While the International Baccalaureate's Middle Years Programme (MYP) is growing in popularity in Australia and across the globe, few studies have examined the benefits and challenges of this IB programme for supporting student learning. Using a qualitative case study design of three Australian schools that formerly offered the MYP, we investigated…

This paper discusses the use and impact of formative feedback and scaffolding to develop outcomes for complex problem solving in a required first-year course in engineering design and practice at a medium-sized research-intensive Canadian university. In 2010, the course began to use team-based, complex, open-ended contextualised problems to…

Examinations play a central role in the educational system due to the fact that information generated from examinations is used for a variety of purposes. Critical decisions such as selection, placement and determining the instructional effectives of a programme of study all depend on data generated from examinations. Numerous research studies…

Examinations play a central role in the educational system due to the fact that information generated from examinations is used for a variety of purposes. Critical decisions such as selection, placement and determining the instructional effectives of a programme of study all depend on data generated from examinations. Numerous research studies…

Background: This study investigates how the criterion-referenced (CR) approach has impacted relationships between goals, classroom practices, and student achievement in English education in Japan from 1994 to the present, a period covering three government-mandated administrations of a national curriculum (Course of Study). No study has…

This study was conducted at a large technical university in Russia, which offers English language courses to students majoring in nine different degree programs. Each degree program develops and delivers its own English language curriculum. While all degree programs followed the same curriculum development model to design language courses, each…

Report writing is an important employability skill for Engineers and Technologists, and this case study describes how a Technology degree module took a novel approach to developing students' report writing skills. Students learned how to use a criterion-referenced critical evaluation framework for reports and other technological documents. They…

Inquiry-based instruction is common to nearly every model of gifted education. Six teachers of 14 secondary classes were briefly interviewed about their teaching and learning methods, use of inquiry-based strategies, classroom descriptions, a typical day, student expectations, and inquiry-instruction outcomes. A criterion-referenced checklist of…

This study investigates, through a cluster randomized trial, the impact of "Math in Focus," a core mathematics program modeled after instructional approaches used in Singapore, on third- through fifth-grade students' achievement in mathematics. The program is currently being used in more than 400 school districts in the United States.…

The present study examined the reliability of an achievement test to measure the efficacy of task-based writing activities to improve Iranian EFL learners' reading comprehension at the intermediate level in a private language institute in Ilam, Iran, namely Alefba language institute. To achieve the goal, the techniques for evaluating reliability…

There is on-going international interest in the relationships between assessment instruments, students' understanding of science concepts and context-based curriculum approaches. This study extends earlier research showing that students can develop connections between contexts and concepts--called "fluid transitions"--when studying…

Research repeatedly reports very little vocabulary uptake by English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in public schools in Saudi Arabia. Factors such as the teaching methodology employed and learner motivation have been suggested to explain this but a further explanation, the vocabulary input these learners receive, remains uninvestigated. An…

This study was aimed at comparing the effectiveness and efficiency of direct instruction and problem solving approaches in teaching social skills to children with mental retardation. The design was adapted alternating treatment design. The subjects of the study consist of a girl and a boy between the ages of 11 and 13 who are mentally retarded. In…

Technology Enhanced Learning and Teaching (TELT) is a ubiquitous feature of the learning and teaching landscape at the University of Tasmania (UTAS), supported and guided by a university-wide TELT action plan. This paper reports on the most recent stage of an ongoing investigation into the use of ePortfolio learning technology to improve students'…

The purpose of this study was to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of two teaching models, the expository presentation of Merrill and Tennyson's model and Gagne's model, in acquisition and maintenance of square and triangle concepts in students with mental retardation. The participants of the study were chosen from students with mental…