The ever-changing requirements of working life require individuals to develop their competencies throughout their life cycle. This lifelong learning paradigm requires a renewed vision concerning assessment in which, besides formal learning, informal and non-formal learning experiences are also recognized. To support this lifelong learning…

Purpose: This paper aims to provide a critical analysis of the European Commissions and the member states attempts to introduce a European Qualifications Framework and national frameworks respectively. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is based on a review of policies and substantive desk research in countries that have applied a…

This study explored whether hypermedia annotation presentation in different locations of the text facilitates EFL vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension. It also examined participants' preferences for the location of hypermedia-annotated text (at the end of the text, in the margin, at the bottom of the screen, or in a pop-up window).…

This correlational study examined the relationship between gender and the students' attitude and prior knowledge of using one of the mathematical software programs (MATLAB). Participants were selected from one community college, one state university and one private college. Students were volunteers from three Calculus I classrooms (one class from…

This research investigates the use of cognitive organisers as a self-regulated learning strategy by gifted and talented science students in a Year 9 class at a metropolitan high school in Perth, Western Australia. The case study research design incorporates three primary methods of data collection including participant observation in classrooms,…

Slavery in the pre-Civil War United States is a hard topic to teach, not only because it raises issues of racism and injustice, but also because students assume so much. Often, they think all northerners were abolitionists or "good guys" and southerners were "bad guys" who enslaved African Americans because they viewed them as inferior. England,…

For competences development of learners and professionals, target competences and corresponding competence development opportunities have to be identified. Personal Recommender Systems (PRS) provide personal recommendations for learners aimed at finding and selecting learning activities that best match their needs. This article argues that a…

The North West Early Childhood and Primary Teacher Workforce Development Strategy offers students in the Pilbara and Kimberley the opportunity to enrol in a Western Australian University's fully accredited Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood and Primary) part time and externally--so they can continue to live and work in their communities. The…

This article reports on findings pertaining to education scholarship in higher education drawn from a wider study on all education research in South Africa from 1995 to 2006. After briefly outlining pertinent aspects of the wider study, it offers a preliminary and descriptive account of what were found to be primary research themes in higher…

Study abroad (SA) is one of the flagship offerings among United States higher education institutions. Approximately 220,000 students studied abroad in the 2005/2006 academic year, 52.8% of whom studied on programs that lasted eight weeks or less. The effect of these short-term programs on second language development has been little investigated,…

Talk is the foundation for thought and understanding and the key to literacy learning. Research demonstrates that powerful metacognitive strategies can be taught to help students self-monitor their comprehension when reading print and digital texts. This article provides a repertoire of speaking and listening strategies to develop the…

Buzzwords are as prolific in educational circles as bunny rabbits are in spring. Over the last 10 years everyone has heard the buzz of multiculturism, multiple intelligences, learning modalities, essential questions, cultural literacy, media literacy, differentiated instruction, learning by design, curriculum alignment, curriculum mapping,…

This article addresses the importance of opening space for young people to engage in critical media literacy learning using popular culture texts. Children's background knowledge includes a wide-variety of texts that are often ignored or excluded from school curriculum. The author shows how popular music, for example, can offer powerful…

Taking a philosophical approach based on what Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes said about knowledge, this paper addresses some of the murkiness in the conceptual space surrounding the issue of whether prior knowledge does or does not facilitate text comprehension. Specifically, the paper first develops a non-exhaustive typology of cases in which…

Describes an analytical model which provides explicit criteria to identify possible causal relations that a reader might infer between events in order to arrive at a coherent representation of the text. Applies the model to a story, discusses its psychological validity, and compares it to other models of text representation, comprehension, and…