To meet challenges of diversity in classrooms various multicultural teacher education programs to prepare pre-service teachers are introduced with the objective of changing beliefs, attitudes, knowledge base, and pedagogical skills. Studies reporting effectiveness of these programs used measure such as portfolio assessment, interviews, survey and…

The ability to use the research literature within a given field is a basic skill that students should acquire as part of their higher education studies. However, undergraduates need support in developing this skill. The use of concept maps as an aid to interrogating the literature is described here. This may help students to highlight key issues…

This study proposes an interactive model of "cross-domain" concept mapping with an emphasis on brain functions, and it further investigates the relationships between academic achievement, creative thinking, and cross-domain concept mapping. Sixty-nine seventh graders participated in this study which employed two 50-minute instructional…

There have been enormous advances in our understanding of human learning in the past three decades. There have also been important advances in our understanding of the nature of knowledge and new knowledge creation. These advances, when combined with the explosive development of the Internet and other technologies, permit advances in educational…

Consideration of variations in the gross morphology of concept maps can be helpful in the context of lesson planning by promoting the consideration of the multiple perspectives held by students. The three basic concept map structures are described as having particular utility at different stages of the planning process: (a) chain-type maps…

Chapter 5 of DETYA's volume "The Impact of Educational Research" (Selby-Smith 2000) begins with an examination of the peculiarity of decision making in the VET sector, followed by an examination of the idiosyncratic consequences for the function of research in the sector. Having established the distinctiveness of VET in relation to these two key…

This article is a response to "Mapping educational research and its impact on Australian schools," Chapter 2 of The Impact of Educational Research, in which researchers Allyson Holbrook, John Ainley, Sid Bourke, John Owen, Philip McKenzie, Sebastian Mission and Trevor Johnson report on their Commonwealth Education Department commissioned…

One can easily identify the United States of America by the Statue of Liberty, France by the Eiffel Tower, Egypt by its Great Sphinx, and China by its Great Wall. What do these landmarks tell people about these places? What are the characteristics of the place and culture that are symbolized by these landmarks? These questions can serve as the…

This guide is a joint effort from the Forum for Youth Investment and the Finance Project designed to help decision makers and community leaders both learn the importance of a good children youth and families (CYF) resource map and lay out the process of creating or improving a CYF resource map of their own. The handbook has been designed to…

In our current climate of standards-based reform, efforts abound to have all students reach the same goals. At the same time, other educational reforms, such as inclusion, are creating increasingly diverse populations of students in general education classrooms. Consequently, teachers often view inclusion and standards-based reform as incompatible…

Hypermedia as a learning environment complements traditional instruction as it places the student at a higher level of control. Instead of "wait and see" what the teacher expects the student to learn next, hypermedia stimulates the student to become aware of his/her own cognitive needs and interests. This paper presents a combination of notions…

Concept maps have been used successfully in science and mathematics education in a variety of settings. This paper describes the application of the metacognitive tool, concept mapping, to the development of an integrated veterinary curriculum, to the development of case-based exercises for problem-based learning, and as a learning tool for…

Critical thinking has been identified as essential to development of the professional nursing role. A process, "cognitive reengineering," has been created to facilitate critical thinking skill development in RNs. The process is derived from adult learning principles, techniques of consciousness-raising, and transformational theory. Its basic…

The goal of the Toledo, Ohio, Support Teacher Programs has been to improve the learning of math and science concepts at the junior high school level. This goal involves some basic changes in the way teachers interact with each other and with their students. The greatest changes have been in the movement away from the…

Based upon Ausubel's theory of meaningful learning, this study focused on the use of concept maps (diagrams that portray relationships among concepts in a given area of study) to help students identify logical relationships between a new concept and concepts already known. Relationships of a learner's prior knowledge and cognitive development to…