the tutorial…

This report describes two studies prompted by research on rates of research use and attitudes toward research among preservice and inservice teachers enrolled in graduate programs in teacher education. The first study asked prospective and inservice teachers to rate the importance of various research skills and to provide a verbal exposition that…

In educational and training environments, teachers assign their students independent research tasks that require locating, gathering, synthesizing, and summarizing information from one or more information resources containing large, and sometimes overwhelming, amounts of information. This study explored the information location and use activities,…

The installation of technology in the school library is only the first step in its effective use by students. Many search engines are not intuitively obvious to users, and students often need help with searching. Systematic formal instruction in electronic search skills is necessary for awareness of library software and competence in its use. The…

Two projects in the teacher education program at Seton Hall University gave assignments involving basic qualitative research methods as applied to a focused goal of interaction between future teachers and their students. The first project focused on life in community residential programs for adults with developmental disabilities, and the second…

This paper explores the use of ethnographic biography as a source of information and reflection for student teachers. Ethnographic methods combine observation of a subject's teaching environment or context, examining the present rather than the past. Information can then be made available to student teachers in need of a personal viewpoint on…

Designed for middle school students, this award winning, six-day teaching unit helped students learn about the concepts of specialization, interdependence, efficiency, and profit. At the onset of the lesson the students were already familiar with the concepts of scarcity, goods, services, profits, supply, demand, and opportunity costs. The unit's…

Utilizing the HIPPS (Hypothesis, Involvement, Participation, Practice, and Sharing) method in community college social science courses provides students with the opportunity to develop research, critical thinking, and writing skills. The HIPPS method includes the following stages: (1) Hypothesis Formation by Students, in which the professor poses…

Currently available World Wide Web search engines determine a site's qualification as a response to a search request by matching keywords in the request to keywords representing the site. The returned sites are given a score and ranked according to the match on keywords. Many of these retrieved sites can be irrelevant to the user's true…

The problem of transferring library and information searching skills from high school to college is not new, but has become intensified in the last decade by the pressures of the information explosion, new technologies, and budget reductions. This paper compares the library skills required of students in their final year of high school with those…

Group investigation is an organizational approach that allows a class to work actively and collaboratively in small groups and enables students to take an active role in determining their own learning goals and processes. As part of reform and restructuring efforts, Beaverton High School (Oregon) implemented the Group Investigation model with…

Fifteen papers presented at conferences throughout Europe and in the USSR, Nigeria, Japan, Jamaica, and Tunesia provide an introduction to the research work being done by the graduate level Department of Geography for Education (G.ED.) at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. An introductory chapter describes the three G.ED. modules, which…