A practical book which, through case study, exercises and engages the reader in a close examination of their own personal assumptions, practices and experiences of school life. The book takes a good look at the assumptions that prevail in different schools and circumstances and shows how the desire to improve will often need to be met by an equal desire to change and expand horizons. The initiatives suggested show how change can be handled to minimise fears and reservations.

This provocative new work on children's development in context presents recent theoretical developments and research findings that have been generated by sociocultural theory. Sociocultural theory began with the work of L.S. Vygotsky and his colleagues but has been significantly expanded and modified recent years. Since the late 1970s, sociocultural theory has challenged existing notions of cognitive development by suggesting that psychological functioning is specific to its social context and is dependent on the mastery of culturally defined modes of speaking, thinking, and acting. For this volume, the editors have assembled a list of contributors noted for their distinguished work in sociocultural theory and research. Taken together, they offer a multifaceted perspective on an emerging research paradigm and argue for a fundamental reconceptualization of mind and its development. Three main themes are explored in detail: discourse and learning in classroom practice, interpersonal relations in formal and informal education, and the institutional context of learning. Research findings are consistently discussed in terms of their theoretical implications. The book includes three commentary chapters and an afterword that propose future directions for sociocultural research. This book will be of interest to a wide range of researchers, educators, and students concerned with the theory and practice of developmental, educational, social, and cognitive psychology.

Concept Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) is a unique, classroom-tested model of reading instruction in which inquiry science provides a point of departure for reading instruction. Book will appeal to experienced teachers, in-service professionals and prospective teachers.

The ability to use language in more literate ways has always been a central outcome of education. Today, however, "being literate" requires more than functional literacy, the recognition of printed words as meaningful. It requires the knowledge of how to use language as a tool for analyzing, synthesizing, and integrating what is heard or read in order to arrive at new interpretations. Specialists in education, cognitive psychology, learning disabilities, communication sciences and disorders, and other fields have studied the language learning problems of school age children from their own perspectives. All have tended to emphasize either the oral language component or phonemic awareness. The major influence of phonemic awareness on learning to read and spell is well-researched, but it is not the only relevant focus for efforts in intervention and instruction. An issue is that applications are usually the products of a single discipline or profession, and few integrate an understanding of phonemic awareness with an understanding of the ways in which oral language comprehension and expression support reading, writing, and spelling. Thus, what we have learned about language remains disconnected from what we have learned about literacy; interrelationships between language and literacy are not appreciated; and educational services for students with language and learning disabilities are fragmented as a result. This unique book, a multidisciplinary collaboration, bridges research, practice, and the development of new technologies. It offers the first comprehensive and integrated overview of the multiple factors involved in language learning from late preschool through post high school that must be considered if problems are to be effectively addressed. Practitioners, researchers, and students professionally concerned with these problems will find the book an invaluable resource.

This volume brings together the current theoretical interest in reconceptualizing second and foreign language learning from a sociocultural perspective on language and learning, with practical concerns about second and foreign language pedagogy. It presents a set of studies whose focus is on the empirical description of particular practices constructed in classroom interaction that promote the learning of a second or foreign language. The authors examine in detail the processes by which the learning of additional languages is accomplished in the interaction of a variety of classrooms and in a variety of languages. Not only will the findings from the studies reported in this volume help to lay a foundation for the development of a more expansive, sociocultural model of second and foreign language learning, but on a more practical level they will help language educators in creating a set of principles for identifying and sustaining classroom interactional practices that foster additional language development. The volume is distinguished in three ways: * Following a Vygotskyan perspective on development, the studies assume that language learning is a fundamentally pragmatic enterprise, intrinsically linked to language use. This breaks from a more traditional understanding of second and foreign language learning, which has viewed learning and use as two distinct phenomena. The importance of classroom interaction to additional language development is foregrounded. * The investigations reported in this book are distinguished by their methodological approach. Because language learning is assumed to be a situated, context-sensitive, and dynamic process, the studies do not rely on traditional experimental methods for collecting and analyzing data, but rather, they involve primarily the use of ethnographic and discourse analytic methods. * The studies focus on interactional practices that promote second and foreign language learning. Although a great deal of research has examined first language learning in classrooms from a sociocultural perspective, little has looked at second and foreign language classrooms from such a perspective. Thus there is a strong need for this volume of studies addressing this area of research. Researchers, teacher educators, and graduate students across the fields of second and foreign language learning, applied linguistics, and language education will find this book informative and relevant. Because of the programmatic implications arising from the studies, it will also appeal to teacher educators and teachers of second and foreign languages from the elementary to the university levels.

Illustrates how to leverage inquiry and technology to reform science education; offers education professionals, cognitive researchers, policy makers, and natural scientists the opportunity to work together to convert student into lifelong learners.

Sponsored by the Association of Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), the second edition of this ground-breaking handbook updates and expands its review of the research, theory, issues, and methodology that constitute the field of educational communications and technology. Organized into seven sections, it profiles and integrates the following elements of this rapidly changing field: theoretical foundations, hard technologies, soft technologies, instructional design, instructional strategies, instructional message design, and research methodologies. All chapters have been updated, some extensively. New chapters include those on programmed instruction, everyday cognition and situated learning, ecological psychology, Internet-based learning, library media centers, foreign language labs, microworlds, automated instructional design, cognitive apprenticeship, case-based learning aids, and conversational analysis. All articles are organized around a numerical cross-referencing system that permits the construction of front-end databases, hypertexts, and summaries. This handbook is intended for graduate students, professors, instructional designers, and researchers in educational communication and technology.