The poor success rate of policy for curriculum change has been widely noted in the educational change literature. Part of the problem lies in the complexity of schools, as policy-makers have proven unable to micro-manage the multifarious range of factors that impact upon the implementation of policy. This article draws upon empirical data from a…

The introduction of a social software blog space called the Trading Room in an undergraduate finance unit generated a great deal of activity to support student learning. A subsequent evaluation of this innovation, viewed through the lens of Activity Theory, demonstrated that students perceived high value in the opportunity it provided for them to…

As a lens through which to read and understand a subject area and its curriculum content and issues, a sociocultural perspective is a recent and arguably significant change for the Health and Physical Education (HPE) Key Learning Area (KLA) in Australia. Its significance lies, first, in the fact that it seems to represent a notable departure from…

This article reports on an action research project in which two New Zealand classroom teachers worked with a university researcher to investigate the effects of their knowledge, thinking, and beliefs on the ways in which they mediated students' learning in teacher-student interactions. Working in a small community of practice over a two-year…

Technology integration in school curricula promotes student achievement, yet many teachers are not successfully integrating technology for learning. This phenomenological study explored the strategies of 10 elementary teachers in Georgia who overcame barriers to technology integration to successfully incorporate lessons within the public school…

Purpose: The paper sought to investigate TESL teachers' knowledge and understanding of the Malaysian School Based Oral English Assessment (SBOEA) after five years into its implementation in upper secondary ESL classrooms in Malaysian public schools Method: The descriptive study involved a total of 80 TESL trained teachers from the 19 schools…

"Conversation," the social and socialising activity "par excellence," has undergone a profound semiotic and phenomenological transformation in the contemporary age. Broadly speaking, conversation used to be associated with speech and a shared context of situation in many linguistic approaches (e.g., conversation analysis), but…

Although the potential of peer assessment activities in promoting student learning and fostering student cognitive development has been widely studied and well documented across the world, it is unclear how peer assessment may benefit students of diverse achievement levels. This study examined this issue via a mixed methodology approach that…

This article explores how participation in a community of learning supported transformation on a personal and professional level in a Master's programme at a South African university. It draws on the concept of transformational learning in the professional preparation of educational psychologists, and how such learning plays out in the development…

Differentiated instruction, or designing instruction to meet the needs of a variety of learners, has received much attention in continuing and higher education for several years and the middle school philosophy has centered upon differentiation as fundamental to effective teaching. Vast amounts of human and capital resources have been committed to…

This article aims at sharing a vital issue that emerged from the findings of a qualitative research study into collective responses of teachers of English as a foreign language to an extended change process in their Mexican university context from 1989 to 2003. The data generation process employed was comprised of semi-structured interviews as…

This study investigated the language and literacy practices of five graduates of a Spanish-English K-12 dual language immersion program through semistructured interviews to understand the residual impact of thirteen years in a Spanish-English bilingual school program. Drawing from sociocultural theory, the interviews also sought to provide an…

Achieving the Dream is a national initiative focused on helping more community college students succeed, particularly students of color and low-income students. Achieving the Dream's student-centered model of institutional improvement focuses on eliminating gaps and raising student achievement by helping institutions build a culture of evidence…

This study examined how general education teachers perceive the effectiveness of the Response to Intervention (RtI) approach to instruction in identifying students with learning disabilities early. The study also examined how these perceptions impact and influence general education teachers' ability to successfully implement RtI in the classroom.…

This study sought to understand which aspects of current school accountability measures cause high school principals the most concern and what specific actions they were taking to address their concerns. This study took place in Genesee County Michigan. The primary method of data collection was semi-structured interviews. Thirteen traditional high…