Purpose: US community colleges are based on an open-door mission and serve to provide access to students of diverse backgrounds. Online learning is one of the fastest growing segments of community college offerings--serving both local and geographical dispersed students. If the community college system embraces its open-door mission, it must…

The role of assessment in the chemistry classroom is ultimately tied to the nature of the assessments available for use. Because they provide data that can inform decisions about curricular changes, or new pedagogies, the incorporation of new assessment strategies can play an important role in how educational and curriculum reform is carried out.…

There is evidence that science teachers give naive responses to direct questions about the nature of science. However, there is also evidence that such responses underpredict the more sophisticated knowledge that teachers may use in classroom situations. The purpose of this study was to characterize the informal ideas used by teachers in…

New devolutionary powers for education have been enthusiastically seized on by politicians and policy-makers alike to promote a more integrated and holistic form of education in Scotland. This period of curriculum renewal offers the prospect of increased levels of outdoor education; however, to date there is a lack of a clearly agreed rationale…

Two recent reports offer some paradigm-shifting proposals regarding the teaching of world languages in general at the undergraduate level. The Modern Language Association's (MLA's) "Foreign Languages and Higher Education: New Structures for a Changed World" and "Report to the Teagle Foundation on the Undergraduate Major in Language and Literature"…

Despite past lessons, book-banning continues to exist at all levels within our democratic society. This case presents a realistic scenario when the school district, facing a book challenge by a concerned parent, responds by removing the book from the library. On the basis of a true story, the study features a parent of an elementary child…

This article describes the complex nature of collaborative relationships, the difficulties of conducting research with others, and the complications of partnerships in educational research. To create and sustain a communicative space in which participants can collaborate to innovate education and curriculum, time and opportunity to develop trust…

Purpose: Enabling entrepreneurial creativity is a key aim of UK Government; however, there is a dearth of constructively aligned models of teaching and assessment. This paper aims to introduce design-based pedagogies and to highlight cognitive approaches that develop innovative mindsets; it seeks to indicate their propensity for adoption in…

The Council on Social Work Education's Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) stresses the importance of the implicit curriculum in shaping a school's culture. This timely article describes how the implicit BSW curriculum was developed at a large Southern state university using three Web-based projects: (1) a glossary of terms for…

Career and technical educators are constantly being challenged to have their courses meet the changing needs of their students in this fast-paced world people live in. As the name implies, the hybrid online course is a melding of traditional and online learning. In this article, the author describes her experience designing hybrid courses that…

City University of New York's (CUNY) new community college, planned almost entirely by administrators and slated to open in 2012, seems designed to shunt its student body into narrow, mostly terminal career-technical programs with the promise of an associate's degree at the end. But to what purpose? To "reimagine community college education…

New subjects are always emerging but only some gain a place in the formal school curriculum. In fact, most of the now accepted conventional school subjects have, at some stage, struggled to become established. This paper presents findings of a three-year study of teacher and school responses to the introduction of environmental education (EE) as a…

To keep up with rapidly advancing technology, numerous innovations to the electrical and computer engineering (ECE) curriculum, learning methods and pedagogy have been envisioned, tested, and implemented. It is safe to say that no single approach will work for all of the diverse ECE technologies and every type of learner. However, a few key…

This paper examines the processes of implementing curriculum reform in schools. Specifically, it investigates how schools learn lessons from previous experiences of reform and apply them when challenged by new reforms. The context for this study is Hong Kong's New Secondary School Curriculum (NSSC), with particular reference to the subject of…

Practitioners are often faced with the national legislation's influence at the school-based curricular level. In the United States, the federal government No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 mandates reading instruction at the early primary grade levels. The position of "literacy coach" was created to support this curriculum change by…