For more than a decade, the world history course taught in the public high schools of Texas has provided the only comprehensive overview of the story of humanity to millions of students, most of whom are of Mexican descent. The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills curriculum standard for world history has been foundational for textbook selection,…

Hunt and McDonnell have provided an excellent overview of one of the most important aspects of planning for students with severe disabilities--an ecological curricular framework that is created with input from the student, family, and needs of current and future environments. The standards-based reform-movement has created tension for educators to…

A collaborative of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and education faculty developed a STEM certificate aimed at elementary education majors. A four-phase process model was used to create and evaluate courses. The certificate is comprised of three interdisciplinary, team-taught, lab-based courses: Environmental Biology,…

This paper describes the development and assessment of a learning environment to support the transition of students from lower to upper secondary chemistry education in Germany. The learning environment centers on reviewing and expanding learners' prior chemistry knowledge in heterogeneous learning groups upon entering upper secondary education.…

There is an abundance of research in support of interdisciplinary approaches to teaching Environmental Education (EE). Research has also supported the use of a holistic and systemic approach to the teaching and learning of environmental content. Curriculum planning in South Africa has followed a cross curricular approach to teaching Environmental…

This paper addresses the ideal of "citizenship" in the US and how particular meanings of history, culture, and language are encoded in government policy and practice. The US government (Citizenship and Immigration Services) presents citizenship as a commitment to shared knowledge and values, and it requires applicants to possess…

The draft Australian Health and Physical Education (HPE) curriculum (Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority [ACARA], 2012c) takes a strengths-based approach that emphasizes questions such as "What keeps me healthy and active?" rather than "What risks, diseases and behaviours should I learn to avoid?". This…

Many of the actions of Colombia's National Programme for the Development of Foreign Languages (Programa Nacional de Desarrollo de Lenguas Extranjeras--PNDLE) have been carried out in elementary and secondary education, but there is not much information about its impact in institutions of higher education. The aim of this article is to present the…

This study examined demotivational factors among Iranian and Japanese college teachers of English. To achieve the purpose, the study used a 35-item questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The results were compared with the similar study in Japan by Sugino (2010). The findings of the study revealed that Iranian and Japanese lecturers are much…

Content analysis has been used to conduct curriculum mapping to map the course objectives, course content, and the assessment tasks of 14 compulsory courses, onto the five Subject Learning Objective (SLO) factors of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction (DC&I) in a teacher education institution in Hong Kong. The results show that the…

Background: Learning to read is very challenging for Hong Kong children who learn English as a second language (ESL), as they must acquire two very different writing systems, beginning at the age of three. Few studies have examined the role of phonological awareness at the subsyllabic levels, oral language proficiency, and L1 tone awareness in L2…

Bilingual education in Poland gained in popularity after the political changes in 1989 when Polish society started noticing the importance of foreign language learning. With the emergence of content and language integrated learning (CLIL) in the 1990s, which in the Polish context is still termed as "bilingual education", foreign…

The readiness and expectations questionnaire (REQ) assesses first-year students' expectations and preparedness for their first year in university. This measurement instrument is useful for educational policy and curriculum development; it can also be used to predict the outcomes of the first year of college. This instrument was initially developed…

Forty per cent of new teachers in Australia leave the profession in the first five years (Ingersoll, 2012; Watt & Richardson, 2011; Hartsuyker, 2007). Stress, induction failure and professional isolation have been identified as key attrition factors. Mentoring has been used both internationally and in Australia to enhance induction and…

This article outlines the implementation of a journal club for master's and doctoral social work students interested in mental health practice. It defines educational journal clubs and discusses the history of journal clubs in medical education and the applicability of the model to social work education. The feasibility of implementing…