The dichotomy between content knowledge and 21st-century skills ("zest for life" in the Japanese context) has been an issue since the early 2000s in Japan. Recently it has been evident in the demand for a high school-university connection. In spite of such a division, involving apparently incompatible or opposite principles, Japan can…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to understand how teachers experience a stance toward inquiry through participation in Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). In order to meet this objective, the following questions framed this research: (1) How do individual teachers make meaning of the epistemological and dialogic aspects of…

Purpose: Findings from a multi-year project entitled, Teachers Working Together to develop and implement culturally and linguistically responsive practices (TWT-CLRP) conducted at a large urban 6-12 school that predominantly served Latino emerging bilingual learners will be shared. All teachers shifted practices and adopted an ethos that all…

The stretching modes of ML[subscript "x"] complexes have the same symmetry as the atomic orbitals on M that are used to form its s bonds. In the exercise suggested here, the atomic orbitals are used to derive the form of the stretching modes without the need for formal group theory. The analogy allows students to help understand many…

An increasing number of tools are available to support the learning design process at different levels and from different perspectives. However, this variety can make it difficult for researchers and teachers to assess the tool that is best suited to their objectives and contexts as learning designers. Several of the tools are presented elsewhere…

This paper reports on a study that investigated the process and outcomes of using "Appreciative Inquiry" (AI) in an Australian initial teacher education (ITE) program review. The aim of the study, which drew on a sample of teaching staff involved in this Master of Teaching program, was to gain an understanding of the extent to which the…

The study of electricity and magnetism is fundamental to all first-year physics courses. Developing simple electricity laboratory experiences that are open ended and inquiry based can be difficult. We wished to create a lab experiment where the students have some control over the experimental design, data analysis is required, and students…

As institutions of higher learning are increasingly held accountable for student outcomes, faculty are faced with the challenge to clearly articulate and assess what students should learn in their courses. We report on the assessment of a liberal studies learning outcome related to the nature of science, which involved 178 students from 41…

This manuscript introduces a multidimensional framework for academic literacies to help instructors become more aware of different aspects of literacies and how they might be used to plan and orchestrate meaningful, multifaceted literacy experiences in their classes. More specifically, this broad framework for literacy and learning explicitly…

WebQuests have been a popular alternative for collaborative group work that utilizes internet resources, but studies have questioned how effective they are in challenging students to use higher order thinking processes that involve creative problem solving. This article explains how different levels of inquiry relate to categories of learning…

As they wrote this article attentive to the focus of this volume of "Review of Research in Education" on "extraordinary pedagogies for working within school settings serving nondominant students" (C. Faltis & J. Abedi, 2011, personal communication), the authors held close understandings of ways in which narrative inquiry…

In this article, the authors examine the claims of professionalization in youth work as both a process and outcome that aims to ultimately improve the lives of young people. The topic of professionalization is then approached through three circles of inquiry that reframe the issue(s) through the historical and sociocultural situatedness of…

To address a perennial need to provide K-8 teachers with a solid foundation in science, there are many physics content courses throughout the United States. One such course is Physics and Astronomy for Teachers (PAT), which relies heavily on active-learning strategies. Although PAT is successful in teaching physics content, students sometimes…

Teacher quality largely determines student outcomes and many argue for high quality teacher training and professional development (PD). Much PD has been heavily critiqued and what constitutes effective provision for teachers remains contested. Disenfranchisement of teachers, through neglect of prior expertise and failure to acknowledge teachers'…

This article explores the extent to which and ways in which philosophical ethics can make an educational contribution to teachers' understanding of their practice as a distinct moral domain. Philosophical ethics is argued to facilitate two necessary features of teachers' moral understanding of their practice. First, it promotes awareness of the…