Colleges implement success courses to improve student outcomes. Since expanding its curriculum to include nine success courses, Illinois Eastern Community Colleges (IECC)--a multi-college community college district in rural, southeastern Illinois--has not determined the efficacy of these courses on student success. The purpose of this study was to…

Thanks to a wealth of research on college student retention, we have today a good understanding of the factors that facilitate student success. However, actions taken to promote student success are far from always effective. The teaching-learning environments differ between institutions and provide, to a greater or lesser extent, the conditions…

A study was conducted considering a mathematics learning center as a figured world, that is, as a social space that is treated as if individuals within the space share certain meanings about the space and interactions within it (Holland et al., 1998) from the perspective of the undergraduate peer tutors employed in it (for the larger study, see…

New Leaders developed the Transformational Leadership Framework (TLF) to pinpoint practices commonly found in schools that were significantly advancing student achievement and in what sequence principals and their teams implemented those practices to deliver consistent and equitable outcomes for students. The TLF is based on: (1) More than 100…

While occupying various academic leadership positions, the authors repeatedly encounter the use of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) accreditation to influence decision making around engineering curricula. For instance, ABET criteria are commonly cited as the reason why particular changes to engineering programs, such…

Education reform has focused on academic standards, but curriculum is still weighed down by outdated subject-area categories that are reinforced through various practices and institutions. T his article examines the possibilities for an integrative curriculum model that can accommodate the broad goals of holistic education and the needs of society…

National goals and performance standards were introduced in Sweden during the 1990s as part of a curriculum reform. The intention was to detect shortcomings among students and provide support to those students who did not reach the passing grade in one (or several) subject/s. Despite this reform, approximately one-fourth of the students do not…

Formative assessment is strongly advocated as a critical component of Australian teachers' work. This article examines the evolving policy expectations and support for teachers' formative assessment practices in the context of two recent Australian education reforms: the introduction of the first national curriculum and of new professional…

The more recent discussion in Ireland around post-primary teachers being responsible for assessing their own students' work continues. The new junior cycle reform (covering the first three years of post-primary education) is concerned with making fundamental changes in approaches to learning, teaching, curriculum and assessment, with school-based…

This paper reports on implementing learning plans at an Australian university and their perceived use in supporting doctoral candidates' professional and academic development. The implementation of individualised learning plans for doctoral candidates was the outcome of university-wide discussions regarding coursework in the PhD. Based on a review…

It has been substantiated that Academic English must be an integral component of ESL students' study at foreign languages departments to achieve success as professionals and be ready to realize themselves in a demanding world of today. We have defined the main problem on the way to it, namely the insufficient provision of the Academic English…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the discussion about the complexity and heterogeneity of entrepreneurship education. In order to achieve this objective, this paper combines educational psychology with perspectives from entrepreneurship education research to make explicit educators tacit assumptions in order to understand how…

This design-research partnership involves learning scientists, design researchers, and graduate students from the Learning in Informal and Formal Environments (LIFE) Center and the College of Education at the University of Washington (UW), and district staff, teachers, and students from the Bellevue School District (BSD). The goal of their work is…

The authors describe a vocational training course that was developed to give more than just an overview of how aircraft work, or a course on how to fly. This training course was a half-year course in aviation technology. Powered flight is an area of interest for many students, and the intent of creating a curriculum rich with science, technology,…

We examine the distinction between teaching and teachers as it relates to instructional improvement. Drawing from work outside of education on improvement systems and from analyzing the Japanese system of lesson study, we contend that a focus on teaching can shape a coordinated system for improvement whereas a focus on teachers, common in the…