This article examines recent UK policy initiatives to enhance teaching and learning in higher education in the UK, and the quality of the student experience there. The Higher Education Academy has recently begun to work in this area and the Higher Education Bill (2004) has passed into law. A reflective review of previous initiatives is therefore…

The metaphor of scaling up is the wrong one to use for describing and prescribing educational change. Many of the strategies being employed to achieve scaling up are counter-productive: they conceive of practitioners as delivery agents or consumers, rather than as co-constructors of change. An approach to educational innovation based on the…

We have recently demonstrated that pre-training of additivity (the outcome of two causal cues is larger than one causal cue) greatly enhances blocking. This manipulation could work by removing a ceiling effect on the outcome, as proposed by Cheng (1997). Alternatively, it could remove the logical ambiguity associated with blocking under…

In this article, the author reviews the state of the art in schoolage language learning disabilities. Some of the key connections among language, learning, and reading disabilities are outlined. The challenges facing speech and language professionals and other specialists who work within and outside of postmillennium classrooms are presented, and…

Numerous commentators argue that the worldwide use of English in education is an important outcome of colonialism. While accepting that there is much truth in this general conclusion, the present authors also recognize an irony. In too few cases do commentators base their arguments on historical evidence; in too many, they treat colonialism as an…

This paper presents comments on F. M. Moghaddam's article, (see record 2005-01817-002) which uses the metaphor of a narrowing staircase "to provide a more in-depth understanding of terrorism", describes the journey as being provoked by how people perceive of levels of fairness and experience feelings of relative deprivation. If the masses perceive…

The emergence of new research practices is the general theme in this text. The case is ethnography as an approach in Swedish educational research. Ethnography is now an established approach in educational research in Sweden. What was the process behind this position? The article will follow a trajectory that starts in the 1960s and discuss how…

The psychiatrist renders a diagnosis, comes up with a formulation, and then simultaneously uses both frameworks to treat patients. In clinical situations, however, there are times when one is in ascendancy while the other lies temporarily dormant. This article deals with the doctor's particular emphasis. It presents 13 cases in which treating the…

A new conceptual metaphor is proposed to enrich the description of chemistry education and support the many existing efforts to help students make connections with the chemistry found in textbooks. A widely used metaphor for chemistry education takes the shape of a planar triangle that highlights three thinking levels in learning chemistry such as…

"Educational Theories, Cultures and Learning" focuses on how education is understood in different cultures, the theories and related assumptions we make about learners and students and how we think about them, and how we can understand the principle actors in education--learners and teachers. Within this volume, internationally renowned…

This paper highlights a distinctive way to research and present issues within education using metaphor and the qualitative narrative methodology known as auto ethnography. Auto ethnographic writing links the personal to the cultural and is recognised as a methodology that combines the method with the writing of the text, which in turn explicates…

Charter schools are a growing and evolving component of the public education sector. These schools may be exempt from state or local regulations, but they are part of the public system and subject to federal laws and many regulations. Research has documented policy tensions and basic challenges associated with developing special education programs…

The research reported in this paper addressed the nature of transitions between language genres in school physics. In this qualitative study, quasi-ethnographic methods were employed to understand the culture of one secondary school physics classroom in the USA. One teacher and his physics students were the participants. The teacher was…

This article examines the role elementary school children's spontaneous metaphors play in learning science. The data consists of tape recordings of about 25 h from five different schools. The material is analysed using a practical epistemology analysis and by using Dewey's ideas on the continuity and transformation of experience. The results show…

The function of suppression of context-inappropriate meanings during lexical ambiguity resolution was examined in 25 adults with prefrontal cortex damage (PFCD) localized to the left (N = 8), right (N = 6), or bilaterally (N = 11); and 21 matched Controls. Results revealed unexpected inverse patterns of suppression between PFCD and Control groups,…