Using Seattle Public Schools (SPS) as a model, this Alliance for Excellent Education report shows how high-quality curriculum and innovative school designs that support the use of students' home languages, as well as English, produce better outcomes for English language learners (ELLs). The report also shows how SPS develops educators who value…

At the University of Delaware there has been growth in the use of multimedia technologies to facilitate the process of learning. However, many students entering higher educational institutions today, despite growing up with access to these tools, do not use them in interesting and meaningful ways. When given the opportunity to create multimedia…

This paper examines why communicative language teaching (CLT) fails to improve student learning in certain contexts by assessing two adult educators' communicative and noncommunicative practices through qualitative case studies, interviews, and participant observations. Results show no inherent CLT problems that prevent teachers from grasping…

Educational leaders not only face moral and ethical decisions regarding their classrooms, schools, districts, and education institutions, but they also must consider the complexities and threats that impact their communities. In this unstable era of war, terrorism, natural disasters, accountability, and high stakes testing, this process is…

The number of students needing remediation upon enrollment in post-secondary institutions has risen steadily in recent years. Concurrently, state legislatures and governing boards are putting pressure on higher education institutions to lower budgets. Under these conditions, developmental education programs are often primary budget-tightening…

A well-designed curriculum for online learning nurtures both student learning and student retention. While ideally value will be designed into an online curriculum from the start, the reality is that, across the spectrum of e-learning, there is a wide range of quality. Consequently, virtually every online course can benefit from periodic…

Purpose--The purpose of this paper is to review and highlight some recent examples of embedding education for sustainable development (ESD), within science and related curricula in ways that are meaningful and relevant to staff and students and reflect on different embedding strategies and discourses. Design/methodology/approach--A review of…

In democratic societies the level of citizens' civic engagement and inclusion in all forms of democratic participation is crucial in maintaining social cohesion and a vibrant democracy. In the historical development of Canada's demographic, political, socio-economic and cultural systems, immigration continues to play an influential role. Our paper…

A fundamental part of the orientation and mobility curriculum is the acquisition and retention of skills in using a long cane automatically and proficiently to detect and negotiate obstacles and drop-offs. Using practitioners' experiences and the principles of learning theory, instructors can monitor students' advancement and adapt teaching…

The paper describes the considerations that were taken into account in the development of a tentative English language textbook evaluation checklist. A brief review of the related literature precedes the crucial issues that should be considered in developing checklists. In the light of the previous evaluation checklists the developers created a…

This article describes a course design process to improve the effectiveness of using experiential learning techniques to foster critical thinking skills. The authors examine prior research to identify essential dimensions of experiential learning in relation to higher order thinking. These dimensions provide key insights for the selection of…

Engineering educators are often not familiar with the theories and research findings of educational psychology, adult development, curriculum design, and instruction design. Even the published research in engineering/computing education does not sufficiently leverage this body of knowledge. Often in the educational reports and recommendations by…

Content and emphases in undergraduate biochemistry courses can be readily tailored to accommodate the standards of the department in which they are housed, as well as the backgrounds of the students in the courses. A more challenging issue is how to construct laboratory experiences for a class with both chemistry majors, who usually have little or…

This research study examined whether and how professional development can help teachers design sequences of instruction that lead to improved science learning. The efficacy of three professional development programs and a control condition was compared in a cluster randomized trial involving 53 middle school science teachers from a single school…

This article gives an account of the way an opportunity has been taken to draw together ideas for a curriculum for the common school and beyond, during the writing of a new edition of the "Index for Inclusion; developing learning and participation in schools" (Booth & Ainscow, 2011). I discuss the way thinking about the curriculum…