An assessment with the Environment Rating Scales (ERS) is designed to give early childhood administrators and teaching staff much more than a set of quality scores. Appropriately used, an ERS assessment can provide a blueprint for planning and carrying out both immediate and long-range program improvements. Unfortunately, programs often complete…

In recent years, as pressures for accountability have increased in higher education, some members of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) community may worry that the inquiry-based, improvement-focused practices they advocate could be put at risk by easy-to-administer, one-size-fits-all forms of assessment, quality assurance, and…

This pilot study resulted in changes to how we support and understand the teacher candidate learning process. Student teachers recorded videos of several teaching segments and later both researchers and student teachers utilized software to identify, tag, and analyze teaching performances. The study was based on the following assertions: teacher…

The American higher education system, arguably the mightiest arrow in America's competitiveness quiver, is facing a perfect storm. Government support is declining, and tuition is rising; international competition for student and faculty talent is intensifying; and a technological revolution in pedagogy is gathering momentum. Academia, government,…

Current reforms in mathematics education place dialogue at the heart of the development of conceptual understanding. Underlying these ideas is strong criticism of transmissive teaching styles, often referred to as "teaching by telling" However, there is little in terms of specific guidance for teachers about how best to achieve these…

The Churchill Trust was established in 1965 to honour the memory of Sir Winston Churchill by awarding overseas research Fellowships known as "Churchill Fellowships". Since its inception, The Churchill Trust has awarded Churchill Fellowships to more than 3,700 Australians who, like Churchill, are innovative, filled with a spirit of…

The dynamic changes in today's world have made countries of the world masters of their own destinies. In this light, it has become noted today that "the affluence or penury of nations depends largely on the quality of higher education". This is informed by the fact that higher education systems of a nation is the "machinery of…

As elsewhere in Canada, the provincial educational system has adopted an accountability framework to improve student success by putting the emphasis on the rendering of accounts and production of a success plan. However, the implementation of school success plans is not always self-evident for socioeconomically disadvantaged communities. This case…

This article sets the scene for the series of five articles on "red dirt thinking". It first introduces the idea behind red dirt thinking as opposed to "blue sky thinking". Both accept that there are any number of creative and expansive solutions and possibilities to identified challenges--in this case, the challenge of…

Reading teachers focus more on the instruction of reading content or strategies, but pay relatively less attention to the impact of writing on reading comprehension. Based on mediation theory, the author examined the effect of summary writing about reading texts on readers' comprehension. By reviewing relevant literatures on the topic of…

Concerns about the misuse of assessment results in accountability related efforts led our biology faculty to take the initiative to develop our own assessment tool for one of our introductory biology courses. Our goal was to evaluate student achievement in the course and detect methods for improving our course. We developed a pre/posttest, which…

Internationally, quality assurance schemes persist despite long-standing dissatisfaction and critique of their impact and outcomes. Adopting a critical systems perspective, the article explores the relationships between the knowledge, power and meanings that stakeholder groups bring to the design and implementation of quality assurance systems.…

Tanetha Grosland's goal is to inform and extend the current knowledge base concerning the intersection of antiracist pedagogy and emotions, and its implications for reconceptualizing such pedagogy. Therefore, she begins by addressing some fundamental theoretical claims about antiracist education. Then utilizing two sources to contextualize…

In this article Jonny Sluman describes how he adapted an interactive DVD quiz game at a Christmas family get-together into an exciting, creative science activity to teach his students. The rounds included: a "quick fire" question round, a "what happened next" round, a music round, and a "spot the difference" round.…

A shared conference presentation describes two ways of bringing education for sustainable development into education. The first part concentrated on putting science into outdoor learning backed up by a series of mind-mapping activities. The second was about linking schools with their surrounding communities to develop ways of working together. An…