Institutional effectiveness (IE) is required for colleges and universities by the six regional accrediting agencies for education in the United States, but the creation of cyclical, systemic, ongoing IE plans has proven to be a challenge for institutions, and especially for community colleges. The literature indicates faculty resist IE work when…

Research on mechanistic thinking in organic chemistry has shown that students attribute little meaning to the electron-pushing (i.e., curved arrow) formalism. At the University of Ottawa, a new curriculum has been developed in which students are taught the electron-pushing formalism prior to instruction on specific reactions--this formalism is…

Assurance of learning (AOL) is a quality enhancement and quality assurance process used in higher education. It involves a process of determining programme learning outcomes and standards, and systematically gathering evidence to measure students' performance on these. The systematic assessment of whole-of-programme outcomes provides a basis for…

There remains a lack of published empirical data on the substantive outcomes of higher learning and the establishment of quality processes for determining them. Studies that do exist are nationally focused with available rankings of institutions reflecting neither the quality of teaching and learning nor the diversity of institutions. This article…

This study was carried out with a group of three teachers who work for the foreign languages department of a private university in Colombia. It was aimed at unveiling and characterizing the narrative knowledge these teachers hold about language teaching and learning processes as well as the role this knowledge plays in the constant construction…

Creativity, which has now entered the discourse in higher education alongside other agenda items such as enterprise, entrepreneurship and innovation, is an elusive and complex notion. It may evade the sort of definition, categorisation and compartmentalisation required to integrate it fully into the curriculum frameworks and assessment regimes…

This eight-chapter book clearly presents a theory of how children learn and, therefore, how teachers and others can help children think about science as well as other topics. Its ideas and techniques may be adopted for preschoolers when objects are conceptually ordered, or for theoretical physicists when findings are conceptually organized. In…

This article is concerned with the connection between religions and education. It explores the case of one particular values education programme, "Living Values: an educational program", and its link with the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University (BKWSU) to show how the programme originated and developed, which individuals and…