Discussion of communities of practice in workplace learning is widespread. Here the authors seek to consider how we can make use of communities of practice theory in practical teaching in a formal undergraduate educational context. The concept of what the authors call the double shift is discussed; a shift from the workplace as community of…

The transfer of knowledge, policy and practice between nations increasingly involves knowledge of the theory and practice of evaluation. This article examines issues arising from the transcultural evaluation of a drug and alcohol misuse knowledge and skills transfer programme for nurses, nurse teachers and medical staff in the narcology service in…

Organizational learning or epistemology has emerged in order to manage the creation of knowledge and innovation within contemporary capitalism. Its insights are being applied also to the public sector. Much of the research in organizational learning has drawn upon the discipline of psychology, particularly constructivist theory. Two approaches in…

Pre-registration nursing and midwifery students are under considerable pressure to acquire the necessary information technology (IT) skills by the time they embark on a professional nursing career. There is a multitude of research findings detailing the use of computer-based learning materials, IT training initiatives and how such materials are…

The paper draws on in-depth qualitative comments from student evaluation of an e-learning module on an MSc in Information Technologies and Management, to develop a picture of their perspective on the experience. Questionnaires that yielded some basic quantitative data and a rich seam of qualitative data were administered. General questions on…

Founded on the premise of a connection between the neglect of the core purposes of undergraduate liberal education, on the one hand, and certain patterns of disengagement exhibited by students, on the other, the Bringing Theory to Practice project provides support for campus programs as well as for research on the connection of certain forms of…

In intervention research, treatment fidelity is defined as the strategies that monitor and enhance the accuracy and consistency of an intervention to ensure it is implemented as planned and that each component is delivered in a comparable manner to all study participants over time. Reviews of the literature in special education and other…

Governmental and accrediting entities are demanding increased accountability and efficiency from colleges and universities. This chapter discusses strategies for developing institutional data sets that create a "culture of evidence." (Contains 5 figures.)

Whereas writing a dissertation can be a fear-inducing experience for a doctoral student, there exists the possibility of not only learning but also self-transformation that can take place through the process. In this article, I reflect on how my choice of a research approach provided me with a transformative research experience. I will describe…

This article explores some of the challenges and benefits of doing a dissertation with participants from a population to which I belong and on a topic some consider controversial, that of gay and lesbian educators. I describe the homophobia I experienced and how that homophobia affected my choice of topic, the research process, and my job…

This article theorizes and exemplifies reconceptualized teaching practices, both in early childhood education (ECE) and in a couple of programs within the new Swedish Teacher Education (since 2001). These programs are tightly knit to the last 12 years of reconceptualized early childhood education practices in and around Stockholm, built on…

This paper first reviews the literature on school-university partnerships to evaluate and describe challenges and paradigms of Japanese approaches to school-university partnerships in theory and practice. Secondly, it clarifies the role of three-year school-university partnership between the Nagoya University and the Tokai City Board of Education…

Professionals in the field of deaf-blindness are challenged to use instructional practices that have been tested using experimental methodology. Single-subject design has been examined as a form of research that assists in substantiating practice. In a review of the literature, the authors identified 54 single-subject studies from 1969 to 2006…

This paper addresses the general significance of the collection. It briefly and broadly traces the relation of the project's theoretical concerns to its purposes and its positioned nature. These concerns and this positioning are connected with tendencies in contemporary thought in social science theory and in research philosophy. The project's…

There is a large body of educational research results available in the science education literature that could be usefully applied for the improvement of teaching practice in biochemistry and molecular biology. Unfortunately, for a great variety of reasons, such applications are relatively limited in our discipline. In this first paper in the…