While appreciative inquiry (AI) has its origins in organizational development, this article considers the application of AI within a course evaluation in higher education. An AI process was deemed appropriate given its concern for peak performance or life-centric experiences. Former students of a particular course, along with current students,…

Analysis of views from a select group of Kenyan science teachers regarding the effect of student learning experiences on their teaching after implementing a contextualized science unit revealed that the teachers' (a) literal interpretation and adherence to the official curriculum conflicted with the students' desires to understand scientific…

When combining the increasing use of online educational environments, the push to use serious video games and the lack of research on the effectiveness of online learning environments and video games, there is a clear need for further investigation into the use of serious video games in an online format. A mix methods model was used to triangulate…

In July 2010, the faculties of Law, Business and Economics, and Medicine at Monash University, Australia commenced placing law, finance, and social work students in a multidisciplinary clinic at a community legal service operated by the University. Students from the three disciplines began seeing legal service clients at the same time as a team.…

As higher education struggles to prove its ongoing relevance within the broader society in the face of increasing costs and little visible accountability, community engagement has emerged as one strategy to demonstrate that relevance. Such engagement is difficult and often messy, however, and structural differences among universities and the…

The popularity of smart phones has increased enormously in the last few years. Because of the increasing penetration of these devices and the above-average willingness of our students using new tools and devices in language courses, we decided to design a voluntary pilot project for mobile language learning for students who learn German as a…

The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the relationships between working memory (WM) and three commonly used learning strategies or conditions in the nature of proficiency among adult L2 Russian learners. Based on the aptitude-learning condition interaction framework articulated by Robinson (2002b), the study identifies two types of…

This article reports a case study of two Chinese-English bilingual families in Singapore and illustrates the importance of incorporating two hitherto disconnected fields of research--family language policy and family literacy practices--to an understanding of early language and literacy acquisition in the familial milieu. Specifically, this work…

This article describes a unique experiment in reconceptualizing the teaching of ethics as an embodied, performative activity rather than a purely intellectual, scholarly study. Although the inclusion of corporeal dimensions in the teaching of ethics makes intuitive sense, because morality is all about how one acts in the world, ethics education in…

As part of one of the undergraduate Bachelor of Education units offered as a specialisation unit in primary mathematics education at The University of Notre Dame Australia, the pre-service teachers were asked to complete an assignment. In this assignment they were given 12 typical algebra text book problems which they were asked to solve and then…

When students feel comfortable in the learning environment and are being given authority to make their own choices about what they want to create, they can create significant artworks with different personal expressions through the form of narratives. Students feel this freedom especially when they are not in the regular school environment where…

This paper describes a field trip by senior undergraduate anthropology students to a local winery, where they participated in a wine-tasting class with winery staff. In response to explicit hints from a wine-tasting facilitator, and more subtle cues from the cultural capital embedded in their surroundings and the winery staff, the students…

In the last decade, e-portfolios have moved to the forefront of teacher preparation programs across the United States. With its widespread use, faculty and administrators need to understand teacher candidates' perspectives to meet their needs. In the present study, the researchers gathered in-depth information from 244 students who were required…

When we separate the process of learning that is experienced by adults and children from the methods, systems and settings that are used, a clear case can be made for a very distinct, andragogical model. This concept exists separately from the notion that there is undoubtedly a common pedagogy or "art of teaching" that is shared by the…

This paper introduces the concept of "pedagogy in practice" (PiP), referring to the immediate interaction between students' learning experiences and school's pedagogy and distinct from the pedagogy advocated "from above" by the school. We bring the concept of PiP into focus by analysing students' open-ended discourse about…