It is becoming increasingly important for teachers to collaborate. Teacher community is found to be a fruitful notion when thinking about improving collaboration. Teachers can be prepared for working in such communities during teacher education. We examined how the practice of collaboration within different types of groups in teacher education can…

This article focuses on educational enterprises outside the formal sector, such as museums, botanical gardens and interactive science centres. International research is drawn on to illuminate how design, culture, educational strategies and settings combine to affect the way in which young people respond to experiences on offer, leading to analysis…

This study assessed the perceptions of 146 gifted and 115 non-gifted high school biology students and investigated associations between student perceptions and cognitive achievement. The What Is Happening In this Class? (WIHIC) was used to assess perceptions of actual and preferred learning environments. Data indicated that all students preferred…

This article develops a theoretical framework for studying how instructional space, teaching and learning are related in practice. It is argued that a school's physical design can contribute to the quality of the learning environment, but several non-architectural factors also determine how well a given facility serves as a setting for teaching…

This study used data from the Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning project, which involved data on the academic performance of more than 90,000 New Zealand students in six subjects (i.e. reading, writing and mathematics in two languages). Two sub-samples of this dataset were included for detailed re-analysis to test the general applicability…

This research is distinctive in that a mixed-methods approach, employing both cogenerative dialogues and student responses from the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES), was used to help to understand 9th grade urban students' experiences in their biochemistry class in New York City. Factor analyses of student responses demonstrated…

This article discusses the effect of clustering on statistical tests conducted with school environment data. Because most school environment studies involve the collection of data from teachers nested within schools, the hierarchical nature to these data cannot be ignored. In particular, this article considers the influence of intraschool…

Classroom communication often involves interactions between students and teachers from dissimilar cultures, which influence classroom learning because of their dissimilar communication styles influenced by their cultures. It is therefore important to study the influence of culture on classroom communication that influences the classroom verbal and…

Learning environment studies acknowledge that learning takes place within the social realm and that social conditions contribute to the quality of both learning and experience. This can be said to be especially true for environmental learning programs. To access information about students' perceptions of their learning environment, a robust…

School-university partnerships (SUPs) are considered a way of improving teacher education. For the successful implementation of such partnerships, cooperation between the different stakeholders is of crucial importance. Therefore, most partnerships are organised in short- and long-term teams, which are usually composed of teachers, student…

The purpose of this article is to analyse reasons underlying the neglect of social climate in education. It discusses the relevance of the concept of social climate in learning environments, presents evidence for its effects and importance in special-needs and inclusive education, presents differences existing between settings and discusses the…

This article describes the development and validation of the Inventory of Teaching and Learning (ITAL) as a new measure of teacher perceptions of science and mathematics learning environments. The ITAL was initially developed and administered in 2004 and has subsequently been revised annually. The ITAL is administered using a confidential…

The present study monitored a student-centred educational anti-smoking intervention with fifth graders by focusing on their cognitive achievement and intrinsic motivation. In order to assess the potential influence of the setting on self-directed learning, the intervention was conducted in two different learning environments: a classroom-based…

An inquiry-oriented laboratory in chemistry was integrated into the chemistry curriculum in Jewish high schools in Israel, and after a short period was also implemented in Arab sector. In this study, we investigated the effect of culture on the perceptions of laboratory classroom learning environments by comparing the perceptions of Arab and…

This study reports the first development in Australia of primary science teacher typologies of teacher-student interpersonal behaviour, which was measured by students' perceptions using the Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI). Earlier work with the QTI in The Netherlands has revealed eight different interpersonal styles, which were later…