For educators, the content of the curriculum really is like oxygen: it is the necessary precondition for improving schools, closing the achievement gap, engaging parents, and preparing teachers. However, when educators take the content of the curriculum for granted, they lose opportunities to coordinate and collaborate. Good curriculum instruction…

New Zealand has an internationally unique approach to early childhood education, which includes a bicultural early childhood curriculum, a robust infrastructure of organisation and management overseen by the New Zealand Ministry of Education, and a growing reputation for innovation in early childhood teaching and learning. This paper examines how…

The influence of the information and communication technologies (ICTs) in open and distance learning (ODL) in a developing country, the Philippines, is critically evaluated in this paper. Specifically, this paper examines how ICTs have influenced or shaped the development of ODL in this country. Also examined are the different stages or…

"Count Us in: Achieving Success for Deaf Pupils" is a timely report. It comes when schools are becoming more confident in dealing with a wide range of additional support for learning needs. Schools are also more aware that they need to personalise experiences in order to meet pupils' learning needs. The report does point to strengths…

Curriculum developers assume that tasks to be learned are basically procedural and can be broken down into component elements. This approach may be useful for managing instruction, but it can interfere with the quality of education. True proficiency does not depend on following rules and procedures. (PP)

The monograph summarizes findings of effective schools research, information on the characteristics of effective classrooms, and descriptions of the methodological and conceptual issues related to school improvement projects. The impact of the school effectiveness literature on classroom instruction is discussed, and implications for the…

This study contributes to the field by identifying a broad range of traditional and newer middle grade policies and practices, and determining in California which of these differentiate higher- from lower-performing schools serving similar student populations, with performance measured by the state's standards-based tests. Based on a sample of 303…

In the 2008-09 school year researchers from EdSource and Stanford University conducted a large-scale study of 303 middle grades schools in California. The team surveyed 303 principals, 3,752 English Language Arts (ELA) and math teachers in grades 6-8, and 157 superintendents of the districts and charter management organizations that oversee the…

Realizing the critical need to dramatically improve access to higher education in Papua New Guinea, and the impossibility for traditional modes of education to adequately address this situation given major economic and geographic variables in that country, the National Higher Education Plan 11 (2000-2004) assigned a primordial role to the …

The paper advances a number of suggestions for an enhanced research agenda in school health education, examining approaches to health education that work, noting new or enhanced directions that are suggested by current successes, and discussing directions for which there are few available data. (SM)

The INNOV database was created as part of a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) program to collect, analyze and promote successful basic education projects in the developing world, and this report lists innovations in the field. It is divided into sections of project reports in three major geographical…

This paper, the first in a series of discussion papers for faculty members and administrators, contends that outdated structures, practices, and reward systems frustrate higher education's ability to reap the benefits of new directions in student learning. It finds that broad agreement is emerging on what students ought to learn from their…