Peer review is the evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competencies as the producers of the work. It functions as a form of self-regulation by qualified members of a profession within the relevant field. Peer review methods are used to maintain quality standards, improve performance, and provide credibility. In academia, scholarly peer review is often used to determine an academic paper's suitability for publication. Peer review can be categorized by the type of activity and by the field or profession in which the activity occurs, e.g., medical peer review. It can also be used as a teaching tool to help students improve writing assignments.
Whole language is a philosophy of reading and a discredited educational method originally developed for teaching literacy in English to young children. The method became a major model for education in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, and the UK in the 1980s and 1990s, despite there being no scientific support for the method's effectiveness. It is based on the premise that learning to read English comes naturally to humans, especially young children, in the same way that learning to speak develops naturally.
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Russian and Soviet psychologist, best known for his work on psychological development in children and creating the framework known as cultural-historical activity theory. After his early death, his books and research were banned in the Soviet Union until Joseph Stalin's death in 1953, with a first collection of major texts published in 1956.
Instructional scaffolding is the support given to a student by an instructor throughout the learning process. This support is specifically tailored to each student; this instructional approach allows students to experience student-centered learning, which tends to facilitate more efficient learning than teacher-centered learning. This learning process promotes a deeper level of learning than many other common teaching strategies.
Student-centered learning, also known as learner-centered education, broadly encompasses methods of teaching that shift the focus of instruction from the teacher to the student. In original usage, student-centered learning aims to develop learner autonomy and independence by putting responsibility for the learning path in the hands of students by imparting to them skills, and the basis on how to learn a specific subject and schemata required to measure up to the specific performance requirement. Student-centered instruction focuses on skills and practices that enable lifelong learning and independent problem-solving. Student-centered learning theory and practice are based on the constructivist learning theory that emphasizes the learner's critical role in constructing meaning from new information and prior experience.
Early childhood education (ECE), also known as nursery education, is a branch of education theory that relates to the teaching of children from birth up to the age of eight. Traditionally, this is up to the equivalent of third grade. ECE is described as an important period in child development.
Constructivism in education is a theory that suggests that learners do not passively acquire knowledge through direct instruction. Instead, they construct their understanding through experiences and social interaction, integrating new information with their existing knowledge. This theory originates from Swiss developmental psychologist Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development.
"The Death of the Author" is a 1967 essay by the French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes (1915–1980). Barthes' essay argues against traditional literary criticism's practice of relying on the intentions and biography of an author to definitively explain the "ultimate meaning" of a text. Instead, the essay emphasizes the primacy of each individual reader's interpretation of the work over any "definitive" meaning intended by the author, a process in which subtle or unnoticed characteristics may be drawn out for new insight. The essay's first English-language publication was in the American journal Aspen, no. 5–6 in 1967; the French debut was in the magazine Manteia, no. 5 (1968). The essay later appeared in an anthology of Barthes' essays, Image-Music-Text (1977), a book that also included his "From Work to Text".
The zone of proximal development (ZPD) is a concept in educational psychology that represents the space between what a learner is capable of doing unsupported and what the learner cannot do even with support. It is the range where the learner is able to perform, but only with support from a teacher or a peer with more knowledge or expertise. This person is known as the "more knowledgable other." The concept was introduced, but not fully developed, by psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) during the last three years of his life. Vygotsky argued that a child gets involved in a dialogue with the "more knowledgeable other" and gradually, through social interaction and sense-making, develops the ability to solve problems independently and do certain tasks without help. Following Vygotsky, some educators believe that the role of education is to give children experiences that are within their zones of proximal development, thereby encouraging and advancing their individual learning skills and strategies.
Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) is a pedagogical approach wherein learning takes place via social interaction using a computer or through the Internet. This kind of learning is characterized by the sharing and construction of knowledge among participants using technology as their primary means of communication or as a common resource. CSCL can be implemented in online and classroom learning environments and can take place synchronously or asynchronously.
Bilingual–Bicultural or Bi-Bi deaf education programs use sign language as the native, or first, language of Deaf children. In the United States, for example, Bi-Bi proponents state that American Sign Language (ASL) should be the natural first language for deaf children in the United States, although the majority of deaf and hard of hearing being born to hearing parents. In this same vein, the spoken or written language used by the majority of the population is viewed as a secondary language to be acquired either after or at the same time as the native language.
