Curriculum revision is an important part of academic work. Despite theoretical literature on curriculum development and design, there is a scarcity of literature available for either academic staff or novice educational developers on the initiation of this curriculum revision process. This study, therefore, set out to explore the practices of…

Both Nigeria and the United States represent developing and developed countries respectively, and special education policy between these two countries are different. Both countries have contributed to help learners with exceptionalities in their policies. These policies help in the formulation and implementation of special education programmes for…

Regardless of your stage at implementing the design tools and using the improved template for Understanding by Design[R] (UbD), this companion to "The UbD Guide to Creating High-Quality Units" is essential for taking your work to a higher plane. This volume features a set of hands-on modules containing worksheets, models, and self-assessments that…

Teacher education in universities is under pressure. In many new education policies there is a renewed focus on teacher quality, and therefore quality initial teacher education. In some countries this renewed focus has led to a resurgence of "alternative approaches" to teacher education such as Teach for America / Australia. One of the…

Through this document, Lumina Foundation for Education offers a "Degree Qualifications Profile," a tool that can help transform U.S. higher education. A Degree Profile--or qualifications framework--illustrates clearly what students should be expected to know and be able to do once they earn their degrees--at any level. This Degree…

During a six month contract with the Royal University of Bhutan, the author was required to develop the initial stages of a first library qualification to be offered in Bhutan. Questions raised by this project included: is a first qualification in librarianship needed in Bhutan? What are the potential student numbers in such a programme? What…

This experience report details the use of debates in a course on Information Ethics. Formal debates have been used in academia for centuries and create an environment in which students must think critically, communicate well and, above all, synthesize and evaluate the relevant classroom material. They also provide a break from the standard…

This article considers the extent to which the English National Curriculum for science has influenced practice and learning outcomes, and briefly reviews the mechanisms through which this influence is exerted. It identifies and discusses three central issues for the review that is now in progress: the structure of the science curriculum; the…

Some school leaders have viewed programs such as Advanced Placement (AP) as an attractive option to resolve the ongoing achievement gap problem. However, the ongoing debate in the field about maintaining the ostensible purity of the AP program versus diluting it with program expansion has hindered the full utilization of AP classes to close the…

The aim of this article is to describe the model developed for the teaching practice component of the pre-service Distance English Language Teacher Training Program (DELTT) at Anadolu University, Eskisehir, Turkey. The steps taken to improve the model over a six-year period will be explained and the recent developments in the teaching practice…

Despite the growing interest of business executives, there is limited academic research on the contributions of virtual worlds to learning in organizations. We address this limitation by using a recently developed typology of virtual world capabilities to investigate the potential contributions of virtual worlds to learning in organizations.…

The typical conference consists of a series of PowerPoint presentations that tend to render participants passive. Students of learning have long abandoned the transfer model that underlies such one-way communication. We propose an alternative theory of conferences that sees them as a forum for learning, mutual inspiration and human flourishing. We…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how student teaching experiences impact the sense of teaching efficacy and feelings of preparedness of pre-service teachers in a nearly and elementary teacher education program (EC-6). The study used an action research, mixed-methods design. Seventy-one pre-service teachers at a large public university…

The purpose of this study was to examine elementary teachers perspectives on the impact that Lesson study participation had on their knowledge and teaching of mathematics. The study explored teachers perspectives of how Lesson study participation affected their mathematical content knowledge and pedagogical-content knowledge. Lesson study is a…

Two approaches to professional learning communities, the inquiry-oriented and the results-oriented approaches, both have weaknesses. Neither adequately addresses the overall coherence of a school's efforts to improve teaching and learning. A third model, the Common Priorities approach, combines the strengths of the other two approaches and…