This paper reports on efforts to access four-year-old children's perspectives on their learning experiences. Interviews with children in various contexts were carried out using photographs of recent activities to stimulate discussion and recall. Small group interviews with a researcher or teacher; one-to-one interviews between researcher and…

Thirty features of the learning experience as perceived by a sample of 3,300 students in 11 secondary schools in the United Kingdom were analysed to see how far students positively rated the classroom environment, challenge in lessons, learning styles, teaching approaches, relationships with teachers, and awareness of key skills. These data are…

This study was conducted in a lighthouse school with a long and successful history of restructuring. In this article we describe our (surprising) impressions of shadowing Jake, one of the highest achieving students in the school. We present a researcher's account of Jake's classroom experience over the first four periods of a single day and an…

The programmes offered by both institutions are geared to the application of current technology. All the University of Derby programmes, including the BSc(Hons) degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and the Higher Technical Institute Diploma in Electrical Engineering, are accredited in the UK at Incorporated Engineer level by the…

How does one count the most organic and authentic moments where an adult educator helped facilitate a learner's epiphany? One minute all the letters on the blackboard seemed jumbled and the words were unidentifiable, and then suddenly, with a blink of an eye, all of the letters now make words that have meaning and enter the mind to make deeper…

Science instructors sometimes avoid inquiry-based activities due to limited classroom time. Inquiry takes time, as students choose problems, design experiments, obtain materials, conduct investigations, gather data, communicate results, and discuss their experiments. While there are no quick solutions to time concerns, the 5E learning cycle seeks…

Experiential learning is an educational tool in which students "learn by doing." Briefly stated, "debriefing is the processing of the learning experience from which the learners are to draw the lessons to be learned" (Dennehy, Sims, & Collins, 1998, p. 9). Kolb's (1984) model provides a four-stage framework: concrete experience, reflective…

Brain development is self-organizing in that the unique structure of each brain evolves in unpredictable ways through recursive modifications of synaptic networks. In this article, I review mechanisms of neural change in real time and over development, and I argue that change at each of these time scales embodies principles of self-organizing…

This article reports on research into the student experience of learning through discussions in a third-year undergraduate engineering subject. Information engineering students studying e-commerce were required to engage in face-to-face and online discussions as a key aspect of their learning experience. This study investigates the quality of the…

This article discusses the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (CAS) which celebrated twenty-five years of service, stewardship, and spirit in 2004. CAS is a consortium of thirty-five higher education associations whose directors achieve consensus on the nature and application of standards that guide the work of…

With nearly 27 million school children participating in the National School Lunch Program and in 1999 $5.46 billion spent to fund it, school lunch is clearly a part of the experience of schooling for most children. But, if one accepts the definition of curriculum as the planned experiences that happen in school (Ornstein & Levine, 1989), then…

John Henry Newman, Leo Strauss, and Michael Oakeshott do not share an identical "idea of the university." Strauss and Oakeshott do not, for instance, ascribe to religion the elevated role that Newman had judged crucial for it in education. But, as Timothy Fuller shows in this essay, all three resisted the portents of what afflicts academe today.…

When Annie Stunden came to the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) in 1999 as CIO, she had a vision of providing all students, faculty, and staff their own Web sites where they could store and share documents and files, a place where they could easily and intuitively collaborate with each other. Before joining UW-Madison, Stunden had been…

Nature continually impresses humans in its role as an omnipresent, if not ultimate, source of power. One hallmark of outdoor and adventure education (OAE) has been its presumption that humans' interaction with aspects of Nature's "power" promotes the antecedents of leadership: measurable, persistent psychological effects and behavioral…

Online courses and programs continue to grow in higher education settings. Students are increasingly demanding online access, and universities and colleges are working to meet the demands. Yet many questions remain re: the viability and veracity of online learning, particularly from the learner perspective. The purpose of this study was to gain…