Students' negative perceptions of physical chemistry courses are well-known and are likely impacting their learning and performance in this upper-division course for majors. The syllabus can be the first interaction students have with a course and instructor and can be central to the expectations student set for the learning experience. While…

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centred instructional approach in which complex real-world problems are used as the vehicle to promote students' learning of concepts and principles. This paper presents a case study that explored the learning experiences of 18 pre-service teachers and how the instructor was affected when implementing PBL…

What if young students could explore science, technology, engineering, art, and math (STEAM) subjects through autonomous and creative play? What if children were treated like artists and encouraged to formulate and explore their thoughts, theories, and ideas starting at the age of 4? What if educators relinquished their traditional roles as…

The challenges of naming a bounded disciplinary body of knowledge for the social sciences has made it difficult to define and clearly articulate 'what counts' for disciplinary learning in school curricula. The shift to 'new' generic skills with an associated autonomy of curriculum content choice and learner-centred approaches has introduced…

Student evaluations of teaching have considerable impact on teaching improvement. However, there is no reliable instrument that can reflect nursing students' perspectives of teaching evaluations in China. To design a student-centred evaluation instrument of nursing teaching in China, we developed and psychometrically tested the Nursing Course…

This empirical study examined preferences between teacher-centered and student-centered teaching methods and academic major with 507 undergraduate college students. Surveys were administered to the students that assessed their level of agreement with teaching methods utilized in the classroom. The results indicate that across all academic majors,…

In 2014, evolution through natural selection was introduced to the primary science National Curriculum in England for year 6 (ages 10-11). As teachers had little prior experience of teaching this concept, it provided a rare opportunity to study the effectiveness of different approaches. A study was developed to investigate the impact of…

The present study takes a novel quantitative approach to examine whether the change mechanisms hypothesized by conceptual change theories are involved in reconceptualizing teaching from a teacher-centred to a student-centred approach. We assessed changes in approaches to teaching, measured with the Approaches to Teaching Inventory-Revised (ATI-R),…

Attracting and retaining students' attention is a concern for educators at every level of education, including those in higher education. Despite compelling evidence that student-centred pedagogies enhance attention, motivation and learning gain, exposition-centred delivery in forms such as lectures persists across higher education. Contemporary…

Both cooperative and collaborative learning are learner-centered teaching approaches in English Language Teaching (ELT) to support active learning, shared learning, inductive learning, and autonomous learning. However, definitional and conceptual clarity of these two concepts did not receive as much attention as they deserve. As a result, these…

This paper explores the effect teachers' participation in a targeted inquiry-based/nature of science (NoS) continuing professional development programme had on Irish primary children's experiences of scientific inquiry and developing conceptions of NoS. Data were gathered from 459 children from 10 Dublin schools. The findings revealed that their…

The purpose of the study was to reveal whether and how learner-centered instruction in comparison with traditional teacher-centered instruction might present unique effects on the learning behaviors and academic motivation of Chinese students. Meanwhile, it was also explored how the distinctive instructing features of Chinese teachers assuming the…

As online education opportunities continue to grow, college readiness begins to rely more and more on technology literacy. Skeptics question the validity of online education and insist that technology has created more of a barrier for students. This opinion took center stage during the COVID-19 pandemic that started in spring 2020. Many higher…

This dissertation attempts to understand how students in post-secondary education apply and participate in the self-determined learning model called heutagogy and how it might impact their rate of success. The study aimed at defining students' perceptions of heutagogy as a framework for higher education and to examine whether those perceptions…

The rapid pivot to the online environment, necessitated by COVID-19, has resulted in some universities adopting online meeting platforms, such as Zoom, for exam invigilation. This study aims to evaluate the effectiveness and reflect on the student experience of exams invigilated with an online meeting platform. In 2020, twenty-four subjects with…