In recent years educators and educational researchers in the U.S. have begun to introduce engineering design activities in secondary science classrooms for the purpose of scaffolding science learning as well as supporting such general problem-solving skills as decision making and working in teams. However, such curricula risk perpetuating a…

The science discourse of young children is a means by which children can pose and try to answer difficult questions about their world. This paper describes through excerpts from transcripts of audiotapes and fieldnotes of science talks, how young children talk about science, and how they use metaphors and analogies to develop theories about…

To illustrate the theoretical dynamics involved in analysis of the process of "metasensing," this paper investigates the language of 22 elementary school principals and their strategic actions during school improvement programs. The study's grounded theory approach frames the principals'"epistemology of practice"--thereby…

This volume presents a selection of the 200 papers given at the 1999 biennial conference of the International Study Association on Teachers and Teaching. The theme of the conference was "Teachers and Teaching: Revisioning Policy and Practice for the Twenty-First Century." The 15 papers are: (1) "Teaching in a Box: Emotional…

Discussion about and reflection upon observations which produce cognitive conflict have frequently been promoted as a strategy to enhance conceptual development in science classrooms. As part of the Practical Mechanics in Primary Mathematics project, teachers were urged to elicit children's views and attempt to establish what is now called…

This study investigated whether and to what degree management majors at one small, liberal arts institution actually "used" course knowledge on their job. Phase 1 surveyed all management majors graduating from the institution between 1988-1992, asking graduates to estimate the percentage of useful knowledge gained from each component of their…

The learning and development experiences of English-speaking Caribbean immigrant women in the United States were examined in a transcultural study. A heuristic phenomenological approach was used to explore how a sample of 15 Anglophone women from the British Caribbean islands who had immigrated to the midwestern, southwestern, and eastern United…

To take community seriously in the conduct of educational research, the researcher should consider taking down epistemological walls and the "real" ones that confine the processes and products of academic labor to artificially isolated settings. Epistemologically, the question of walls relates to the kinds of knowledge competed over,…

The role of the elementary school principal is critical in determining school effectiveness. This study analyzes the thinking and language of 22 "effective change" elementary school principals to discover common patterns in decisionmaking processes. The method of grounded theory delineates implicit theories principals use to make…

This paper focuses on the evidence of learning in children engaged in small-group discussion with a teacher. The children are considered to have learned if they show progress in the explanations they make, the language they use in the dialogue, or the understanding they show of the dialogue. Motives of the participants in this dialogue are…

The pilot project, "A Pedagogy of the Land" (POL), provides an opportunity to ponder the relations between aboriginal community/university knowledges in this case, the relations between an Anishinaape land-based pedagogy and the developing theorizing around formal and informal learning. Traditional aboriginal education is not limited to…

This document contains three papers from a symposium on learning at the top that was conducted as part of a conference on human resource development (HRD). "Learning at the Top: An Investigation of Nonprofit CEOs' (Chief Executive Officers') Learning Experiences" (John J. Sherlock) reports on a study that used Mezirow's theory of adult…

Robert Kegan's constructive-development theory of adult growth postulates three different ways of knowing (instrumental, socializing, and self-authoring) and suggests that, although individuals develop differently, individual development can never be separated from culture. The potential of the constructive-development perspective on adult…

Recent empirical and theoretical literature in cultural geography, feminist and postcolonial philosophy, cultural studies, and political economy, was explored in an examination of the significance of spatiality to the changes taking place in the policy, practice, and study of adult education and lifelong learning. The following were among the key…