This article draws out the implications for school and classroom practices of an emerging consensus about the science of learning and development, outlined in a recent synthesis of the research. Situating the review in a developmental systems framework, we synthesize evidence from the learning sciences and several branches of educational research…

As a result of multi-disciplinary research on learning, a consistent and comprehensive body of knowledge on effective learning environments is currently emerging (OECD 2010). While this evidence is increasingly influencing the academic and policy discourse on the improvement and innovation of schools, its impact on the design principles of…

Russ Sojourner is the Schools of Character Director for the Character Education Partnership (CEP) in Washington, DC. In this article he begins by saying that Daniel Lapsley and Charles Murray's articles presented in this issue of "Journal of Character Education" are clearly concerned about the compelling (and daunting) challenges facing…

There is a widely held belief in e-learning circles that pedagogy must come before technology. In this paper it is argued that, not only is that not true, but that it is a weak distinction as pedagogies, insofar as they represent a set of techniques and tools for learning, are as much technologies as the computers, forums, virtual classrooms and…

This forum explores and expands on Ben-Zvi Assaraf, Eshach, Orion, and Alamour's article titled "Cultural Differences and Students' Spontaneous Models of the Water Cycle: A Case Study of Jewish and Bedouin Children in Israel" by examining how indigenous knowledge is appropriated in science classrooms; how students from indigenous…

The article argues that greater attention should be paid to contextual factors in educational research and international development cooperation. The analysis draws upon principles that underpin socio-cultural approaches to comparative education, a critical analysis of the political economy of contemporary educational research, and recent research…

This paper considers the idea of a crisis in educational research. Some conventional expressions of that "crisis" are examined in terms of their assumptions about what is "proper" to educational research. The paper then affirms the role of "metaphysics" in educational research as a necessary dimension of method, as opposed to the naive assertion…

In this article, the author explores practices and economies of learning that make visible particular practices where educational work is embedded in places other than schools, colleges and universities, or at least in complex interaction with them. To do this, she draws on a body of work she has been involved with over the past ten years,…

This essay brings together two lines of inquiry. Firstly, I revisit research on futures in education conducted during the 1980s and re-examine some of the propositions and principles that this research generated about "the future" as an object of inquiry in education. Secondly, I argue that the language of complexity invites us to…

The claim may be made that the Foucauldian analytics of power, in its detailed attention to the question of how modern societies are rendered governable, has superseded classical and radical analyses. This paper points to problems occasioned by Foucauldian governmentality's reliance on Foucault's flawed conception of the subject. These problems…

School and classroom structures designed to meet the needs of the industrial past cannot "maintain the temperature required for sustaining life." Recent learning sciences research findings compel educators to invent new learning environments better suited to meet the demands of the 21st century. These new learning environments require…

Badiou's ontological work draws attention to multiplicities--the oneness of ontology, which he explains can only become ontologically differentiated into events or sites through political, artistic or amorous practices that philosophies can think and invent from. He also draws attention to the fusion of events and sites, and he explains that…

In this essay, Naomi Hodgson reconsiders the value of Michel Foucault's normalization thesis to the study of educationalization in relation to contemporary educational policy and research. Hodgson begins by analyzing educational researchers' response to the recent introduction of citizenship education in England, focusing specifically on a review…

This article reviews the significance of Jacques Ranciere's work for methodological debates in the social sciences, and education specifically. It explores the implications of constructing research as an aesthetic, rather than primarily a methodological, endeavour. What is at stake in this distinction is the means by which research intervenes in…

Education "is" changing, as is knowledge more generally, to a significant degree energised by what has been described as the digital revolution. This has been widely discussed with references to notions such as globalisation, the New Media Age, open access, and the Network Society. Something definitely to be considered is what this could…