Teachers and instructional designers frequently incorporate collaborative learning approaches into their e-learning environments. A key factor of collaborative learning that may affect learner outcomes is whether the collaborative groups are assigned project topics randomly or based on a shared interest in the topic. This is a particularly…

The purpose of this study was to examine evidence of a hypothesized shift in the operative research paradigms in music education during the first quarter century of the publication of the "Journal of Research in Music Education," during the period 1953 to 1978. This shift was from humanities-oriented historical and philosophical studies…

This article focuses on education in Guinea-Bissau in the context of globalisations, examining the concept of globalisation and its relation to education and the curriculum. It focuses on the relatively neglected area of national education policies in Guinea-Bissau, comparing differences and common points of interference/influence of multilateral…

This study concentrates on evaluating the consistency of upper-division students' use of the second law of thermodynamics at macroscopic and microscopic levels. Data were collected by means of a paper and pencil test (N = 48) focusing on the macroscopic and microscopic features of the second law concerned with heat transfer processes. The data…

This paper examines the leadership preparedness of institutional-level practice with focus on basic schools in Ghana. The analysis of documents on teacher training curriculum and, one-on-one and focus group interviews with teachers and school leaders revealed that in all the 38 teacher training institutions in Ghana where teachers are prepared for…

In a changing knowledge society, many workplaces experience a great number of reforms, implying improvement, new ways of working and professional learning. When a reform is introduced, however, does a professional act as an ever-moving machine--a "perpetuum mobile"--always learning with full energy? In this article, I ask the following:…

This paper examines the merit of conducting a qualitative analysis of LibQUAL+® survey comments as a means of leveraging quantitative LibQUAL+ results, and using importance-satisfaction matrices to present and assess qualitative findings. Comments collected from the authors' institution's LibQUAL+ survey were analyzed using a codebook based on…

Analogies have many advantages for students such as concretizing abstract concepts and enabling motivation. Analogies are frequently used in textbooks. Research shows that the analogies in textbooks are not used based on certain directives and sometimes lead to misconceptions for students. Therefore, analysing the analogies in textbooks on several…

Western society places high value on physical beauty and grace of movement, and tends to shun those who do not have these qualities. Disability hate crime highlights the modern form of this violence. This paper uses the high-profile case of Fiona Pilkington to examine how disability hate crime can be dismissed until it results in tragic…

Research consistently shows that well-aligned lesson plans lead to better student learning outcomes. The development of these plans challenges both preservice teachers and the teacher educators who instruct them. This exploratory study examined strategies for teaching lesson plan alignment utilized by 87 teacher educators in the United States.…

This study aims to determine pre-service music teachers' opinions about the significance of the choir lesson. This is a qualitative research. The data were acquired with the participation of 54 pre-service teachers. An open-ended interview questionnaire was used to collect the data. The data were processed using content analysis and classified in…

This paper reports on a study that analysed the ideological framing of "Chinese dialects" or "regional Chinese varieties" in the mainland China's state print media reports of "dialect crisis" and the associated efforts to sustain the use of these "dialects" from 2002 to 2012. The analysis revealed that…

The purpose of the current study was to examine the sample diversity of empirical articles published in four premier teaching of psychology journals from 2008 to 2013. We investigated which demographic information was commonly reported and if samples were ethnically representative and whether gender was representative compared to National…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to introduce methodology and findings of a trend study in the field of e-learning. The overall interest of the study was the analysis of scientific e-learning discourses. What comes next in the field of academic e-learning? Which e-learning trends dominate the discourse at universities? Answering such…

In line with the new trend of using computer-mediated communication (CMC) as an innovative technique in teaching and learning at higher institutions, Facebook as a channel of CMC was employed in carrying out a project work in an Academic Communication Course. For this project, students worked in groups to discuss their work and share information…