The flat structure of American schools is ill-suited to meeting today's demands for education improvement. Historically, American schools have addressed this instructional support deficit with a patchwork of poorly defined roles and responsibilities--underused department chairs, fitful coaching models, and informal teacher leaders who generally…

An Australian scholar in the Arts and Humanities responds to recent US models emphasizing civic-engaged learning as a way to renew the humanities in undergraduate education. Policy contexts and curriculum initiatives of kindred trends in recent Australian undergraduate education in the humanities are contrasted in this essay. The Australian…

GeoCapabilities is a transatlantic collaborative project for researching the purposes and values of geography education through a "capabilities approach." Inspired by the writings of philosopher Amartya Sen and economist Martha Nussbaum, the capabilities approach provides a normative framework for understanding the broader aims of…

Background: Many critical curriculum theorists in physical education have advocated a model- or models-based approach to teaching in the subject. This paper explores the literature base around models-based practice (MBP) and asks if this multi-models approach to curriculum planning has the potential to be the great white hope of pedagogical change…

Recent policy debates surrounding Japan's graduate education raise a serious skepticism in the validity of its "research-based" or "learning-by-doing" training approach that these institutions have uniquely established. Proponents of reform suggest drastic restructuring of the graduate programs by replacing the experience-based…

The purpose of this study was to examine and compare key elements of the actions that states in the USA and Australia took to implement the Common Core State Standards or Phase One of the Australian Curriculum, and what processes and products they used to facilitate implementation of these innovations. A rubric adapted from a diagnostic tool,…

The September 2011 report, "Teaching the Movement: The State of Civil Rights Education in the United States 2011," was prompted by the news that American high school seniors knew little about the civil rights movement. Knowing that low expectations often contribute to poor student achievement, the report took a close look at the content…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to build a detailed description of the Global Seminar (GS) curricula model by exploring its on-the-ground participatory practices in America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Design/methodology/approach: Within a qualitative research design framework, the authors interviewed 20 faculty members from the…

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to analyze international and national research and development (R&D) programs and roadmaps for the manufacturing sector, presenting how agile and lean manufacturing models are addressed in these programs. Design/methodology/approach: In this review, several manufacturing research and development programs and…

This paper seeks to provide a perspective on environmental education in Aotearoa New Zealand. To contextualise this perspective, it illustrates how environmental, socio-cultural and political imperatives have shaped the development of environmental education in this land. These imperatives illuminate the natural history of the country, the…

In the age of standardized testing, science and social studies are not given the same priority as mathematics and reading in the curriculum of United States schools. High stakes testing is viewed as having heavily biased schools toward teaching tested subjects and away from less frequently tested subjects. This paper is premised on the notion that…

With few exceptions, students interact with technology in one way or another every day. And yet, in most U.S. schools, the term "computer science" (CS) refers only to generic skills classes, such as keyboarding and computer applications. Even most Web programming classes usually teach students only how to use conventional graphical user…

Governments recognize that workers in the twenty-first century need to keep pace with increasingly technical employment environments in order to remain competitive in the global market. The Australian government has developed a set of policies to address impending shortfalls in high-level technicians and paraprofessionals across many professions.…

The learner-centered instructional design model redefines the standard linear instructional design model to form a circular model where the learner's needs are the first item considered in the development of instruction. The purpose of this modified Delphi study was to have a panel of experts in the instructional design field review the…

This study examines elementary science content standards curriculum coherence between the People's Republic of China and the United States of America. Three aspects of curriculum coherence are examined in this study: topic inclusion, topic duration, and curriculum structure. Specifically this study centers on the following research questions: (1)…