The authors posit that sustained, broad adoption of applied learning is essential to the continued viability of higher education. They define applied learning, delineate research-proven benefits, and illustrate applied learning in practice. In addition, they consider facets to catalyze movement toward leveraging applied learning: leadership for…

Many reforms in past decades have come and gone without having the desired impact on teaching practices. Two shared ideals that reforms have had are offering challenging content by using whole tasks and tailoring student guidance to what students need for effective learning. In this article, we aim to bridge the reform-practice gap by taking a…

This study explores the experiences of STEM teachers who participated in professional development (PD) workshops focused on supporting the use of a socioscientific issues (SSI)/socioTransformative constructivism (sTc) framework as an avenue to incorporate SSI into lessons and empower students to become agents of change outside the classroom. The…

The literature asserts that science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education needs to be authentic. Although models and modelling provide a basis from which to increase authenticity by bridging the STEM disciplines, the idea of authentic STEM education remains challenging to define. In response, the aim of this study is to…

This study outlines an approach that captures the messy landscape of the learning opportunities on which teaching focused academics draw. The Activity Centred Analysis and Design framework was employed to analyse data from a focused ethnographic study of seven TFAs in a research-intensive university. The Activity Centred Analysis and Design…

To support professional competence development in teacher education, learning environments should allow learners to engage with professional tasks. It is crucial for knowledge and skill transfer in such learning environments to real-life context that preservice teachers perceive the task as authentic. However, due to a lack of prior knowledge,…

Purpose: This study explored how teachers change, what teachers learn and how they learn during the implementation of project-based learning through lesson study. Design/methodology/approach: In this study, three university researchers, one doctoral student and six mathematics school teachers formed a lesson study team. Using a qualitative…

Coaching is increasingly being used as a mechanism to improve the quality of early childhood education. Yet, for coaching outside of researcher-controlled interventions, limited information details coaches' reports of their practices' professional learning needs. We addressed this gap via an exploratory study utilizing online questionnaires of 91…

The 2021 release of Reimagining Our Futures Together: A New Social Contract for Education by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization was a reaction to a number of serious problems discovered in worldwide educational reforms. It sought to establish a new social compact for education to fulfill its unmet promise in the…

Programming and automation continue to evolve rapidly and advance the capabilities of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. However, physical computing (the integration of programming and interactive physical devices) integrated within biomedical contexts remains an area of limited focus in secondary STEM education…

This paper examines the transformative potential of performance-based assessment (PBA) in mathematics education across Sub-Saharan Africa when integrated with Ubuntu philosophy. Through a conceptual analysis of existing literature and pedagogical frameworks, this study explores how PBA can be integrated with Ubuntu philosophy to address…

This paper provides insight into the thinking that informed the design of a programme delivered in blended learning mode with the explicit intent to establish a learning environment conducive to the development of vibrant and robust communities of practices (CoPs). Within the higher education context, the explicit articulation of learning design…

In the context of the critical need to support children's early language development, teacher knowledge may enhance children's opportunities to build linguistic skills. In this study we explored how early childhood teachers' (n = 86) pedagogical content knowledge for language and vocabulary, and their book-reading implementation across the school…

Authentic pedagogy is a complex enterprise for students and teachers. Planning and developing the instructional procedures and scaffolds for student success is daunting. In addition, the teacher implementing the lesson makes dozens of quick decisions as they attend to student thinking and decide how to respond. These spontaneous decisions can have…

Objectives: Computer Science (CS) education has become increasingly prevalent in elementary schools because of multiple rationales, such as the importance of computational literacy and the growing demand for CS-related workforce preparation. As elementary CS standards continue to be adopted by many states, more examples and voices from the field…