Fractions are often difficult for students to fully comprehend. Teachers must find a variety of strategies to use in the classroom for teaching fractions. This study was conducted to identify effective strategies used by middle school teachers in order to find ways to improve fraction instruction. For four months, data were collected in 12…

The purpose of this study was to identify and describe teacher candidates' perceived levels of competency and comfort in teaching diverse student populations. For three semesters, teacher candidates (n = 221) volunteered to complete questionnaires at the beginning of their professional education courses. A second group (n = 242) completed…

Self-regulated learning is an important aspect of student learning and academic achievement. Certain parenting styles help children develop self-regulated learning and encourage them to exert control over their own learning. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between Chinese parenting style and children's involvement in…

The extant literature suggests that the high rates of educational failure for aboriginal schoolchildren result from differences in the home and school interaction patterns. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the micro structures of classroom discursive interactions, and to examine those within and against the macro structures of…

Five-year-old children in two socioeconomic school settings were observed in Guatemala City. Their parents and teachers were surveyed about perceptions of learning through play. The difference between the actual classroom experience for Guatemalan kindergartners and the perceptions about what should be their experience, according to their parents…

This study aimed to investigate children's performance and perception of problem difficulty in solving everyday mathematical problems with familiar versus unfamiliar contexts. In addition, the ways that children identify the similarities in problem-solving approaches between problem settings and everyday shopping were also examined. Forty-eight…

This study examined Vygotsky's theoretical notion that play creates the zone of proximal development by investigating the effects of peer interaction within the context of constructive play with blocks. The authors used the Play Observation Scale (Rubin, 1989) to observe 100 four-year-olds in naturalistic settings. Forty-eight children were…

This study examined the effects of concept mapping on the science achievement of middle grade science students. The subjects were 182 eighth-grade students, distributed into eight intact earth science classes by ability levels. The ability level variable also was examined as a possible effect on student achievement. Two teachers were involved in…

The research study examined the relationship between pre-kindergarten teachers' age and years of experience with their perceptions and their actual compliance with the norms of the High/Scope Pre-kindergarten Program. Teachers' perceptions of satisfaction with the supervisory relationship were measured by the Early Childhood Job Satisfaction…

The findings in the study suggest "reading-as-the-reader" can improve 5th- and 9th-grade writers' ability to compose descriptive writing consistent with their readers' informational needs. Participants included: 154 writers (78 fifth-graders and 76 ninth-graders) and 52 ninth-grade readers. The study adapted the referential communication design…

It is a well-known theory and practice among early childhood educators that building early relationships with the children is crucial to their development. However, there is irony in the fact that many teacher education programs that propose to model "best practices" do not model relationship building with their preservice teachers. This study…

Perceptions of emergent literacy by three family child care providers are described. These perceptions were gathered through ethnographic data collection techniques, including participant-observation, field notes, interviews, and document analysis. The providers described their understandings of emergent literacy through perceptions about…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of a creative movement program on gross motor skills of preschool children. Sixty children between the ages of 3 to 5 were drawn from the population of a preschool in Taichung, Taiwan. An experimental pretest-posttest control-group design was utilized. The children enrolled in the…

To study the developmental interrelationships among various aspects of logico-mathematical knowledge, 80 one- to 4-year-olds were individually asked to build "something tall" with 20 blocks. Percentages of new and significant behaviors increased with age and were analyzed in terms of the development of logico-mathematical relationships. It was…

This action research project was conducted in a 2nd-grade classroom in the Midwest to determine the effects of technology on responses to texts. Six texts, representing a variety of rending levels, were selected for the children to read. Children in the control group read and did research from printed texts, and children in the treatment group…