Purpose: The British Columbia Network Environment for Indigenous Health Research (BC NEIHR) aims to support and advance research leadership among Indigenous communities, collectives and organizations (ICCOs) within British Columbia, Canada. The BC NEIHR provides support and funding to ICCOs for research development and knowledge sharing. This…

Currently, in science teaching and in particular, natural science teaching there are concepts in the school that have a high level of abstraction. Concepts, such as atom, gene, mole and energy, among others are difficult to explain in an understanding manner to students. This situation requires the teacher to design alternative strategies to…

This paper is an attempt to think aloud about the current policy proposals in circulation in England that address pre-service teacher education. Rather than dealing with details of policy and points of specificity in practice, the focus of this paper is with how propositions are justified and the overall ways in which meanings are being managed; a…

Michael Gove has made examination reform a marked feature of his period as Education Secretary in the coalition government, although he has not always found it easy to bring about the changes he feels so strongly about, in the face of widespread opposition from teachers and educationists. This article seeks to analyse the Education Secretary's…

Free school policy claims to partly decentralise to local proposers decisions over who provides a free school, where and for what reasons, within the constraints of a government approval process. This article analyses empirically the people and organisations doing the proposing and their interactions with the approval process. The article begins…

During the past year, Wisconsin state legislators debated a series of bills aimed at closing low-performing public schools and replacing them with privately run charter schools. These proposals were particularly targeted at Milwaukee, the state's largest and poorest school district. Ultimately, the only legislation enacted was a bill that modestly…

Following a report by a Parliamentary Committee, the Higher Education Funding Council for England is consulting the sector about a strengthened national quality assurance system, with an enhanced role for information about quality and a closer focus on academic standards. This article provides a critical review of the main proposals.

This article describes the design and implementation of a business proposal module for final-year science students at a tertiary institution in Hong Kong. It is argued that in the needs analysis process, the present situation analysis (PSA), that is, personal information about the learners and factors which may affect their learning, is just as if…

This paper attempts to shed light on the competencies a university teacher must have in order to teach in virtual learning environments. A teacher training experience was designed by taking into account the methodological criteria established in line with previous theoretical principles. The main objective of our analysis was to identify the…

With the dissemination of its Innovation Strategy in 2002, the Canadian government further solidified its commitment to a knowledge-based national competitiveness strategy. Through the unfolding of a multi-million dollar Workplace Skills Strategy (WSS) agency, and the launch of two research agencies, the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and…

The purpose of this report is to disseminate the findings from an analysis of the proposals submitted by English councils under the Sustainable Communities Act for England 2007 (SCA), conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) in August/September 2009, as requested by the Local Government Association (LGA). It aims to…

The "No Outsiders" research consortium draws upon the Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) notion of a community of practice with a shared focus on "researching approaches to sexualities equality in primary schools". While the word "community", for some, may carry connotations of harmony and even homogeneity,…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to question the appropriateness of a proposal for a new European Qualifications Framework. The framework has three perspectives: historical; analytical; and national. Design/methodology/approach: The approaches are diverse since the first insists on the institutional and decision-making processes at European…

Through successive rounds of negotiations, the World Trade Organization (WTO) encourages countries to commit their higher education system to the mandates of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). The WTO is an organization committed to the aggressive trade liberalization of services like higher education. This ideology, known as…

The authors share a successful Fulbright Group Projects Abroad grant award. The purpose of the grant was to enhance American educators' experience and knowledge of South Africa, in particular, and sub-Saharan Africa more generally. Toward that end, participants experienced a multifaceted view of South Africa's geographical diversity, both physical…