English-language learner is a term used in some English-speaking countries such as the United States and Canada to describe a person who is learning the English language and has a native language that is not English. Some educational advocates, especially in the United States, classify these students as non-native English speakers or emergent bilinguals. Various other terms are also used to refer to students who are not proficient in English, such as English as a second language (ESL), English as an additional language (EAL), limited English proficient (LEP), culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD), non-native English speaker, bilingual students, heritage language, emergent bilingual, and language-minority students. The legal term that is used in federal legislation is 'limited English proficient'.
Inquiry-based learning is a form of active learning that starts by posing questions, problems or scenarios. It contrasts with traditional education, which generally relies on the teacher presenting facts and their knowledge about the subject. Inquiry-based learning is often assisted by a facilitator rather than a lecturer. Inquirers will identify and research issues and questions to develop knowledge or solutions. Inquiry-based learning includes problem-based learning, and is generally used in small-scale investigations and projects, as well as research. The inquiry-based instruction is principally very closely related to the development and practice of thinking and problem-solving skills.
Reciprocal teaching is a powerful instructional method designed to foster reading comprehension through collaborative dialogue between educators and students. Rooted in the work of Annemarie Palincsar, this approach aims to empower students with specific reading strategies, such as Questioning, Clarifying, Summarizing, and Predicting, to actively construct meaning from text.
Anna Stetsenko is a developmental psychologist known for her important contributions to cultural-historical activity theory, building on the work of Lev Vygotsky, Leontiev and Alexander Luria. Her research centers human development, education, and social theory.
Multiliteracy is an approach to literacy theory and pedagogy coined in the mid-1990s by the New London Group. The approach is characterized by two key aspects of literacy – linguistic diversity and multimodal forms of linguistic expressions and representation. It was coined in response to two major changes in the globalized environment. One such change was the growing linguistic and cultural diversity due to increased transnational migration. The second major change was the proliferation of new mediums of communication due to advancement in communication technologies e.g. the internet, multimedia, and digital media. As a scholarly approach, multiliteracy focuses on the new "literacy" that is developing in response to the changes in the way people communicate globally due to technological shifts and the interplay between different cultures and languages.
The gradual release of responsibility (GRR) model is a structured method of pedagogy centred on devolving responsibility within the learning process from the teacher to the learner. This approach requires the teacher to initially take on all the responsibility for a task, transitioning in stages to the students assuming full independence in carrying it out. The goal is to cultivate confident learners and thinkers who are capable of handling tasks even in areas where they have not yet gained expertise.
In the framework of the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) the leading activity is the activity, or cooperative human action, which plays the most essential role in child development during a given developmental period. Although many activities may play a role in a child's development at any given time, the leading activity is theorized to be the type of social interaction that is most beneficial in terms of producing major developmental accomplishments, and preparing the child for the next period of development. Through engaging in leading activities, a child develops a wide range of capabilities, including emotional connection with others, motivation to engage in more complex social activities, the creation of new cognitive abilities, and the restructuring of old ones.
Cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) is a theoretical framework to conceptualize and analyse the relationship between cognition and activity. The theory was founded by L. S. Vygotsky and Aleksei N. Leontiev, who were part of the cultural-historical school of Russian psychology. The Soviet philosopher of psychology, S.L. Rubinshtein, developed his own variant of activity as a philosophical and psychological theory, independent from Vygotsky's work. Political restrictions in Stalinist Russia had suppressed the cultural-historical psychology – also known as the Vygotsky School – in the mid-thirties. This meant that the core "activity" concept remained confined to the field of psychology. Vygotsky's insight into the dynamics of consciousness was that it is essentially subjective and shaped by the history of each individual's social and cultural experiences. Since the 1990s, CHAT has attracted a growing interest among academics worldwide. Elsewhere CHAT has been described as "a cross-disciplinary framework for studying how humans transform natural and social reality, including themselves, as an ongoing culturally and historically situated, materially and socially mediated process". CHAT explicitly incorporates the mediation of activities by society, which means that it can be used to link concerns normally independently examined by sociologists of education and (social) psychologists. Core ideas are: 1) humans act collectively, learn by doing, and communicate in and via actions; 2) humans make, employ, and adapt tools to learn and communicate; and 3) community is central to the process of making and interpreting meaning – and thus to all forms of learning, communicating, and acting.
Annemarie Sullivan Palincsar is a scholar of education known for her research on literacy instruction, reciprocal teaching, and cognitive apprenticeships. Her involvement in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Research Council on the Prevention of Reading Difficulty in Young Children, the National Research Council's Panel on Teacher Preparation, and the International Literacy Association's Literacy Research Panel, attests to her dedication to advancing educational research and improving teacher training. Palincsar is the Ann L. Brown Distinguished University Professor Emerita at the Marsal Family School of Education at the University of Michigan.
