The molecular activities which take place inside neurones during synaptic plasticity development are examined. The molecular events during memory consolidation and learning are investigated.

The educational discourse in recent years in Australia, and in particular NSW has been on advancing the status of the teaching profession through the development of a framework of standards, and by supporting the nature of teachers' work in addition to improving student-learning outcomes. The close link between student learning outcomes and…

Increased access to the Internet and online technologies has allowed a growing number of students to take part in college courses online. Participants in these courses tend not to be as motivated to engage in learning with the same thoroughness as they do in a classroom-based course. This study investigates strategies that are perceived as…

This paper adds to a discussion initiated by Askew (2007) about two contrasting views of scaffolding; as a "tool for results" and a "tool-and-result". The study took place in four primary classrooms within a low socioeconomic setting. Two classroom episodes drawn from one of the teacher's classroom, illustrate the two different…

Teacher mobility is often viewed as a limitation of longitudinal analyses of teacher learning in communities, in which membership changes. I introduce an analytical tool developed to address the continuation of the learning of such communities across changes in membership. In the case analysis, I examine whether changes in membership should be…

Vectors and vector addition are difficult concepts for many introductory physics students and traditional instruction does not usually sufficiently address these difficulties. Vectors play a major role in most topics in introductory physics and without a complete understanding of them many students are unable to make sense of the physics topics…

Since teachers always teach area and perimeter together--and they are both introduced soon after the definition of a rectangle--it is not surprising that students mix up the notions of area and perimeter. Changing the investigation on maximising the area of a fixed perimeter from the traditional, but boring, "Sheep pens" to the much more…

Linton Waters and Jayne Kranat ran a session on the Nuffield "Applying Mathematical Processes" (AMP) activities at BCME7 in Manchester in April this year. These 1-2 hour activities are revamps of some of the Graded Assessment in Mathematics (GAIM) resources, developed in the 1980s, and are freely available via the Nuffield website and…

Early psychologist William James [1842-1910] and philosopher John Dewey [1859-1952] described intelligence as a method which can be learned. That view of education is integrated with knowledge about the brain's executive functions to empower pupils to intelligently organize their learning. This article links the pragmatist philosophy of…

In this study, 94 university freshmen undertook an authentic, experientially driven media production project at a Japanese university which promotes a target language (TL)-only classroom language policy. The project was staged across six 90-minute lessons and sought to promote culturally and socially relevant task-based activities grounded in the…

Research supports what many teachers have long known: talk is a valuable tool for learning. But how can we incorporate talk and still keep students on task, thinking collectively and deeply? Gillis offers a solid theoretical foundation for incorporating talk throughout the curriculum, and then provides practical help for implementing it, with…

A multi-stage pre/post testing scheme is developed to gauge course effectiveness using gain and loss components of normalized change. The components, unlike normalized change itself, can be used to distinguish courses that promote acquisition as well as retention of information from courses that promote acquisition at the expense of retention or…

This article theorizes empirical data from an ethnographic project conducted in and around the economically disadvantaged suburb of Noble Park in southeast suburban Melbourne (Victoria, Australia). Exploring the politics around gendered identities of young people involved in the research, particularly Australian-Sudanese men, the authors theorize…

In schools, like many business organizations, the establishment of mission statements has become common practice. In fact, many high schools are required to establish mission statements as part of an accreditation process. The intent of mission statements is to establish organizational purpose, and theoretically, once established the practice of…

This paper offers a conceptual model and rich narratives that describe the contexts in which teacher leadership emerges and the many ways that leadership is enacted. Drawing on qualitative case studies of seven Maine, USA schools, the authors found that teachers initiated their own professional learning efforts with the central goal of improving…