page_title: Glossary of education terms (M–O)
section_title: N
hierarchical_section_title: Glossary of education terms (M–O) / N
caption_attribution_description: Young child with book.
context_page_description: This glossary of education-related terms is based on how they commonly are used in Wikipedia articles. This page contains terms starting with M – O. Select a letter from the table of contents to find terms on other pages.
context_section_description: NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.: (NAACP LDF or simply LDF) A leading United States civil rights organization. It was founded in 1940 under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall as part of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and spun out as a separate organization in 1957.
  National Educational Television: (NET) was an educational television network in the USA from 1952 until 1970 and was the predecessor of the Public Broadcasting Service.
  National postgraduate representative body: Exists in many countries representing postgraduate students/researchers undertaking their doctorate (PhD) or postdoctoral research. Some have a broader remit to represent all postgraduates, including those taking Master's degrees. A few countries have no specific body but are represented by a national body representing all students, including undergraduates. In Europe many of the national organisations have come together under the federation Eurodoc.
  Network of practice: Builds on the work on communities of practice by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger in the early 1990s, John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid (2000) developed the concept of networks of practice (often abbreviated as NoPs).  This concept refers to the overall set of various types of informal, emergent social networks that facilitate learning and knowledge sharing between individuals conducting practice-related tasks.  In other words, networks of practice range from communities of practice to electronic networks of practice (often referred to as virtual or electronic communities).
  Nines System: The informal name for a grading scale often used at educational institutions in English-speaking countries, particularly the United States.
  The system owes its name to the fact that each of the top four letter grades in it cover a range of nine points.  The minimum passing mark under it is almost always 65%, or five points higher than in the more widely used Tens System.
  Normal school: An educational institution for training teachers. Its purpose is to establish teaching standards or norms, hence its name. The term normal school is now archaic in all but a few countries. In New Zealand, for example, normal schools are affiliated with Teachers colleges. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, normal schools in the United States and Canada trained primary school teachers, while in Europe, normal schools educated primary, secondary and tertiary-level teachers.
  Notetaking: The practice of writing pieces of information, often in an informal or unstructured manner.  One major specific type of notetaking is the practice of writing in shorthand, which can allow large amounts of information to be put on paper very quickly.  Notes are frequently written in notebooks, though any available piece of paper can suffice in many circumstances—some people are especially fond of Post-It notes, for instance.  Notetaking is an important skill for students, especially at the college level.  Many different forms are used to structure information and make it easier to find later.  Computers, particularly tablet PCs and personal digital assistants (PDAs) are beginning to see wide use as notetaking devices.
  Numeracy: A term that emerged in the United Kingdom as a contraction of "numerical literacy". In the United States, it is somewhat better known as "Quantitative Literacy," and is familiar to math educators and intellectuals but not in the common usage. Innumeracy is the absence of numeracy.
  Nursery school: (or preschool) A school for the education of very young children (generally five years of age and younger).  These schools range from schools which seek to teach young children to schools which only provide childcare with little educational benefits.  Schools which focus on education generally teach early social skills including interpersonal interaction, being a part of a group of peers, and classroom skills such as following the instructions of a teacher.  Some formal education also takes place, such as early reading or language skills.  Some nursery schools have adop
caption: Young children learn very quickly.
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