At a time when extremist movements are gaining proportions on the world stage, it is relevant to reanalyse experiences that intended to establish democracy as a principle in school education. The School Republic was one of them, which was proposed by the Sampaio Dória Reform, in 1920, taking the New School as its context; the School Republic aimed…

The recurrent reminders that climate changes are man-made and demand action, calls for the development of novel teaching approaches which besides transferring information, solutions, and values, also allow students to engage in critical reflections and through common inquiries strengthen their decision-making abilities and sustainable commitment.…

Research and practice have recognized the importance of informal learning--a specific type of active learning--for higher education contexts. University students learn not only in formally organized courses, but also in a self-directed and intentional way from fellow students, through trial and error, and by reflection. However, there has been a…

Peer response writing groups present several benefits in language learning classrooms. However, they are usually supervised by the instructor and thus become time consuming when carried out in class. This descriptive case study offers a model for extramural peer feedback and analyzes 12 meeting transcriptions of four undergraduate EFL writing…

This article reports on a study conducted to investigate the development of abstract thinking in preschool children (ages from three years to four years old) in a nursery school in England. Adopting a social influence approach, the researcher engaged in "close listening" to document children's ideas expressed in various representations…

Background: At a specialist nursing education in intensive care, located at a University college in Sweden, there was a desire among the faculty to develop their ability to support specialist nursing students in their academic development, as well as in their academic writing, to improve the overall quality of the master theses. A quality…

In this study, the researchers examined how 64 university students engaged in self-directed group learning and used a self-developed e-portfolio system. A sixweek event was held where the students made entries to the e-portfolio individually each week, received feedback from advisors, studied in groups on a voluntary basis, and reflected on their…

Introduction: The research focused on metacognition in a collaborative learning setting. Based on a comprehensive literature study the researchers designed a metacognitive teaching-learning strategy for pair programmers. Our purpose was to investigate the influence of this metacognitive teaching-learning strategy during pair programming in an…

The intention of the study is to identify the development of personal skills, as well as the increase of job satisfaction and productivity of the employee, as a result of their participation in high performance teams. Volunteered in the study 139 members of self-managed teams belonging to the Production Area, 39 of Operational Administrative…

A case study of an official organization's attempt to organize Dutch rural women who had already formed their own informal groups illustrates issues of knowledge, power, and control. The resulting conflict demonstrates the wisdom of following local organizing practices when attempting development interventions. (SK)

Daytime adult education has emerged in Ireland in the form of voluntary, locally based groups of working class women providing education for themselves and others. A survey of 96 groups illuminated their struggles with finding suitable space, day care, and advertising. They thrive because of disenchantment with the content, scheduling, and form of…

A participant-observation study in a South African mining company that used self directed work team training identified organizational constraints that hindered training effectiveness: lack of materials, machinery breakdown, decentralized budget, and imposed standards. Miners more often used improvisation and initiative to solve daily problems,…

Two studies are reported: one in which case study, evaluation, and action research inquiries were done for students' theses; the other involving a collaborative action research project by the staff at one British school. The effects on participating teachers are reported. (24 references) (Author/LB)

Both the learning organization literature and the self-managed work team literature have alluded to the potential links between teamwork and learning. However, as yet the link between these two concepts remains undeveloped. This study uses a survey of a random sample of 200 Australian organizations to empirically examine the relationships between…

This study investigates the behavior of university students in Singapore regarding (1) the extent and manner in which they study together outside of class and (2) their perceptions of the quality and value of out-of-class academic collaboration (OCAC). Undergraduates (n=457) from four different campuses of the National University of Singapore…