Purpose: The school environment in the islands of Malta is experiencing important changes that need to be critically addressed if school improvement and, more importantly, student learning is going to be enhanced. This paper aims to present the education authorities with an introductory review which aims to contextualise the potential networking…

Describes the application of lean principles and practices to the design and delivery of a graduate business course on leadership taken by part-time working professional students in a classroom setting. The principal objectives were to improve consistency between what was taught in the course and how the course was taught, eliminate waste, improve…

The authors describe a social approach to learning in community service learning that extends the contributions of three theoretical bodies of scholarship on learning: social constructionism, critical pedagogy, and community service learning. Building on the assumptions about learning described in each of these areas, engagement, identity, and…

Much of current inclusive education provision in Australian secondary schools relies on "specialist" support from outside the classroom. Students with diverse abilities are placed within the regular classroom and additional specialist services such as therapy, counselling, psychological assessment and special education teaching are…

This paper discusses current thinking and practice about the use of popular culture in the primary school to teach literacy. It attempts to question the methods that attempt to galvanise children's interest in popular texts to teach the current literacy curriculum. It argues that there is an incompatibility between the pleasures and practices of…

In an organizationally competent school, everyone has a role that defines his or her obligations and everyone is part of a reciprocal relationship that spells out mutual obligations. Reciprocal role relationships enable informal communities of practice to bubble up and institutionalized collaborative cultures to trickle down. When such informal…

To Danesia, the donut shop across the street from her big urban high school stands for everything adults expect from her--and what they do not. It is the place that most kids go when they cut class, walking out the school doors without anybody caring that they are gone. Like Danesia, most high school students pick right up on what they are "meant"…

Serious consideration of disability in the major social theories is a relatively new development. Feminism, critical race, and queer studies have rigorously grappled with issues of embodiment and social justice. These perspectives greatly enhance pedagogy and learning. However, the embodied experience of disability has not been a traditional topic…

Since 1949, China has struggled to provide adequate public education for its masses. But since 1985, education in China has been in transition. In this article, the author discusses the improvements that have occurred since 1985, including more technology, up-to-date textbooks, and new teaching techniques, as well as the many challenges still…

This paper aims to study the various forms of education to be found amongst the Kisongo Maasai, a pastoral population in Tanzania, both in their own right and in terms of what their encounter with one another implies. The late and rather limited development of schooling in that remote area and educational policies, as well as the pastoral way of…

Recent experience shows that reusable learning objects, like the computer assisted learning programmes of the early 1990s, have so far failed to achieve expected levels of integration into educational practice. This is despite technical interoperability, cataloguing systems, high quality standards, targeted dissemination and professional…

There are a number of cross-curricular educational fields today that have as their focus the need to create a better world. These range from peace education and global education to education for sustainability and futures education. This paper is concerned with the first and last of these fields, and in particular the contribution that futures…

Despite an apparent renaissance of interest in the creative and emotional in English education there remains a paucity of research in the province of teacher interpretations of pupils' creative, "affective", and imaginative activity. Based on the findings of an Ed D study conducted in six primary schools in central England, the genesis…

This paper reports the findings from a study of the participation of children with special educational needs (SEN) in decision-making about their needs in a sample of mainstream schools which were self-selected for having promising practices. The findings show promising practices in eliciting views, the importance of a school participation ethos…

Teachers obviously serve as the medium for causing the result of policy as they carry it into schools and classrooms and deliver it to pupils. They mediate between education policy and practice. Knowledge of the exact nature and effects of this vital role is limited. Drawing on a range of research and evaluation of both national and local policy…