21st Century Literacy: If We Are Scripted, Are We Literate? (Explorations of Educational Purpose)

21st Century Literacy: If We Are Scripted, Are We Literate? (Explorations of Educational Purpose) Review

This book offers a call to all who are involved with literacy education. It explores the prescriptions that hinder authentic and effective approaches to literacy instruction. The scripts identified here include the Bureaucratic Script, the Corporate Script, the Student Script, the Parent and Public Script, and the Administrative Script. The authors bring their classroom teaching experiences (over thirty years combined) along with their research base to a discussion of literacy spanning elementary through high school. The discussion offers the reader practical and research-based lenses for identifying and overcoming the barriers to best practice while avoiding the inherent pitfalls found too often in our schools. The implied answer to the subtitle is a definitive “No”, but the text goes beyond criticizing the current state of the field and seeks to empower both teachers and students seeking literacy growth beyond the scripts that plague twenty-first century commitments to accountability and testing.

The Nature of Statistical Learning Theory (Information Science and Statistics)

The Nature of Statistical Learning Theory (Information Science and Statistics) Review

The aim of this book is to discuss the fundamental ideas which lie behind the statistical theory of learning and generalization. It considers learning as a general problem of function estimation based on empirical data. Omitting proofs and technical details, the author concentrates on discussing the main results of learning theory and their connections to fundamental problems in statistics. This second edition contains three new chapters devoted to further development of the learning theory and SVM techniques. Written in a readable and concise style, the book is intended for statisticians, mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists.

The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching the Practice of Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning

The Art of Changing the Brain: Enriching the Practice of Teaching by Exploring the Biology of Learning Review

Neuroscience tells us that the products of the mind--thought, emotions, artistic creation--are the result of the interactions of the biological brain with our senses and the physical world: in short, that thinking and learning are the products of a biological process.

This realization, that learning actually alters the brain by changing the number and strength of synapses, offers a powerful foundation for rethinking teaching practice and one's philosophy of teaching.

James Zull invites teachers in higher education or any other setting to accompany him in his exploration of what scientists can tell us about the brain and to discover how this knowledge can influence the practice of teaching. He describes the brain in clear non-technical language and an engaging conversational tone, highlighting its functions and parts and how they interact, and always relating them to the real world of the classroom and his own evolution as a teacher.

"The Art of Changing the Brain" is grounded in the practicalities and challenges of creating effective opportunities for deep and lasting learning, and of dealing with students as unique learners.

Our Sun and the Inner Planets (Planetary Exploration)

Our Sun and the Inner Planets (Planetary Exploration) Review

Text and illustrations present what astronomers now know about the "nuclear powerhouse" that dominates our solar system.

Research Genres: Explorations and Applications (Cambridge Applied Linguistics)

Research Genres: Explorations and Applications (Cambridge Applied Linguistics) Review

This book provides a rich and accessible account of genre studies by a world-renowned applied linguist. The hardback edition discusses today's research world, its various configurations of genres, and the role of English within the genres. Theoretical and methodological issues are explored, with a special emphasis on various metaphors of genre. The book is full of carefully worded detail and each chapter ends with suggestions for pedagogical practice. The volume closes with evaluations of contrastive rhetoric, applied corpus linguistics, and critical approaches to EAP. Research Genres provides a rich and scholarly account of this key area.

Learning Communities In Practice (Explorations of Educational Purpose)

Learning Communities In Practice (Explorations of Educational Purpose) Review

Most would agree that a learning community of practice cultivates social and intellectual development in educational settings but what are the other benefits and what does a learning community actually look like in practice? This book explores such questions as: “Are learning communities essential in education?” “How are they designed and developed?” “What difference do they make in learning?” The book contains contributions of educators who share their research and practice in designing and implementing learning communities in school, university, and professional network settings. It presents their experiences, and the “how to” of these educators who are passionate about building and sustaining learning communities to make a real difference for students, teachers, faculty, and communities. Combining scholarly and practitioner research, the book offers practical information to teachers, school and university administrators, teacher educators, and community educators.

