It is very common for people in politics and the media to make assumptions about what happens in history classrooms. Too often these preconceptions are based on little more than anecdote, examples from the Internet or memories of what someone experienced at school themselves. In this article, Catriona Pennell reports on an empirical study that set…

Deinstitutionalisation has influenced the life situation for people with intellectual disabilities, whilst the experiences of health promotion in group homes now are limited. This study aimed to explore aspects important to consider when promoting health amongst persons with intellectual disabilities in group homes, from the perspective of…

The central concept behind Open Educational Resources (OER) is opening up the access to educational resources for stakeholders who are not the usual target user group. This concept must be perceived as innovative because it describes a general economic and social paradigm shift: Education, which formerly was limited to a specific group of…

This paper examines the impact of the minerals boom to date on the demand for higher education in Central Queensland, and the sustainability of higher education providers in high economic growth environments. Several datasets were used to examine changes in the demand for higher education among specific student groups within the region, the…

Over 25 years ago, the "wicked problems" concept was introduced into forestry to describe the increasingly complex work situations faced by many natural resource management (NRM) professionals and at the same time the demand and frequency of public involvement in NRM issues also grew. Research on the impact of these changes for NRM…

Debates continue about how high-stakes testing regimes influence schools at all levels: their impact on teaching practices, distribution of resources and curriculum provision, and whether they achieve the intended increases in student achievement in targeted areas. In 2008, the Australian government Introduced a national testing scheme, the"…

The Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS) believes that the most effective way to advance the actuarial profession is to work in partnership with universities. The CAS stands ready to assist universities in creating or enhancing courses and curricula associated with property/casualty actuarial science. CAS resources for university actuarial science…

The paper addresses workplace learning; vocational pedagogy, education and knowledge; and the transformation of practice. It draws upon discussions of vocationalism, vocational pedagogies as well as the constitution of vocational knowledge(s), debates which are set within particular historical and socioeconomic as well as national contexts. It…

A framework to assess the impact of complying with college accreditation mandates is developed based on North's (1996) concepts of transaction costs, property rights, and institutions; Clayton's (1999) Systems Alignment Model; and the educational production function described by Hanushek (2007). The framework demonstrates how sought…

The authors suggest using a balanced scorecard (BSC) approach to evaluate information technology (IT) resources in higher education institutions. The BSC approach illustrated is based on the performance criteria of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in Education. This article suggests areas of potential impact of IT on BSC measures in…

Matthew Lighthart and Creedence Spreder, librarians, describe a partnership that proved successful for the school and library in their community of Pungo, nestled in Virginia Beach's vast but sparsely populated agricultural center. This community was facing a dual challenge: their only elementary school (Creeds) was in dire need of renovation and…

Guiding documents under the "PEC" acronym are commonly used in environmental education centres (EECs) in Spain. They are written documents that are seen as necessary tools to safeguard quality. In this study, we analyse the guiding documents of twenty-three EECs in the province of Girona (Catalonia, Spain) in order to understand their…

Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body, so memes (ideas, behaviours, and actions) transmit cultural ideas or practices from one mind to another through writing, speech, or other imitable phenomena. This paper considers the memes that influence the evolution of open and distance education. If the…

Academic literature suggests that today's college students are not as information literate as educators might expect, despite their generation being frequently described as "digital natives" or "Millennials" (Becker, 2009). A faculty survey at Pima Community College in Tucson, AZ, revealed that students' actual…

Education policy in England has explicitly aimed to remodel state schools in the image of independent, private, schools. However, the body of research evidence on the operation of private schools is very small. Critics have frequently argued that, in contrast to state schools, private schools use resources efficiently because their autonomy gives…