This article focuses on the delivery of two primary English workshops delivered on the BA Primary (with QTS) degree course to first year trainees studying in the School of Education at University of Brighton. These interactive sessions include practical activity, specifically drama, and are typically delivered on campus. This is a significant…

The purpose of this paper is to discuss a pilot study conducted in a graduate action research class that sought to investigate the impact of multicultural literature experiences on third-grade students' ability to make empathetic connections in their writing and discussions about literature. Conducted as participant action research, five…

This article describes an innovative lab course in which students designed and constructed five developmentally (and locally) appropriate museum exhibits around the theme "Healthy Living." They installed these at a local children's museum, designed a pretest/posttest to assess children's learning from the exhibit, conducted children through the…

Seven schools in an economically challenged area of an urban school district in central California implemented mentored peer mediation programs under the guidance of a university-K-12 partnership project, Mediator Mentors. Individual student outcomes for social-cognitive dispositions, perceptions of school climate, conflict strategy choices, and…

Studies with infants show divergence between performance on theory of mind tasks depending on whether "direct" or "indirect" measures are used. It has been suggested that direct measures assess a flexible but cognitively demanding ability to reason about the minds of others, whereas indirect measures assess distinct processes…

Research on preservice teacher learning has often focused on coursework and course related field experiences, and not as much on the learning that takes place during student teaching field experiences. Since preservice student teachers are engaged with children on a daily basis, attention to their own students' thinking should be viewed as a means…

A developmental model of children's understanding of nationality (Nationality Perspective-Taking Ability or NPTA) was proposed and evaluated in this study. The NPTA model expands extant definitions and provides a theoretical foundation for the developmental progression of national identity. Children (Mean age = 9.33 years) from Latin American and…

This article looks at best practices in basic writing instruction in terms of non-traditional audiences and writerly authority. Much conventional wisdom discourages participation in service-learning projects for basic writers because of the assumption that their writing is not yet ready to "go public." Countering this line of thinking, the author…