Describes how an elementary classroom teacher discovers and explores the power of aesthetic experience in an educational context. Discusses how the artwork of Vincent Van Gogh helps an exceptionally difficult class of 11-year-old female students in suburban Dublin, Ireland, become interested in their education. (KM)

Reports the findings of a descriptive case study carried out in Ontario, Canada, and designed to examine how a class of fifth- and sixth-grade students reacted to an integrated unit. Found that participating in the integrated unit was a positive experience for all the students interviewed. (KO)

Asserts that the need for precise and detailed procedures in the collection of qualitative data is of paramount importance. Describes qualitative procedures that were used in a research study of teachers' and students' perceptions of effective teaching and learning. (CFR)

Identifies factors, both helpful and obstructive, influencing teachers' transition from basal to a whole-language curriculum. Observations from two first-grade classrooms and interviews with school principals and two classroom teachers (one whole-language veteran and the other in transition into whole language) are evaluated. (GLR)

Results of action research involving 30 middle school students from Detroit indicated that all the students were concerned about classic environmental issues. Three ways of thinking about pollution and environmental problems emerged: (1) the personalistic view; (2) the technocratic view; and (3) the politicized view. (Contains 40 references.) (MDH)

This case study illustrates how a highly trained and experienced early childhood educator thinks about her interactions with preschoolers. Verbal and nonverbal patterns emerging from videotaped observations demonstrated how the teacher integrated information about specific children into these interactions. Although children's conceptions of time…

We describe a four-level spectrum of pedagogical awareness (SPA) that emerged from the analysis of six undergraduate mathematics tutors' (1) conceptualizations of their first-year students' difficulties; (2) descriptive accounts of their strategies for facilitating the overcoming of these difficulties; and (3) self-reflective accounts regarding…

This paper describes how collaboration emerged in a school district-university partnership designed to foster teacher development in the context of elementary science education. The Teachers Researching Inquiry-Based Science project involved four elementary teachers, a school district science mentoring teacher, a school district science…

As part of a larger ethnographic project addressing the construction of gender through literacy, this study focused on understanding how the children in one writing process classroom expressed their social selves in their written compositions, as well as how those compositions were engineered within the social dynamics of the classroom. The study…

A study examined the effects of a reader response approach to literature in which literature is viewed as a medium for exploration and the effects of such an approach on a group of young women. Subjects of the study were four female middle school students, with the adult female researcher as participant observer. Books chosen for…

A study explored how small groups of student readers interacted in a classroom over time to interpret short stories assigned by a teacher who functioned as participant/observer. The study focused on multiple readers in actual classroom situations to consider the relationship between the social and academic elements observable during day-to-day…

This paper contains descriptions of some of the specific kinds of capital that are needed, sought, and used within two academic science support groups for women and girls that aim to be gender-sensitive. The ways in which the capital (cultural, economic, symbolic, and social) is acquired, the ways in which the groups interacted with the larger…

Prior to the 1986 passage of PL 99-457, an extension of the special services coverage under the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, early intervention programs were primarily interventionist directed and child focused. The new legislation provided incentives for providing programs that were family-centered and family-driven. The goal of…

This paper describes and analyzes an incident which occurred during observation and videotaping of an eighth-grade language arts class. This classroom observation was part of an ongoing case study of an eighth-grade teacher of Native American heritage. The vignette that is presented describes a fist fight that occurred between two male students in…

This study was conducted in order to examine the efficacy of involving student teachers as naturalistic inquirers during their field experience. Such tasks as taking fieldnotes, doing simple qualitative analyses, writing brief summary reports, and learning to think critically about educational issues while learning to teach, is a very helpful…