Studying Virtual Math Teams (Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Series)

Studying Virtual Math Teams (Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Series) Review

Studying Virtual Math Teams (Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Series) Feature

• ISBN13: 9781441956774
• Condition: New
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Studying Virtual Math Teams centers on detailed empirical studies of how students in small online groups make sense of math issues and how they solve problems by making meaning together. These studies are woven together with materials that describe the online environment and pedagogical orientation, as well as reflections on the theoretical implications of the findings in the studies. The nature of group cognition and shared meaning making in collaborative learning is a foundational research issue in CSCL. More generally, the theme of sense making is a central topic in information science. While many authors allude to these topics, few have provided this kind of detailed analysis of the mechanisms of intersubjective meaning making. This book presents a coherent research agenda that has been pursued by the author and his research group. The book opens with descriptions of the project and its methodology, as well as situating this research in the past and present context of the CSCL research field. The core research team then presents five concrete analyses of group interactions in different phases of the Virtual Math Teams research project. These chapters are followed by several studies by international collaborators, discussing the group discourse, the software affordances and alternative representations of the interaction, all using data from the VMT project. The concluding chapters address implications for the theory of group cognition and for the methodology of the learning sciences. In addition to substantial introductory and concluding chapters, this important new book includes analyses based upon the author's previous research, thereby providing smooth continuity and an engaging flow that follows the progression of the research. The VMT project has dual goals: (a) to provide a source of experience and data for practical and theoretical explorations of group knowledge building and (b) to develop an effective online environment and educational service for collaborative learning of mathematics. Studying Virtual Math Teams reflects these twin orientations, reviewing the intertwined aims and development of a rigorous science of small-group cognition and a Web 2.0 educational math service. It documents the kinds of interactional methods that small groups use to explore math issues and provides a glimpse into the potential of online interaction to promote productive math discourse.

Narrative Life: Democratic Curriculum and Indigenous Learning (Explorations of Educational Purpose)

Narrative Life: Democratic Curriculum and Indigenous Learning (Explorations of Educational Purpose) Review

Written with educational practitioners in mind and set in a framework of progressive epistemology and pedagogy, this work tackles issues of global concern. It seeks to answer the question of how we structure education for the world’s 370 million indigenous people so as to promote intercultural understanding, maximize opportunity and right colonial wrongs.

Hooley’s work details an innovative curriculum design for indigenous school children based on the principles of participatory narrative inquiry, as well as exemplars of indigenous knowledge. Written from an Australian perspective, the book discusses broad international issues that impact on schooling such as globalisation, democratic education and whiteness and raises significant questions regarding indigenous culture and knowledge.

Taking inspiration from the works of John Dewey and Paulo Freire, Hooley asserts that a curriculum based on participatory narrative inquiry recognises and respects the interests and rights of local Indigenous communities. Further, it provides a mechanism for linking with white mainstream curricula through the compilation of portfolios of student work and exemplars of knowledge across all subjects areas. This model views formal schooling as a central aspect of a child’s personal, family and community narrative and does not impose knowledge from without, but constructs knowledge from within. Learning is given an indigenous context and thus two-way inquiry between cultural viewpoints is encouraged.

Narrative Life makes an original contribution to Indigenous education worldwide, and does so across all settings of primary and secondary schooling.

Balancing Exploration and Exploitation in Agent Learning

Balancing Exploration and Exploitation in Agent Learning Review

Controlling the ratio of exploration and exploitation in agent learning in dynamic environments is a continuing challenge in applying agent-learning techniques. Methods to control this ratio in a manner that mimics human behavior are required for use in the representation of human behavior in simulations, where the goal is to constrain agent-learning mechanisms in a manner similar to that observed in human cognition. The Cultural Geography (CG) model, under development in TRAC Monterey, is an agent-based social simulation. It simulates a wide variety of situations and scenarios so that a dynamic ratio between exploration and exploitation makes the decisions more sensible. As part of an attempt to improve the model, this thesis investigates enhancements to the exploration-exploitation balance by using different techniques. The work includes design of experiments with a range of factors in multiple environments and statistical analysis related to these experiments. As a main finding from this research, for small environments and for short runs techniques based on subjective utility give better results, while for long runs techniques based on time obtain higher utilities than other techniques. In more complex and bigger environments, a combined technique performed better in long runs.