Experiential placements are increasingly recognised as an essential component of university programmes, providing students with real-world contexts to apply their knowledge and to develop practical skills and personal attributes. In Australia, professions such as pharmacy have traditionally developed experiential placement programmes within state…

Physical education time has been reduced or even eliminated in middle and high schools in favor of more time for standardized test preparation, especially in urban schools and inner cities. One way to replace the time lost is by providing it after school as part of a comprehensive program. After-School All-Stars (ASAS) is such a program, networked…

Background/Context: Educational researchers have long sought to understand the factors that enable or constrain persistence in non-formal family literacy and adult education programs. Scholars typically posit three sets of factors influencing persistence: situational (learners' life circumstances), institutional (programmatic factors), and…

Distance and blended collaborative learning settings are usually characterized by different "social structures" defined in terms of groups' number, dimension, and composition; these structures are variable and can change within the same activity. This variability poses additional complexity to instructional designers, when they are…

In 1983, after over 10 years of working on mathematics education reform in the Philippines, I wrote a paper for a Tokyo conference arguing that education reform in developing countries such as the Philippines should begin by working on macro-problems, namely the social, political, and economic environment of the schools, as a context for the…

Assessments labeled as formative have been offered as a means to improve student achievement. But labels can be a powerful way to miscommunicate. For an assessment use to be appropriately labeled "formative," both empirical evidence and reasoned arguments must be offered to support the claim that improvements in student achievement can be linked…

Education for citizenship is firmly on the policy agenda throughout Britain, and there is an expectation that teachers will create a participative, consultative ethos in schools. This paper identifies three main vehicles for pupil consultation: elected pupil councils, democratic and participative classrooms and opportunities for pupils to engage…

In this paper we present a history of the idea of Open Educational Resources, overview the current state of the Open Educational Resources movement, report on critical issues facing the field in the immediate future, and present two new projects to watch in 2009.

Design-based research is a burgeoning research paradigm holding the promise of introducing more socially responsible studies to transform education. However, there is a lack of methodological standards and established research processes to inform this type of study. Although there are general principles and procedures on design-based research,…

This article traces quality assurance and evaluation (QAE) developments in Finnish compulsory schooling. The central question is this: Is there a Finnish model of QAE? We conclude that it may be a rhetorical overstatement to speak about a specific Finnish 'Model' of QAE in a strong sense. However, neither is it valid to conclude that what happens…

The environmental threats humanity faces have led businesses to increasingly commit to improve their environmental performance and to increasing attempts to address environmental issues in management education. This article presents a matrix of (a) principles that can underlie and (b) attributes that can be generated by environmentally focused…

In the political discourse, the idea that organising continuing education according to the rules of the market would improve the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of continuing education programmes is gaining significance. In this article, we endeavour to subject some elements of this fundamental option in continuing education policy to an…

This position paper sets forth an expanded view of character and character education that recognizes the importance of performance character (needed for best work) as well as moral character (needed for ethical behavior). While core ethical values remain foundational in a life of character, character education must also develop students'…

This edited collection synthesizes current research on the most promising methods and models for designing coherent science instruction. Arising from the National Science Foundation-funded Delineating and Evaluating Coherent Instructional Designs for Education (DECIDE) project, this volume combines the insights of researchers from two Centers for…

Environmental ethicists have focused much attention on the limits of utilitarianism and have generally defined "environmental ethics" in a manner that treats utilitarian environmental ethics as an oxymoron. This is unfortunate because utilitarian ethics can support strong environmental policies, and environmental ethicists have not yet produced a…