The release of the "Australian curriculum: Mathematics" has generated considerable debate in the education community. Some educators warn that this debate has centred on mathematical content and skills, setting the conditions for a "back to basics" movement in line with the political rhetoric that accompanied the national…

This case study analyzes five science courses of a United States virtual charter school. Online quizzes and exams are provided by the corporate partner, while local teachers have selected report topics, virtual labs and at-home labs for students to complete. These assessments were coded for their correlation to the cognitive levels of the revised…

Since 2002, the Center on Education Policy (CEP) at The George Washington University, a national advocate for public education and improving public schools, has been studying state high school exit examinations--tests students must pass to receive a high school diploma. This year marks the 11th year CEP has reported on exit exams in order to help…

In this article we discuss some challenges confronting teachers in higher education when responding to the needs of international students. It is argued that curriculum design within mainstream courses is a key tool to embed language and learning skills in course content, and so foreground those elements that can promote students' familiarisation…

This article describes how a survey designed to assess attitudes and dispositions about mathematics informed curricular decision making in a fourth-grade setting. (Contains 7 figures.)

While the science community continues to ask how its responsibility to society needs to be expressed in the modern world, higher education grapples with issues of its own, including issues embroiled in the perennial tug-of-war between principle and economic pragmatism. In this paper, the authors give an account of the origins and development of a…

Using the method of qualitative metasynthesis, this study analyzes 49 qualitative studies to interrogate how high-stakes testing affects curriculum, defined here as embodying content, knowledge form, and pedagogy. The findings from this study complicate the understanding of the relationship between high-stakes testing and classroom practice by…

This article examines the process of learning to teach an educational foundations course and explores the complexities of designing and teaching an educational foundations course based on the current educational foundations scholarship. The author details his graduate school experiences related to the pedagogy of educational foundations, connects…

The teaching of literature is inextricably connected with face-to-face initiation into the enjoyment of and critical thinking about literary texts. In this respect, the increasingly growing sector of Open and Distance Learning in higher education poses a significant challenge for literary studies, no less so as it addresses an emergent student…

A major challenge for Information Technology (IT) programs is that the rapid pace of evolution of computing technology leads to frequent redesign of IT courses. The problem is exacerbated by several factors. Firstly, the changing technology is the subject matter of the discipline and is also frequently used to support instruction; secondly, this…

This document presents writing samples that have been annotated to illustrate the criteria required to meet the Common Core State Standards for particular types of writing--argument, informative/explanatory text, and narrative--in a given grade. Each of the samples exhibits at least the level of quality required to meet the Writing standards for…

In this information age, career and technical education (CTE) has become a multibillion dollar training enterprise. To make the students more competitive in the labor force and to make the nation economically strong and firms internationally competitive, everyone has to depend on CTE to train today's workers of various kinds. This book brings…

Previous studies conducted on dropouts within online courses have found inconsistent factors affecting attrition. A literature review was performed, focusing on eight main studies. These studies were performed at both national and international universities. The methodology, participants, research question, and results varied by study. Overall,…

Education "is" changing, as is knowledge more generally, to a significant degree energised by what has been described as the digital revolution. This has been widely discussed with references to notions such as globalisation, the New Media Age, open access, and the Network Society. Something definitely to be considered is what this could…

To determine if and how using immersive virtual platforms might further educational purposes, the report examines three graduate, teacher-education, online courses that were conducted in part in Second Life (SL). By studying students' SL-related debriefings and assignments, by considering the type, format, and scheduling of SL events, and by…