Initial teacher education programmes, in order to comply with the requirements for teacher registration, are usually expected to introduce student teachers to the mandated curriculum. Often this is done uncritically, so students tend to accept rather than examine the underlying epistemological model which partitions knowledge into distinct…

This reaction to the papers in this PME Special Issue of "Educational Studies in Mathematics" draws a wider perspective on the issues addressed and some of the constructs used in research in Realistic Mathematics Education (RME). In particular, it tries to show that while the problems addressed existed within the world-wide arena of…

This article provides new information about how compacting can be effective with first grade high ability students in a rural Alabama school district. Curriculum compacting was designed to eliminate already-mastered content and to provide students with enrichment activities in the time saved. The study, which replicated some aspects of the…

Both the special education and gifted education literature call for a differentiated curriculum to cater for the wide range of student differences in any classroom. Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences was integrated with the revised Bloom's taxonomy to provide a planning tool for curriculum differentiation. Teachers' progress in using the…

Using his thirty years of international experience with future-focused Outcomes-Based Education designs and models as a foundation, Dr. Spady describes a five-step process for translating the familiar twelve SAQA "Critical Outcomes" into a compelling life-performance framework of "exit outcomes" that directly empowers learners and genuinely…

The career academy experience challenges the assumptions of traditional high school about the role of schooling for students' career and college transitions and stresses contextual and integrated teaching. This alternative educational approach encourages teachers to focus more collectively on preparing students through their curriculum,…

Most current substance abuse counselor certification education curricula do not include a systematic introduction to alcohol and substance abuse research. I believe that such an introduction would enhance counselor cooperation in research to practice efforts that are currently underway. In this paper I give a brief history of alcoholism and…

A school's curriculum can appear unrelated, fragmented, or somewhat disjointed if not done with an end in mind. This fragmentation or disjointedness often affects students and their views of the experiences being given them in school. Various curriculum-integration techniques, however, can be used to help make the big picture more understandable…

The Philippines is one of the signatories to the historic Agenda 21 and was the first country to establish a National Council for Sustainable Development. Ten years after Rio, global society is again confronted with the question of whether sustainable development as a concept, philosophy and practice has improved the lives of peoples in different…

In this article, the author describes a key challenge facing liberal arts presidents: to accommodate a reciprocal relationship between thinking and doing. Achieving a continuum between thought and action has never been easy--on the academic side is the fear of diluting intellectual rigor matched on the practical side by the fear of paralysis.…

Elementary education in China is mainly subject-based and courses are offered by discipline. Because of this, it is impossible to offer a special course in environmental education in elementary schools. This article explains that the best approach to teach environmental education to elementary schools is to integrate environmental education by…

The graduate of the Steamfitter-Pipefitter apprenticeship program is a certified journeyperson who will be able to: (1) install and maintain high pressure and low-pressure steam and hot liquid systems, including various process and industrial systems; (2) fabricate, join and install any pipe system used for various purposes in buildings, using any…

Purpose: This paper draws on research which began in 2006 with students in a graduate course on rural education. Its purpose was to find out what graduate students saw as current issues of rural education, how that compared to the literature, and what they thought supporting agencies such as government and universities needed to be doing to…

Over the past 10 years, there has been a technical revolution in the life sciences leading to the emergence of a new discipline called bioinformatics. In response, bioinformatics-related topics have been incorporated into various undergraduate courses along with the development of new courses solely focused on bioinformatics. This report describes…

This paper outlines a model for online course design aimed at the mainstream majority of university academics rather than at the early adopters of technology. It has been developed from work at Coventry Business School where tutors have been called upon to design online modules for the first time. Like many good tools, the model's key strength is…