The Philadelphia Education Research Consortium--or PERC--was launched in August 2014 as an innovative partnership designed to provide research and analyses on some of the city's most pressing education issues. This partnership was forged among the School District of Philadelphia, Philadelphia's charter school sector, and Research for Action (RFA).…

The problem which this paper addresses is the difficulty of knowing students in large diverse classes in pedagogically useful ways. The paper discusses how the phenomenographic methodology can be employed to address this problem. It describes how phenomenographic studies and their results can enable teachers to "know their students" at a…

In many institutions of higher education worldwide, faculty members manage lessons based on information transfer whereas their students become passive listeners. According to international research, passive learning has disadvantages mainly because students do not engage in the lesson. The study introduces a new model for higher education called…

After more than 100 years of successfully practicing a traditional model of student teaching, a midwestern university recently transitioned to a new co-teaching model of student teaching. What factors contributed to the decision to implement a co-teaching model? What process was used to guide, facilitate, and implement this major change in the way…

When asked by a principal to design a workshop for ELA and ESL teachers on addressing new ESL regulations, the author suggested that they offer professional development that might inspire teachers to try new practices that could help their students grow as writers. The author decided to devote a workshop not to rules and regulations, but to…

In an activity sequence that took place over several days, the class learned about sound and how people hear sounds. Following each activity, students engaged in whole-group sharing sessions and individual journal-writing sessions that were designed to help them see the patterns that emerged from their explorations. The activities were carefully…

Career opportunities for Australian research graduates have expanded in recent years into areas outside academia. However, the employment market is highly competitive, and Australian universities have recognised the need to produce graduates with transferable skills across all sectors, not just academia. The need to provide an infrastructure to…

First, the author briefly outlines genre theory and sets out some broad definitions of genre. She also discusses how genre knowledge is acquired and how it has been taught in ESP and EAP. Following this, she highlights two challenges to using this pedagogy in a general EFL class. Finally, she argues that despite these challenges, teachers can…

Pedagogically, the term "bottleneck" refers to a moment when students may face barriers to understanding content in the process of learning. As instructors identify "bottlenecks" within their courses, they are faced with the challenge of how to best assist students in overcoming them. Further, most instructors want to know what selected teaching…

In the past few years, many students have begun to lose interest in science and information and engineering technology courses because they find them too boring and hard to learn. To strengthen this field of education and stimulate students' motivation and interest in learning, this study introduces a theoretical pedagogical framework based on…

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and explain a cooperative learning technique, Academic Controversy (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 1996), also known as Cooperative Controversy, Structured Controversy and Structured Academic Controversy, that has potential for use in education and other areas, and has support in both research and theory.…

The secondary level of a Response to Intervention system, sometimes referred to as Tier II intervention, targets students who experience inadequate response to good classroom instruction for 10-15 weeks of validated small-group instruction. The twin purposes of secondary prevention are to (a) prevent the development of long-term reading difficulty…

Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) are front-line facilitators with first-hand contact with students. They play an important role in providing an engaging learning experience for undergraduate and postgraduate students. However, most of them have not received adequate training and guidance in teaching. This paper reports on an intensive and…

This paper describes the design of an educational module which aims to raise awareness and change the attitudes of elementary school students about focal endangered species in protected areas. The proposed design builds on, and extends the General Teaching Model. The educational module which was developed through this approach was pilot-tested in…

This paper describes several models of teamwork used in business curricula at Zagreb School of Economics and Management (ZSEM) in Croatia. Since its foundation in 2002, ZSEM has been implementing best academic practices for quality assurance. This is done both in terms of integrating ICT in teaching and learning, as well as applying contemporary…