This paper reports on a study that investigated the range of institutional support needs of international students at one Australian university with a view to increasing understanding of their needs and the ways in which support was provided. The study involved a number of data collection methods including focus groups, key informant interviews…

Studies have shown that at the end of an introductory statistics course, students struggle with building block concepts, such as mean and standard deviation, and rely on procedural understandings of the concepts. This study aims to investigate the understandings entering freshman of a department of mathematics and statistics (including mathematics…

[This paper is part of the Focused Collection on Astronomy Education Research.] As part of a larger project studying undergraduate students' understanding of cosmology, we explored students' ideas about the curvature of the Universe. We investigated preinstruction ideas held by introductory astronomy (ASTRO 101) students at three participating…

Science students find heat, temperature, enthalpy and energy in chemical reactions to be some of the most difficult subjects. It is crucial to define their conceptual understanding level in these subjects so that educators can build upon this knowledge and introduce new thermodynamics concepts. This paper reports conceptual understanding levels of…

The aim of this pilot study was to investigate to what extent elementary school teachers were prepared to tackle bullying. Interview data from 22 Dutch elementary school teachers (M[subscript age]?=?43.3, 18 classrooms in eight schools) were combined with survey data from 373 students of these teachers (M age?=?10.7, grades 3-6, ages 8- to…

This paper provides new and effective modes of professional environmental training for future teachers. We have designed a model of environmental awareness. It was used in the pedagogical experiment to develop a holistic view regarding its significance in the overall structure of professional competence of future ecology experts. We have…

Sustainability-related learning objectives in university curricula are becoming increasingly popular. While knowledge gain is usually a prevalent metric of success, this study assessed whether a project-based learning assignment could lead to attitudinal shifts in students regarding sustainability. After performing both primary…

The purpose of this investigation was to explore changes in undergraduate and graduate teaching assistants' (TAs') content knowledge and beliefs about teaching within the context of an inquiry-based laboratory course. TAs received professional development (PD), which was informed by the TA training literature base and was designed for TAs…

Background: Headache is the most common type of pain reported in the pediatric population, and chronic headache is an increasingly prevalent and debilitating pain condition in children and adolescents. With large numbers of students experiencing acute headaches and more students with chronic headache reentering typical school settings, greater…

The purpose of this study was to design and develop an educational game which facilitates building adolescents' knowledge and attitudes in financial principles of a daily life. To achieve this purpose, the authors designed a learner-centered big game for financial education by applying an experience-based triple-diamond instructional design model…

A bystander program to increase knowledge and self-efficacy for intervening in alcohol-related emergencies, and increase the ratio of perceived benefits to barriers for intervening, was evaluated. Incoming first-year students participated in small group motivational interviewing sessions. Surveys were emailed two weeks before scheduled…

Human Rights Education (HRE) is a mandate in both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Globally, children may be learning about their rights, and the rights of others, in schools from preschool through college. HRE is not universally or systematically implemented. How much do…

This article details the authors' research focusing on the perceptions of Brock University students in relation to the namesake of Major-General Sir Isaac Brock. They discuss militarism in education and detail the use of everyday life theory and semiotic analysis, the latter as theory and methodology. They explore their findings which focus on the…

African American youth are generally as likely as their peers from other racial and ethnic groups to aspire to earn a college degree; yet, in spite of their aspirations these students remain under-represented in college enrollment and graduation. Part of the disparity between these students' aspirations and the realization of their goals may lie…

This paper examines research findings from an experiential model of interfaith education called the Building Bridges through Interfaith Dialogue in Schools Programme (BBP). The BBP has been operating continuously in Melbourne, Australia since 2004. In the research, participating students were interviewed and surveyed to assess the effect of this…