A recent trend in developed countries' school curricula has been the transition from disciplinary to generic forms of knowledge, resulting in an emphasis on interdisciplinary organisation and more active forms of learning. Subject specialists are increasingly expected to demonstrate how their subject interconnects and equips pupils with key life…

Internationalisation of Australian higher education was initially characterised as growth in the number of international students. While the economic benefits brought by this student cohort and the challenges associated with teaching them are well noted in the literature, their academic contributions are hardly acknowledged. Using a qualitative…

This paper focuses on the effectiveness of factors in designing and delivering a complex, capstone course in an undergraduate major in finance. The course uses an instructional delivery system that is contrasted to the standard lecture format and has a broader set of objectives than is usually specified for a finance course. An objective of the…

The course design and development process (often referred to here as the "production process") at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU-Worldwide) aims to produce turnkey style courses to be taught by a highly-qualified pool of over 800 instructors. Given the high number of online courses and tremendous number of live sections…

The middle-grades program at a state university recently underwent a program redesign in an effort to ensure that teacher candidates are well prepared to teach in today's contemporary middle schools while maintaining the principles and standards established by the Association of Middle Level Educators. The purpose of this article is to explain the…

One of the challenges that social studies educators face daily is how to make student learning relevant. Digital technologies can play an important role by connecting what happens in the classroom to the world beyond. One way to do this is by turning students into producers of information and having them create content rather than simply consume.…

With the goal of re-engaging students in their art class, a participatory action research project was conducted in which an art teacher, his eighth-graders, and the researcher as mentor-teacher used democratic practices to negotiate the structure and content of their class over a school year. Starting with an agreed upon concept of art,…

While research has shown that elementary (K-5) students are capable of engaging in the scientific practice of explanation construction, commonly-used elementary science curriculum materials may not always afford them opportunities to do so. As a result, elementary teachers must often adapt their science curriculum materials to better support…

Based on survey data covering the full population of students enrolled in Danish engineering education in autumn 2010, we explore the motivational factors behind educational choice, with a particular aim of comparing male and female students reasons for choosing a career in engineering. We find that women are significantly more influenced by…

As knowledge of and familiarity with science becomes an increasingly important aspect of contemporary life and citizenship, efforts have been made to make the science curriculum a “lived” curriculum (Hurd, 2000), one that reaches out to the lives, communities, and experiences of students. In this research around a high school urban ecology…

Anatomy instruction has evolved over the past two decades as many medical schools have undergone various types of curricular reform. To provide empirical evidence about whether or not curricular changes impact the acquisition and retention of anatomy knowledge, this study investigated the effect of variation in gross anatomy course hours,…

The purpose of this comparative study was to identify the technical skills and abilities needed by prospective employees of construction industries in Ghana and Nigeria. Potential employees were defined here as recent graduates of construction industry programs with entry-level technical skills. The continuous growth in and expansion of these two…

In the 1980's and 1990's, results from flurries of standardized exams (particularly in 4th and 8th grade mathematics and science) reached the attention of ever-growing numbers of Americans with an alarming message: our children are not even close to keeping up with those in China, Japan, and Korea. As a step towards improving American classrooms,…

Researchers at AAAS and BSCS have developed a six-week unit that aims to help middle school students learn important chemistry ideas that can be used to explain growth and repair in animals and plants. By integrating core physical and life science ideas and engaging students in the science practices of modeling and constructing explanations, the…

Head Start, the largest federally funded early childhood education program in the United States, provides comprehensive services to low-income children and their families. These services historically have a whole child approach, fostering social-emotional well-being, physical and mental health, and cognitive and language development, as well as…