There has been much recent interest in the extent to which the teaching in higher education delivered by non-academic staff has increased in the recent past. Within the Biosciences there has always been a tradition of engaging postgraduate students to support the delivery of some forms of teaching. In this paper we report on the findings of a…

Assessment has long been beset by a dichotomy between what Lynch (2003: 4) termed the positivist and interpretivist orientations. The former views assessment as a technical exercise involving the quantification of learners' knowledge or cognitive abilities; the latter considers assessment as the humanistic endeavor of portraying learners'…

Alison Cook-Sather begins this review essay with a discussion of David Tyack and Larry Cuban's generative phrase "the grammar of schooling" to provide context for her examination of three texts that address the challenges of school reform: John Sylvester Lofty's "Quiet Wisdom: Teachers in the United States and England Talk About…

This working paper describes a series of recent "student voice" projects undertaken by the New Zealand Council for Educational Research (NZCER). Although these projects varied in terms of their specific contexts and processes, each sought to elicit young people's perspectives (about learning, education and/or other aspects of their…

Involving undergraduates in the design, delivery, and evaluation of classroom-based learning enhances student ownership of the learning environment and stimulates peer interest in the transformative possibilities of education. As bell hooks (1994) eloquently describes, the process of honoring student voices in the classroom enhances "the…

The authors, in a nonexperimental randomized study, used national data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) to examine present instructional practices for Grade 5 mathematics classrooms and its impact on achievement for White non-Hispanic non-English language learners (ELLs), Hispanic non-ELLs, and Hispanic…

The concept of experiential learning, in one form or another, has been around a long time, some would say going back to Confucius. More recently, however, within the United States it was put into practice in a very aggressive form, cooperative education, created by Herman Schneider and initiated at the University of Cincinnati (UC) in 1906.…

Developmental mathematics (DSPM) is no longer a roadblock to student success at Jackson State Community College. Previously, all students, regardless of their goals, had to pass or test out of the same DSPM courses before enrolling in the college courses and programs they desired. In Spring 2007, Jackson State began a process of redesigning its…

Coyote teaching emphasizes learning community, long term mentoring, a need for learning, ownership of learning, heightened sensory awareness, storytelling, purposefully designed tricks, and the Socratic method to promote lifelong learning and a new generation of coyote teachers. Many of these methods are found in other educational philosophies but…

The continued downward spiral of enrollment in physical sciences in the USA and Europe has science educators concerned on both sides of the Atlantic. Physics has been particularly hard-hit, with the percentage of students choosing to major in the subject at the lowest level in decades. University physics has a reputation as a difficult, abstract…

This article describes a study that attempted to evaluate the integration of wikis as an educational tool in successfully achieving the learning objectives of a fifth-grade linguistics and literature course. A mixed-method approach was employed--data were collected via questionnaires, reflective journals, observations, and interviews. The results…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive list of student-led, campus-based climate change initiatives, and offers details on many specific cases. The paper also documents the roles students have played and considers the larger youth engagement implications. Many of these initiatives can be replicated elsewhere, thereby…

International partnerships have become an increasingly important trend in African higher education. The creation of partnerships with African universities has been on the rise in the last few years. Different factors (U.S., European, and African initiatives) suggest this trend will continue to increase. This study draws from a survey of a random…

Student affairs scholars have yet to explore neocolonialism. Scholars within the field rely on the foundational documents of the profession to guide policy and practice, without interrogating the widespread history of the colonial project. However, neocolonialism involves forces of domination and control through social, political, economic, and…

The purpose of this paper is to provide an operational definition of college readiness that differs in scope from current representations of this concept. This paper suggests that, although much has been learned about this phenomenon, particularly during the past 20 years, few systematic attempts have been made to integrate the various aspects or…