Climate literacy is an essential component of a strategy to comprehend and confront the grand challenge of global climate change. However, scientific complexity, societal implications, and political associations make climate change a difficult but important topic to teach. In this paper we report on the results of a survey of undergraduate faculty…

Organizational culture shapes how members of a group act. The culture has the power to exclude potential new members who do not fit into the culture of the organization. Research on urban school-based agriculture programs has indicated that urban agriculture students face barriers to their participation in the National FFA Organization (FFA).…

This study attempts to show how the creation of an innovative scenario, introducing video games and online communities as educational resources in the classroom, facilitates the development of new literacies in the context of participatory culture. The experience described was carried out during the 2010-2011 academic year in a secondary school…

The Research Excellence Framework has led to increased scrutiny on the volume/quality of writing produced by academics within higher education institutions. This paper describes the initiation of a writing support programme for teacher educators in a new university and analyses its impact. A key finding has been that supporting staff to write is…

Google Earth is an accessible, user-friendly GIS that can help landowners in their management planning. I offered hands-on Google Earth workshops to landowners to teach skills, including mapmaking, length and area measurement, and database management. Workshop participants were surveyed at least 6 months following workshop completion, and learning…

This article discusses the academic writing challenges of undergraduate students at Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT), South Africa. It examines challenges such as lack of a mastery of academic writing conventions, analysis of writing topics, using writing to construct social identities; ability to research and apply knowledge across…

This article reports the results of a one-year longitudinal study examining a teaching intervention designed to enhance students' learning of critical thinking in Hong Kong. Seventy participating students (age 16-18) learned how to make reasoned arguments through a series of collaborative activities, including critical-thinking modelling tasks and…

Research Findings: In order to identify the active ingredients in an effective professional development intervention focused on enhancing preschool vocabulary instruction, this study examines the frequency with which teachers and children discussed theme-related vocabulary words during shared book reading. Head Start teachers received 1 year of…

In this era of globalization, students need to know how to write well. Faculty development needs to focus on assisting primary teachers as they prepare students for a twenty-first-century world. Strategic curriculum reform and professional development can be achieved by partnerships between district administrators and professional consultants. Two…

Higher education is increasingly available to a wider range of people, not just recent school-leavers with established academic ability. One way of encouraging this trend is to provide credit transfer into higher education (HE) qualifications for people's prior vocational education and training (VET) studies. However, it is generally recognised…

This article reports the findings of a pilot project undertaken by a professional freelance chamber orchestra in collaboration with conservatoire-based researchers exploring the potential value of professional development activities for musicians and their employers. Key members of the orchestra took part in two improvisation workshops,…

This article analyzes the content and format of the Overseas University Leadership Program organized by the National Academy of Education Administration in Beijing, China. Universities provide the country with scientific and technological expertise, pave the path to individual advancement, and are major economic engines. China's new mission is to…

The leadership institute, targeting new and aspiring county Extension directors, was completely revised to reflect face-to-face and online constructivist learning theory and practice. New co-learning and engagement methods were incorporated, and all facilitators and teachers/presenters were trained and coached to use the new methods and…

In the summer of 2012, thousands of teachers across the United States attended several days of professional development workshops. The workshops, which focused on the Common Core State Standards, were part of a Tennessee Department of Education initiative in teacher leadership. The department recruited and trained 200 highly-effective teachers to…

The purpose of this paper is to present a preliminary, qualitative review of a therapeutic programme for preschool children and their parents in severely under-resourced contexts to aid the development of the underlying skills required to be ready for formal school. A team of two pairs, each comprising an occupational therapist and a community…