This article highlights the construction of practiced curriculum in vocational courses, stemming from networks of knowledge woven into curricular (re)contextualization and supported by the diversity of everyday knowledge of young students. The experience of this curriculum has allowed the recognition and (re)construction of counterhegemonic…

Physical education scholars have identified a number of factors that affect how teachers translate policy into practice. It is becoming clear that to create learning experiences that reflect the intention of guiding documents, teachers need to employ appropriate teaching styles. The aim of this paper was to determine whether the teaching styles…

The purpose of this descriptive study was to compare the self-efficacy in autonomous learning levels of full professors with normative statistics associated with the U.S. nontraditional adult population. As self-efficacy in autonomous learning--subsumed under the general field of self-directed learning--has been studied and posited as being an…

Background: Autonomy support in people with intellectual disability (ID) is an important yet understudied topic. Psychometrically sound instruments are lacking. This study tested the factor structure and reliability of an instrument for assessing the extent people with intellectual disability perceive their support staff as autonomy supportive.…

In the biomedical and behavioral sciences, it is widely recognized that researchers conducting studies involving human participants must respect the autonomy of research subjects. There is significant debate in the clinical research ethics and bioethics literatures about what it means for an individual to be autonomous. According to proponents of…

The author advocates for a new paradigm in education that builds on individual student's strengths and passions to bring value to our rapidly changing world of work and life.

It's all too easy for teachers to focus on building students' knowledge and skills without paying attention to the mental habits that students need to be effective learners. Guy Claxton discusses the need for teachers to design their instruction in a way that promotes resilience, curiosity, independence, and a positive disposition toward learning.

Children's autonomy is a cultural ideal in Finnish early childhood education and care (ECEC). In this article we examine autonomy in spatial terms. The theoretical background is developed by applying spatial sociology. Our starting point is that space is relationally produced, thus, we understand space as continuously negotiated, reconstructed and…

Kevin Gary, President of the Ohio Valley Philosophy of Education Society, argues that the standard conception of a liberal education espoused by sociologist Max Weber and the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) is built on the illusions of personal autonomy, critical thought, and liberal neutrality. Gary turns to the wisdom…

This article explores the ways Ngaanyatjarra students in Australia respond to Montessori pedagogy in a remote Aboriginal early childhood context. The article initially presents key literature pertaining to early childhood education, Aboriginal education, and Montessori education in Australia. The qualitative methodology underpinning the research…

Often, educational and psychological theories stand independently of one another, focusing on particular, discreet components of learning or motivation. However, there are many similarities between invitational educational theory, which examines motivation and education, and self-determination theory, a theory of motivation and personality. Both…

In this paper, we examine the relationship between basic psychological needs and student engagement in a population of Italian secondary school students. To measure the psychological needs, we have selected a set of indicators that, beyond the needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness, also include the need for justice, which is crucial in…

Identity and meaning are fundamental to human experience and are particularly pertinent during adolescence and times of adversity. While identity development and meaning making can be different for vulnerable young people, who experience multiple adverse life events, there is currently little evidence of how these young people construct identity…

While there is a rich array of community-based learning activities and approaches across the Portland State University campus, the authors assert that integrating a critical service learning (CSL), rather than traditional service learning (TSL), model in the first-year curriculum benefits both students and community partners. They advocate for…

High self-efficacy beliefs and effective self-regulatory strategies are increasingly important in academic settings, and especially in developing academic writing skills. This article deals with how students develop academic writing skills in two different pedagogical settings (as autonomous learners and in a traditional learning environment), and…