After years of noticing the challenge our students have with fraction operations, we decided to implement a scaffold approach that focuses on using benchmarks to better develop both students' understanding of a fraction as a quantity and their ability to think about fraction operations meaningfully. While we found this approach supported students…

In Canada, the federally funded Language Instruction for Newcomers to Canada (LINC) program follows a task-based language teaching (TBLT) approach using the Canadian Language Benchmarks (CLB). Aligned with other communicative language approaches, TBLT de-emphasizes systematic instruction of the morpho-syntactic elements of language. Although TBLT…

The recent increase in the number of mathematics museums has given rise to a need for tools with which to design and assess mathematics educational proposals in this non-formal context. This study proposes the use of the van Hiele model, a benchmark in mathematics instruction, for the design of interactive museum models focusing on mathematics…

Empirical growth benchmarks, as introduced by Hill, Bloom, Black, and Lipsey (2008), are a well-known way to contextualize effect sizes in education research. Past work on these benchmarks, both positive and negative, has largely avoided confronting the role of vertical scales, yet technical issues with vertical scales trouble the use of such…

According to NCTM's "Principles and Standards for School Mathematics" (2000), the act of estimating is reflective of students' mathematical intuition and number sense. Students with more developed number sense are better able to judge the reasonableness of their results. To promote estimation, Jennifer Marshall explored incorporating…

Technology and Engineering Education (T&EE) includes "engineering design challenges" to establish a connection to designing and problem-solving indicative of being an Engineer. Engineering design challenges involving bridges (or towers) have been a common feature of the discipline. These bridge design challenges ask students to…

Both those inside and outside of the education community are becoming increasingly familiar with the STEM acronym and the extensive efforts underway nationally to develop integrated PK-12 STEM programs that promote critical thinking, problem solving, 21st Century skill development and authentic learning experiences (Ingram, 2019). However, for…

Through building the environmental monitoring curriculum system for application-oriented talents, the comprehensive design and practice were constructed from the syllabus, textbooks, web-based courses, top-quality courses, test paper bank, open laboratory and scientific research etc. The aims are to promote environmental science professional,…

Indian higher education (HE) system has undergone rapid expansion over the last two decades, emerging as one of the largest HE systems in the world. Expansion is accompanied by the challenge of ensuring comparable quality education across a diverse institutional spectrum. Simultaneously, academic reforms in the sphere of general HE have been…

Benchmarking is one way of ensuring academic depth and rigour in teacher education. After making a case for setting benchmarks in teacher education based on the widely recognised intra-education system contextual factors, the importance of also taking into account the external (e.g. the national-social) context in which teacher education occurs is…

Polymer education relies on generally agreed terminology and nomenclature rules. The Polymer Division of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) generates and recommends such rules for naming processes and materials in polymer science. It is the goal of IUPAC that these recommendations be applied in polymer science curricula…

This paper shares a practice of encouraging critical analysis in science students by comparing mobile applications and peripherals to traditional tools to record physiological variables such as heart rate and blood pressure. A progressive series of case studies is described with learning outcomes mapped to the benchmark statement for Bioscience…

Maria Montessori developed a form of education in the first half of the last century that came to be called by her surname, and research indicates it often has positive outcomes. In the years since its development, tens of thousands of schools worldwide have called their programs "Montessori," yet implementations vary widely, leading to…

Developing and articulating clear goals for student social and emotional learning (SEL) involves a number of important steps. This document focuses specifically on the articulation of learning goals (sometimes called "competencies" or "standards" in state and district policy) and suggests a process for those state teams that…

Most of the world's English language teachers speak English as a second or third language rather than as their first language. For many, their level of proficiency in English may not reach benchmarks established by their employers, raising the issue that is the focus of this article, namely, what kind of proficiency in English is necessary to be…