Muslim communities in principally non-Muslim nation states (e.g. South Africa, United States of America, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands) established a plethora of Muslim theological institutions. They have done so with the purpose of educating and reinforcing their Muslim identity. These educational structures have given rise to numerous…

While often cited as one of the most rewarding professions, teaching is demanding, technically challenging, and more closely scrutinized by the public than ever. Although research has helped the education community better understand how children learn and how to support and develop educators, teachers report more dissatisfaction with their jobs…

Many science education researchers have argued that learners' commitment to a substance (matter-based) ontology impedes the learning of scientific concepts that scientists typically conceptualize as processes or interactions, such as force, electric current, and heat. By this account, students' tendency to classify these entities as…

This study examined the prevalence of psychological myths and misconceptions among psychology students and within the general population. In total, 829 participants completed a 249-item questionnaire designed to measure a broad range of psychological myths. Results revealed that psychological myths and misconceptions are numerous and widely held.…

Related with the teaching profession and the Tool Box of the Language teacher, we dedicate this study to the debate on the issue of--To have or not to have a Learning and Instruction English language Methodology. The paper is a synthesis of the preoccupations of the English language teaching profession with the space created by the disappearance…

When considering a topic as broad as research in environmental education it seems worthwhile, at the onset, to make some basic distinctions: (1) establishing research priorities is not simply an empirical question; and (2) a much more challenging task is to more clearly understand the nature of the questions to which we seek answers. How do we go…

In this article the author speaks to the teaching of Barack Obama in U.S. schools. Drawing from scholarly literature on the heroification of American historical figures in public memory, the author argues that focusing on Obama's firstness as an African American may lead students to have incomplete and misleading understandings of what the…

This article details a study that investigated 55 elementary pre-service teachers' content knowledge about density. Using a mixed-methods approach, pre/post face-to-face interviews and pre/post concepts maps (Cmaps) were used as data to document changes in teacher knowledge which occurred over a 15-week science methods course. Thematic analysis…

Communicating complex concepts to practitioners, policymakers, and other nontechnical readers is a challenge that all policy researchers face. Research in education uses many concepts from methodology and statistics. If researchers want to communicate their findings to an audience of other researchers, they can safely assume that their audience is…

PISA claims that it can extend its reach from its current core subjects of Reading, Science, Maths and problem-solving. Yet given the requirement for high levels of reliability for PISA, especially in the light of its current high stakes character, proposed widening of its subject coverage cannot embrace some important aspects of the social and…

This study investigated pre-service science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge in the physics, chemistry, and biology topics. These topics were the light and sound, the physical and chemical changes, and reproduction, growth, and evolution. Qualitative research design was utilized. Data were collected from 33 pre-service science teachers…

Democratic education and the dignity it affords should create opportunities for students to achieve their most desired outcomes. Some of the current thought and rhetoric in the field of special education and disability studies impinges upon these opportunities by approaching the education of children with autism and other developmental…

This article describes the design of a misconception diagnostic test about fire-related phenomena. It proposes a new test format in which a certainty-measuring tier has been integrated into each of the true/false response choices. This format is argued to be easier for teachers to use than the increasingly popular three-tier format. First, we…

The philosophy of "publish or perish" has already been adopted as a yardstick by the vast majority of Chinese higher education institutions in their attempts to benchmark Western research universities in recent years, which has led to increasing pressure on university teachers to produce research publications. This paper addresses this…

Non-parent college students enrolled in a lifespan developmental psychology course were assessed at two time points (beginning of the semester and shortly after midterm) on knowledge and attitudes that would likely to be useful for the transition to parenthood. Students reported perceived change in knowledge and attitudes, and repeated measures…