It is ironic that the management of education has become more closed while learning has become more open, particularly over the past 10-20 years. The curriculum has become more instrumental, predictive, standardized, and micro-managed in the belief that this supports employability as well as the management of educational processes, resources, and…

This book presents results from a four-year project addressing the central question: What factors, challenges, and contexts contribute to and constrain literacy achievement among at-risk adolescent learners with culturally diverse backgrounds? Researchers consider the importance of several, interrelated factors that support the development of…

Technology is a learning and teaching tool that enhances students' communication, innovation, and critical thinking skills, also known as 21st century learning goals. Successfully using technology in the classroom to promote these learning goals, however, has presented some challenges for teachers. While research has identified a variety of…

Young people are often referred to as digital natives, who are familiar with digital technologies such as computers, the Internet and mobile phones for communication, entertainment and accessing information. As a result scholars have called for an educational approach that bypasses the traditional unidirectional lecture teaching style, and applies…

This study investigated the challenges that history learners in rural black schools are faced with during assessments when using English as the language of learning and teaching. The aim of the study was to investigate whether English, which is used as a language of learning and teaching in schools, is a barrier to the learning and teaching of…

This study explores how collaborative inquiry learning can be supported with multiple scaffolding agents in a real-life field trip context. In practice, a mobile peer-to-peer messaging tool provided meta-cognitive and procedural support, while tutors and a nature guide provided more dynamic scaffolding in order to support argumentative discussions…

With their increased popularity, games open up possibilities for simultaneous learning on multiple levels; players may learn from contextual information embedded in the narrative of the game and through the risks, benefits, costs, outcomes, and rewards of the alternative strategies that result from fast-paced decision making. Such dynamics also…

Two reasons are suggested for studying the degree of conceptual integration in student thinking. The linking of new material to existing knowledge is an important aspect of meaningful learning. It is also argued that conceptual coherence is a characteristic of scientific knowledge and a criterion used in evaluating new theories. Appreciating this…

The majority of newly qualified teachers in New South Wales, Australia, begin their careers as casual teachers in fragmented employment contexts which make it difficult to build on the knowledge base gained at university through continuous, and continuously evaluated, practice in a classroom. This study explored the experiences of early career…

The focus in this article is on the role of symbol and metaphor in the development of student self-awareness and engagement in the process of learning. It draws on a case-study which explored the process of an inquiry-based learning project in an Indigenous learning centre in a school in New South Wales, Australia. The data used for this article…

As Web 2.0 emerging technologies are gaining momentum in higher education, educators as well as students are finding new ways to integrate them for teaching and learning. Technologies such as blogs, wikis and multimedia-sharing utilities have been used to teach various subject matters. This trend not only creates new opportunities for us to afford…

Data-driven instructional improvement relies on developing coherent systems that allow school staff to generate, interpret, and act upon quality formative information on students and school programs. This article offers a formative feedback system model that captures how school leaders and teachers structure artifacts and practices to create…

In CSCL contexts ("Computer Supported Collaborative Learning") collaborative activities with different levels of structuredeness are often used to foster discussion and exchange among students and enhance collaboration. In this field the debate around whether and to what extent it is useful to structure the activities proposed to students, is…

This study analyzes what characterizes the negotiations of seventh graders at a public school in Bogotá when working in pairs to develop speaking tasks in EFL classes. The inquiry is a descriptive case study that follows the qualitative paradigm. As a result of analyzing the data, we obtained four consecutive steps that characterize students'…

This article analyses an experience in collaborative learning in an asynchronous writing environment through discussion forums on a WebCt platform of the University of Huelva's virtual campus, and was part of an innovative teaching project in 2007-08. The main objectives are to describe the processes of collaborative knowledge construction and the…