One of the primary goals of teacher education is to aid preservice candidates in formulating a personal philosophy of teaching that is research-based. Teacher candidates should recognize that their philosophy of teaching and learning must be grounded in research-affirmed theory, certain dimensions of which (e.g., motivation) are critical to…

To prepare students for participation in a pluralistic, democratic society, history curriculum should help them develop mature ideas about why multiple accounts of the same events exist. But how can we know if we are successful? In this article, we describe work on the design, validation, and piloting of a paper-and-pencil instrument called the…

This paper examines teachers' experiences in responding to a new Chemistry curriculum in the province of Manitoba in Canada informed by a "tetrahedral" orientation (Mahaffy, 2005) as a pedagogical framework for the teaching of Chemistry. This tetrahedral orientation endorses macroscopic, microscopic, symbolic and human element teaching…

Social Studies can be understood, or theorized, in a number of different ways as a consequence of its history (Evans, 2004). This paper presents the findings of a research study of high school students' and teachers' conceptions of Social Studies in relation to four philosophical orientations, labeled the Classicist/Traditionalist, Essentialist,…

An instrument was developed and used with grade 11 students and university teacher education students (intending English teachers) in British Columbia to explore their beliefs about appropriate ways to interpret segments of Shakespeare's "Macbeth." This is the second is a series of instruments designed to explore students' and teachers'…

This preliminary report of the 1988 Manitoba Writing Assessment Program contains a summary of student performance in grade 11 for the provincial sample as a whole. The report is based on 177 test papers from students enrolled in English 200 or English 201 in French Immersion programs. The first chapter describes the spelling exercise, the process…

This final report is the second of three reports (Preliminary, Final, and Summary) of the findings of the 1988 Provincial Writing Assessment in Manitoba, Canada for grades 4, 8, and 11 of French Immersion schools. It contains an overview of the purposes, procedures, and a detailed presentation of the findings and recommendations of the Writing…

This final report is the second of three reports (Preliminary, Final, and Summary) of the findings of the 1988 Provincial Writing Assessment in Manitoba, Canada for grades 4, 8, and 11 of Franco-Manitoban schools. It contains an overview of the purposes, procedures, and a detailed presentation of the findings and recommendations of the Writing…