Organising teaching of a topic around a small number of "big ideas" has been argued by many to be important in teaching for deep understanding, with big ideas being able to link different activities and to be framed in ways that provide perceived relevance and routes into engagement. However it is our view that, at present, the…

This action research reports on a three-year collaborative learning process among three teachers. We used current literature and a critical reflection framework to understand why our teaching approaches were not resulting in increased student learning. This allowed us to examine our previously unrecognized and uninterrupted--and often,…

Existing literature examining the teaching of research methods highlights difficulties students face when developing research competencies. Studies of student-centred teaching approaches have found increased student performance and improved confidence in undertaking research projects. To develop a student-centred approach, it could be beneficial…

Advances in science education research have the potential to improve the way students learn to perform scientific interpretations and understand science concepts. We developed active, collaborative activities to teach skills in manipulating flow cytometry data using FlowJo software. Undergraduate students were given compensated clinical flow…

Noted Maori scholar Russell Bishop identified three impediments to developing Indigenous principles and practices in schools within colonized countries. These include confusion about the culture of Indigenous children, uneven programme implementation and issues with measuring student achievement. In this article, we present results from a mixed…

The first appendix in this report is the complete version of the literature review from the research project "Motivation and Engagement of Boys: Evidence-based Teaching Practices." This project was carried out by the University of Western Sydney on behalf of the Australian Government Department of Education, Science and Training (DEST)…

This paper describes and evaluates an action research project carried out by a teacher in an English comprehensive school, where a class of 13- to 14-year-olds was taught personal, social and health education and German through content-language integrated learning (CLIL) over a six-week period. The purpose of the study was to explore how CLIL…

In this study we described an action research project enacted by a veteran Kindergarten teacher (Sarah) in the context of a professional development program. Over the course of a year, Sarah collaborated with other teachers in a small group to investigate how to use "Science Talks" to promote student learning in Kindergarten classrooms. A…

Utilizing ecosocial theory and the notion of the environment as text, two teachers, the vice principal and a university researcher, engaged in a year-long, place-based, qualitative action research project in which they used the environment as the integrating context for teaching critical literacy, mathematics, and science. The project revealed…

The current internationalisation agenda in UK higher education (HE) is still seen as most relevant to those university departments involved in international student recruitment and support. This approach has been influenced by the dominant "deficit" discourses from earlier decades, which emphasise the need for international students to…

This article considers how theories of instructional scaffolding--which call for a skilled expert to teach a novice a new task by breaking it into smaller pieces--might be employed in graduate-level qualitative methods courses. The author discusses how she used instructional scaffolding in the design and delivery of a qualitative methods course…

This study focuses on three case studies of three Florida teachers' action research projects focusing on improving at-risk students' literacy skills through innovative instructional technology, culturally-relevant poetry and bilingual teaching. The teachers, White, African American and Latina, describe their research journeys, the literacy…

This paper discusses some issues that arose in the context of a three-year research project on Indigenous mathematics teacher education in the Northern Territory of Australia. The project was based on the premise that Indigenous student numeracy outcomes are more likely to be improved where students can work on key number ideas and strategies in…

Writing performance for a large number of adolescents, with and without learning disabilities (LD), in the United States is below the level required for success in college and in the world of work. Despite the importance of writing and students' with LD documented difficulties in this academic domain, writing intervention research for adolescents…

Fourteen high school students, chosen at random from a group of 28, spent 5 hours participating in a business simulation, after which all 28 students took tests designed to measure their knowledge of business facts and concepts and their ability to evaluate business decisions. The simulation group outperformed the control group on both tests, but…