This study describes the peer mentoring experience from doctoral student mentors' point of view. Twelve science and engineering doctoral students participated in this phenomenology study. The findings suggest doctoral peer mentors served instrumental, psychosocial, buffering, and liaison roles; they passed on their social, professional, and…

A commonly advocated best practice for classroom assessment is to make the assessments authentic. Authentic is often used as meaning the mirroring of real-world tasks or expectations. There is no consensus, however, in the actual definition of the term or the characteristics of an authentic classroom assessment. Sometimes, the realistic component…

In contemporary educational contexts, technology, globalization, and mobility have brought about a blurring of the boundary between language learning and activation in and beyond the classroom. (We prefer the term "activation" to "use" as it has a more dynamic connotation.) This contrasts with the pre-globalized, pre-Internet…

The societies of the twenty-first century are subject to social, cultural, political, and economic changes. In this context, the school is asked to educate the future citizens in the present. To respond to this kaleidoscopic reality, the school is immersed in a pedagogical revolution. In this book, the reader will find a selection of avant-garde…

How are stakeholders represented in higher education institutions' decision-making bodies that influence the quality of education, and are their viewpoints taken into account? This paper addresses this question taking into account the empirical evidence from eight countries in Europe. Findings indicate that formal barriers are largely absent, that…

Higher education in the United States faces major challenges: increased competition from non-traditional players, online programs that are eroding regional monopolies, shifting demographics, the perceived irrelevance of some degrees, and the development of low-cost certification alternatives to those degrees. In other industries, information…

In this article we report the findings of a two-phase action research study focused on the role of collaborative work in the development of elementary students' writing skills at a Colombian school. This was decided after having identified the students' difficulties in the English classes related to word transfer, literal translation, weak…

This article presents part of the research performed in a project from 2008 to 2013, regarding the introduction of the Reggio Emilia approach to Slovene preschool educators. The study's aim was to recognize the possible influence of the training--from 2009 to 2011--in this project on educators' viewpoints and the promotion of children's…

This article presents the results of a study, undertaken from a phenomenographic perspective, which examines technical and further education (TAFE) teachers' conceptions of ICT-enhanced teaching. A cohort of 23 teachers from three TAFE institutions in Australia, participated in semi-structured, in-depth interviews. These interviews were used to…

This paper presents an action research program which was designed to support parents and primary school teachers, with the mediation of school professionals in order to enable them facilitate the school inclusion of at risk students or those with special educational needs. The aims, the organization process, and the implementation of the program,…

Instructional design for psychology courses is ever changing. Recently, there has been an explosion of scholarly literature related to flipped classroom pedagogy in higher education. This essentially entails inverting a course so that lectures are viewed outside of class, and class time is devoted to active learning through activities such as…

Guided by sociological perspectives that view (young) children as agents who are shaped by and shape the structures of social systems in which they live, we studied forms that agency of young children from historically marginalized groups may take in science class when offered opportunities to engage in science in a variety of ways, how curricular…

This research describes and evaluates the application of a child-led approach to scientific enquiry (the Community of Scientific Enquiry, CoSE) to children aged 8-11 (Key Stage 2) in Northern Ireland. Primary teachers were introduced to CoSE at a workshop and asked to evaluate its implementation with their class. Results from children (n = 364)…

Institutes of higher education are investing in information and communication technologies (ICT) with the hope of revolutionizing higher education. Current approaches of using technologies for teaching and learning, however, fall short in terms of preparing students for the 21st century. We present various factors that shape learning in the 21st…

Intentional learning occurs in formal and informal settings throughout an individual's life time. Intentional learning can be deemed as an ideal learning process where all the necessary elements for achieving a goal of effective learning are in place and in order. Intentional learners take an active role in and responsibility for their own…