There is a tendency in recent curriculum reforms to put the major emphasis on the status and role of students. The OECD's Education 2030 project, for example, presents the concept of 'student agency' as a key vision for future learning frameworks. The OECD's discourse of student agency appears to serve as a catalyst for spreading the slogan that…

In this article, I argue that critical discourse in Mezirow's theory of transformative learning is a constructionist, ontological act that serves to support an individual's critical reflection, which, in turn, is a constructivist, epistemological act. The notion of onto-epistemology is helpful in bringing to the fore the entanglement of these two…

This article argues for the thesis that epiphanies are a central means for transformative moral and intellectual growth. Drawing on recent work on this concept in moral education, the article develops a conception of epiphany as a genre of transformative experience with three distinct phenomenological dimensions: a disruption of our everyday…

Pedagogy is a term used broadly to refer to both how and why an educator influences learning. Given the importance of quality transformative learning experiences noted in the sustainability education literature, the role of an educator's values, assumptions and philosophy underpinning their educational capability for the provision of learning…

Under the constructivist learning paradigm, which emphasises authenticity as a required condition for learning, distance educators have been striving to create authentic learning environments that reflect the real world. However, it is inevitably challenging to make an online learning environment authentic for learners when it is ultimately…

This forum paper is a reflection about the paper written by Valérie Frède and illustrates how it influences my work as a Ph.D. student in education. It focuses mainly on the relationship to knowledge and the clash between student culture and Western science culture in classroom. In this forum paper, I will briefly explain why these two ideas seems…

There is today a great deal of controversy over digital and social media. Even leaders in the tech industry are beginning to decry the time young people spend on smartphones and social networks. Recently, the World Health Organization proposed adding "gaming disorder" to its official list of diseases, defining it as a pattern of gaming…

A group study program in the UK provides the setting for understanding deep learning in social work education through inquiry-based learning (IBL). Thirteen undergraduate and graduate students from a large university in Western Canada participated in a 15-day learning journey complete with a research methods conference and multiple exchanges with…

Student-teachers are exposed to different approaches to teaching Religion Education in South Africa. Amongst these have been the phenomenological-reflective-dialogical approach of Cornelia Roux and the empathetic-reflective-dialogical approach of Janet Jarvis. These different approaches made immeasurable contributions as they started to shift how…

Online education is becoming prevalent across the higher education sector and requires new approaches to teaching and learning. As music is seen as a 'hands on' discipline, there has been a very gradual move toward the use of online technologies in music teaching in tertiary education, especially in the area of performance studies. By surveying…

Educational scholars concur that research preparation courses should engage doctoral students with methodological differences and epistemological controversies. Mary Metz and Nancy Lesko recently published articles describing how courses guided by this aim engender self-doubt for students. Neither scholar is entirely convinced that self-doubt is…

This paper reports a critical comparative analysis of two popular and significant theories of adult learning: the transformation and the deep approach theories of learning. These theories are operative in different educational sectors, are significant, respectively, in each, and they may be seen as both touching on similar concerns with learning…

This article considers drama/theater education as a form of constructivism where popular culture is both accessed and employed to engage young people and animate education. Using the familiar cultural trope of zombies, and in reference to three separate performance projects, attention is drawn to why projects such as these matter and why they…

The authors focus on the critical role of assessment within a flipped classroom environment where instruction is based on constructivist learning theory and where desired student outcomes are at the higher levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. While assessment is typically thought of in terms of providing summative measures of performance or achievement, it…

Social constructivist theorists tend to identify qualitative educational research as discovering meaning and understanding by the researcher's active involvement in the construction of meaning. Although these approaches have been widely influenced by Vygotsky's social constructivist approach, his own theoretical framework has received…