Background: The literature contains very few studies that focused on evaluating the impact of professional development activities on student learning. And, many of these studies failed to determine whether the professional development activities met their primary goal--to improve the learning process. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to use…

This paper presents results from a study aimed at helping preservice elementary and middle school teachers incorporate model-centered scientific inquiry into their science teaching practices. Specifically, the authors studied the effect of using a guided inquiry and modeling instructional framework (EIMA) and accompanying science methods…

This paper explores Mechanical Engineering students' conceptions of and preferences for conceptions of the derivative, and their views on mathematics. Data comes from pre-, post- and delayed post-tests, a preference test, interviews with students and an analysis of calculus courses. Data from Mathematics students is used to make comparisons with…

The purpose of this research was to investigate the impact of engineering design classroom activities on conceptual change in science, and on attitudes toward and knowledge about engineering. Students were given a situated learning context and a rationale for learning science in an active, inquiry-based method, and worked in small collaborative…

Professional development in family-centred services was given to professionals supporting children with disabilities and their families with the purpose to influence ways to perform working tasks. Is it possible to change ways of working through in-service training? In order to find answers to that question perceptions of in-service training at…

This investigation sought to determine if there was a difference in the development of effective urban teacher characteristics after completing a traditional internship experience or a Professional Development School internship experience. The Urban Teacher Selection Interview was used to assess 10 characteristics including persistence, value of…

This article reports the experiences of families of children with autism in the People's Republic of China. The caregivers of 43 children with autism attending one of two short-term (3-month) intervention programmes for young children with autism were interviewed about their experiences before, during, and after the programme. Parent-to-parent…

This study is aimed at investigating students' annotation behaviors and their effects on learning achievement with pre-reading (reading before class) exercises and Web-based sharing mechanisms. An 8-week quasi-experiment was conducted with 125 sixth-grade elementary school students. The study shows the following results. First, a significant…

This mixed methods study examined preservice teachers' awareness of domestic violence through an undergraduate reading course which focused on children's literature. Pre and post surveys were administered to preservice teachers to determine whether their knowledge and skills in recognizing signs of domestic violence in behaviors of the elementary…

Most K-12 evaluations are designed to make inferences about how a program implemented at the classroom or school level affects student learning outcomes and such inferences inherently involve hierarchical data structure. One methodological challenge for evaluators is linking program implementation factors typically measured at the classroom or…

Vocabulary notebooks are frequently advocated as a way for students to take control of their vocabulary learning (Fowle, 2002), with the added benefit of improvements in vocabulary learning (Schmitt and Schmitt, 1995; Laufer and Nation, 1999). The study described in this article attempts to lend empirical support to these claims, by investigating…

Our main goal in this study was to explore whether the use of models in high school molecular genetics instruction can contribute to students' understanding of concepts and processes in genetics. Three hundred and nineteen students from four comparable groups of 11th- and 12th-grade students participated. The control group (116 students) was…

This study examined college students' attitudes towards science in a course designed with Science Education for New Civic Engagement and Responsibilities (SENCER) ideals. SENCER uses socially engaging issues to teach basic science to non-science majors. A combination of methods was used to measure changes in attitudes (confidence and interest) and…

Does speed provide a "model for" rate of change in other contexts? Does JavaMathWorlds (JMW), animated simulation software, assist in the development of the "model for" rate of change? This project investigates the transference of understandings of rate gained in a motion context to a non-motion context. Students were 27 14-15 year old students at…

This article describes a project which identified the skills and abilities in written literacy of pre-service teachers, as well as their needs in this area. An intervention to address their needs is evaluated and its outcomes assessed, using a combination of quantitative and qualitative analyses. Results show that it is possible to improve these…