Most higher education institutions offering programmes in music performance organise master classes for their students. It is commonly agreed that master classes offer valuable learning opportunities for the students performing, but what do they offer for students in the audience? In this article, theories of learning by observation as well as…

This study aimed to investigate whether social network analysis (SNA) is a useful method for identifying different discursive patterns in everyday classroom activities. The material analysed came from 20 teacher-led lessons that were video-recorded in small-size classes in Italian public primary schools. SNA was used to measure classroom relations…

This article, grounded in a Vygotskian sociocultural perspective, details the self-inquiry of a language teacher educator who examined her "emotional dissonance" regarding her mediation of the reflection journals of a teacher learner teaching an ESL class during an internship. Data from the teacher learner's reflection journals and the…

Collaboration is essential in learning ensemble music. It is unclear, however, whether an individual benefits more from collaborative or individual rehearsal in the initial stages of such learning. In nonmusical domains, the effect of collaboration has been mixed, sometimes enhancing and sometimes inhibiting an individual's learning process. In…

This article presents a case study illustrating the potential value of enhanced student participation in higher education (HE) curriculum development, in response to an absence of research in this area. Lecturers and students had divergent views of the effectiveness of a staff-led redesign of a module curriculum. Focus groups were used to…

According to Krashen's affective filter hypothesis, students who are highly motivated have their self-consciousness. When they enter a learning context with a low level of anxiety, they are much more likely to become successful language acquirers than those who do not. Affective factors such as motivation, attitude, and anxiety, have a direct…

This study attempts to design a survey to assess students' perceptions of twenty-first-century learning practices in their classrooms and the resulting knowledge creation self-efficacy among the students. In addition, it also explores the relationships among the various dimensions of twenty-first-century learning practices. Four hundred and…

The study aspires, by giving voice to the experiences and perceptions of adult learners and their educators, as they embark on distance learning courses delivered by the Open University of Cyprus and the Hellenic Open University to unveil the adult learning and "fine-grained" processes at work during the organization and delivery of the…

This paper explores the intersection of reflection, journal writing and creativity. Undergraduate students who participated in a residential field camp were required to keep a creative reflective journal to demonstrate their theoretical and practical understandings of their experience. This study reports on the content analysis of 42 student…

This study was designed to investigate the benefit of inclusion of various verbal elements in 3D talking-head on pronunciation learning among non-native speakers. In particular, the study examines the effects of three different multimedia presentation strategies in 3D talking-head Mobile-Assisted-Language-Learning (MALL) on the learning…

This paper reports the findings of a study investigating Chinese English language learners' perceptions of pragmatics in the EFL learning context in China. A total of 237 Chinese EFL first--year university students participated in the study. A questionnaire and focus group interviews were used to collect data about learners' pragmatics insights…

This study explored Ghanaian primary school teachers' values and challenges of integrating cultural games in teaching mathematics. Using an In-depth conversational interview, ten (10) certificated teachers' voices on the values and challenges of integrating games were examined. Thematic data analysis was applied to the qualitative data from the…

In the context of the hype, promise and perils of Big Data and the currently dominant paradigm of data-driven decision-making, it is important to critically engage with the potential of Big Data for higher education. We do not question the potential of Big Data, but we do raise a number of issues, and present a number of theses to be seriously…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the professional norms surrounding school development, with a special emphasis on school principals' pedagogical leadership. Design/methodology/approach: A norm perspective is used to identify possible links between legal norms, professional norms, and actions. The findings are based on…

Whereas there has been some research on the role of bottom-up and top-down processing in the learning of a second or foreign language, very little attention has been given to bottom-up and top-down instructional approaches to language teaching. The research reported here used a quasi-experimental design to assess the relative effectiveness of two…