Dialogic teaching has been demonstrated to be conducive to the development of such important competencies and skills as creativity, communication skills, and critical thinking skills. However, the literature confirms that teacher-student interactions in the classroom are predominantly monologic rather than dialogic across subjects, grades, and…

This paper reports the findings of a qualitative study examining the influence of professional development (PD) on tutors' teaching philosophies. It found that tutors construe their role in three ways: as transmitter, facilitator, or reflexive practitioner. The findings suggest most tutors, prior to a PD program, hold a teacher-focused conception…

The purpose of this article is to explore the effectiveness of entrepreneurship education (EE) programmes through the lens of realist evaluation (RE). The interest of the authoring team--a practitioner-academic mix with professional experience including developing EE in primary and secondary schools--lies with EE competitions, a type of…

This article recounts some of the motivations, hurdles, and successes the Cuyamaca ESL Department in San Diego encountered while transforming its curriculum to an accelerated model. The college discovered that the new program, while challenging, increased the success and rate of passing among its language learners and improved the quality of their…

Despite credible research to support a constructivist-based approach in early childhood programs, policymakers continued to push for a more academic-based philosophy in an effort to reach standardized testing goals. Reggio Emilia, a constructivist-based early childhood philosophy that originated in Northern Italy, has been shown to be an excellent…

Advocates of different approaches to inclusion are often adamant that there can be only one true form of inclusion--yet advocated forms differ. Ultimately, inclusion is about empowering students to succeed and wrapping them with the support necessary to do so. This article presents the story of Forrester Hill State School where varied approaches…

Although research suggests that service learning (SL) is being incorporated into the college classroom at an increasing rate, faculty often report that they are not convinced of its educational values. There is a lack of research on, and awareness about, what SL is, how it can be incorporated into the curriculum, and the outcomes on student…

During 2009-2012, one Sixth Form College (SFC) introduced Building Learning Power (BLP) as a new philosophy and framework for learning and teaching. This short paper sets out to explain why and how BLP was introduced, and discusses how effective this process has been.

This article proposes an applied theoretical framework that could assist education reformers in Confucian heritage culture (CHC) countries to adopt Western-developed learning practices successfully. This framework is needed because the literature has recently documented a large number of failures in educational reforms at CHC colleges. The main…

Beliefs about knowledge, learning and teaching are assumed to impact teachers' practice (Brownlee, 2004; N. Entwistle, Skinner, D. Entwistle, & Orr, 2000). A change of beliefs is an important step for teacher learning, but it is often seen as difficult if not impossible (Cooney, Shealy, & Arvold, 1998). This study investigated the impact…

A mixed methods study examined how a newly developed campus-wide framework for learning and teaching, called the Learning Model, was accepted and embraced by faculty members at Brigham Young University-Idaho from September 2007 to January 2009. Data from two administrations of the Approaches to Teaching Inventory showed that (a) faculty members…

The Philosophy for Children in Schools Project (P4CISP) is a research project to monitor and evaluate the impact of Philosophy for Children (P4C) on classroom practices. In this paper the impact of P4C on the thinking skills of four children aged 10 is examined. Standardised tests indicated the children had below-average reading ages. The pupils…

While there is consensus that institutions need to represent their educational effectiveness through documentation of student learning, the higher education community is divided between those who support national standardized tests to compare institutions' educational effectiveness, and those who believe that valid assessment of student…

This paper presents the response of the technology teacher education programmes at the University of Limerick to the assessment challenge created by the shift in philosophy of the Irish national curriculum from a craft-based focus to design-driven education. This study observes two first year modules of the undergraduate programmes that focused on…

Within the framework of language socialization, this dissertation uses conversation analytic and ethnographic methods to examine the interactional practices used by the adult safe school educator at a progressive elementary school to socialize students into beliefs and practices associated with the school's Cool Tools Safe School Program. Cool…