This case study, framed within a school-university partnership, highlights the tensions inherent to employing design-based approaches for educational change. The case illustrates core tensions between an abductive, open-ended, design-based approach to change versus more traditional (deductive/inductive) approaches to managing change in schools.…

In order to evaluate the impact of the pilot Narnian Virtues Character Education English Curriculum Project, a pilot sample of 86 year 7 and year 8 students (11 to 13 years of age) completed a battery of tests both before and after participating for six weeks in the programme. The battery of tests comprised 12 Narnian Character Virtue Scales…

Identifying effective instructional approaches that stimulate students' critical thinking (CT) has been the focus of a large body of empirical research. However, there is little agreement on the instructional principles and procedures that are theoretically sound and empirically valid to developing both domain-specific and domain-general CT…

Obesity and overweight among children in China is a growing concern. The curriculum and organization of Chinese schools focuses on academic achievement leaving little time for other programs. This pilot program illustrated that it is possible to involve schools and parents in a program to reduce obesity and overweight. Teachers, school staff,…

The usage of social media networks, such as websites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, had become the number one activity on the internet by 2010. The sweeping increase in usage led organizations to explore the marketing possibilities the networks offered. The turning point occurred when organizations began to ask whether it was feasible to use…

Middleverse de Español (MdE) is an evolving platform for foreign language (FL) study, aligned to the goals of ACTFL's National Standards and 2007 MLA report. The project simulates an immersive environment in a virtual 3-D space for the acquisition of translingual and transcultural competence in Spanish meant to support content-based and…

For many years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) has been working with other institutions in the University of Wisconsin System to change the conversation about higher education in the state. In the spring of 2006, these partners participated in a systemwide advisory group convened to promote better understanding of liberal…

In the current climate of high stakes testing and tough love rhetoric, many educational stakeholders have become increasingly reliant on standardized test scores to determine whether or not individual students, teachers, and schools--and even entire districts and states--are successful. In contrast to the black and white picture that test-driven…

This article is a case study of compensatory education as it was developed and implemented by an innovative urban school principal in the early 1960s. I argue that while the compensatory education movement was often marred by pejorative-sounding language and inegalitarian ideas, especially as it was shaped and expanded by policy makers and…

Geography, as with all subjects, has a set of organising principles and concepts. One of the central concepts which underpins the subject is that of place. However, it is very much the case that this is an evolving concept, which has taken on a number of guises over time. This paper reviews some of the major changes in perspectives on place as a…

This study addresses several common shortcomings of current university campus sustainability initiatives, including a lack of attention to integrative issues such as land use, housing, and transportation, and a generally reactive rather than proactive approach to sustainability. To engage these concerns, we develop a model for assessing the…

Three articles discuss: (1) a Montana State University pilot project utilizing a local area network for word processing; (2) an interdisciplinary arrangement between Purdue University's Electrical Engineering and English Departments which utilizes computers to teach writing to engineering students; and (3) whether computers should be used to teach…

This article describes one school's year-long effort to provide equitable access to the core curriculum to a very culturally, linguistically, and academically diverse student body while increasing teachers' needs for responsive professional development by piloting a dramatic change in the special education service delivery system with the support…