Presents a study to determine the effects of introducing methods students to the "learning cycle" technique on their ability to adapt science textbooks to the method and employ it in their teaching. Interviews of 24 randomly selected students out of 48 participants indicated that 75 percent used the approach while student teaching and…

Describes a physics course designed to engage preservice elementary teachers in the practices and discourses of science through activities that would later be used with children. Presents an account of preservice teachers' progress in inventing and testing models, working with empirical data, critically evaluating and using authoritative sources,…

Examined syntactic development in acquisition of Swedish as a first language in normal (L1) and specifically language-impaired (SLI) children, and acquisition of Swedish as a second language (L2). Similarity between SLI learners and L2 learners is evidence against the hypothesis that there is a fundamental L1-L2 difference. Some data are appended.…

Recalls a week-long field study trip to a reconstructed historic site, Barkerville, British Columbia. Ten years later the participants remembered the experience. The students overwhelmingly agreed that the experience sparked their imagination and created a real connection to the historical past. Includes brief excerpts from the interviews. (MJP)

Discovered that the introduction of piano keyboarding into elementary school music instruction produced a positive effect regarding children's sentiment towards school. No discernible effect was revealed concerning memory skills. Includes statistical data and description of survey questionnaires. (MJP)

This set of working papers concentrates on reading issues. This collection contains the following papers: "Literacy: The Needs of Teachers and Learners" (Christopher Brumfit); "Eight Lessons from Research into Literacy" (Henrietta Dombey); "'The Disqualified Half': Gender Representation in a Children's Reading Scheme" (Simon Williams); "Reading to…

This booklet for parents summarizes the curriculum at the University of Tulsa School for Gifted Children in Oklahoma. Program goals are to: (1) enhance academic achievement; (2) provide an emotionally supportive and intellectually challenging atmosphere; and (3) develop a creative and positive approach to school learning. A major premise of…

The Cognitive Education Project conducted a 3-year longitudinal evaluation of two cognitive education programs that were aimed at teaching thinking skills. The critical difference between the two experimental programs was that one, Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment (IE) method, was taught out of curricular content, while the other, the…

Based on the idea that children learn language and mathematics in much the same way, and that they can learn both simultaneously, the five sections of this journal present teaching ideas addressing various aspects of this process. The first section discusses the "language of math" with reference to both the child and the teacher. The…

This monograph focuses on the writing development of young English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) learners in order to provide teachers with an overview of research and theory about ESL children's writing from the perspective that research and theory may and should form practice. Recent research on children's first and second language writing is…

Proceeding from a definition of "story schema" as an idealized internal representation of the parts of a typical story and the relationships among those parts, this paper explores the role of story schemata in reading comprehension. The paper also identifies variables that may affect the way in which schemata function and outlines the…

A new framework for designing qualitative studies is described to optimize the emergence, representation and presentation of insights. The framework, called Reflection Methodology, is presented as a "Conversational Paradigm" that includes four components--interviewer (researcher as participant); child, task situation, and observing…

The long term predictive validity of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) and the Bender Visual Motor Gestalt Test for Children, when used for the educational placement of exceptional students, was investigated. In 1971, 225 learning disabled elementary school students were tested on the WISC and the Bender. The students were…

The study examined the relation of language use and logical thought to social experience with both age and class held constant. The primary assumptions under study were: that the logic of symbolic grouping was highly sensitive to a child's experience with the objects to which that logic was applied; that the existence of diglossia in a bilingual…

This report, designed especially for use by researchers, evaluators, and teachers, explores the practical implications of the composing process for writing instruction and assessment. An understanding of the actual process of text composition is presented as insights into how the acquisition of aspects of writing might be facilitated are explored.…