Critical reflection in teachers' professional development has received much attention in the scholarly literature, and there is an overwhelming consensus about its great significance to the quality of teachers' work. Nevertheless, despite the well-established role of reflection, a large gap between the professed goals and the actual reflective…

Many mentoring conversations--especially those that pertain to junior faculty of color--cite concern about the socio-racial location of the mentor. This essay, an autoethnographic reflection by an academic of color, is a call to consider the characteristics of mentoring that have moved faculty successfully through their institutional benchmarks.…

Popular education programs allow for collective agenda setting and flexibility, and also to carefully and respectfully design activities that bring in all voices and level the power in the room. Popular education methods help to raise awareness and engage with stakeholders to support topics, such as social justice, human rights, collective power,…

Early childhood educators worldwide all strive to improve the quality of care and education for young children through sustainable pathways. One such pathway is professional development (PD). In the United States, ongoing PD has been recognized as critical to enhancing practitioners' professional competence. Situated within the broader context of…

Organising teaching of a topic around a small number of "big ideas" has been argued by many to be important in teaching for deep understanding, with big ideas being able to link different activities and to be framed in ways that provide perceived relevance and routes into engagement. However it is our view that, at present, the…

This article presents the findings of a research study with young adults who explored the connections between their early childhood experiences in nature and their attitudes and actions towards the environment in adulthood. Drawing on E. Wilson's (1984) work, environmental or ecological consciousness is theorised to connect to ecological identity…

Although interest in contemplative pedagogies has grown considerably in higher education, faculty have relatively few resources available to help them make evidence-based choices about the use of different contemplative pedagogies in particular disciplinary or course contexts. We propose adapting a framework from the Scholarship of Teaching and…

Interdisciplinary understanding requires integration of insights from different perspectives, yet it appears questionable whether disciplinary experts are well prepared for this. Indeed, psychological and cognitive scientific studies suggest that expertise can be disadvantageous because experts are often more biased than non-experts, for example,…

Universities in the UAE are entering the age of virtual and open access education. This paper describes the evolution of a MOOC at a state-funded university in Dubai. We will describe the challenges as well as a reflection of our experiences as creating virtual learning spaces in this culture differs somewhat from Western models. [For the complete…

An increasing number of baptized emerging adults consider themselves spiritual (spiritual seekers) and religiously un-affiliated. In 2003 the Pontifical Council for Culture, aware of the reality of the human spiritual quest, stated that helping people in their spiritual search by offering proven techniques and experiences of real prayer could open…

Education is an act of love. One may argue however, that because it is such a personal act, it is difficult and nearly impossible to achieve it in an authentic manner beyond the face-to-face interaction of teacher and student. Yet, we now live in a time in which education has been transmitted to a virtual platform. This paper highlights how I…

In this article, the idea of the 'colonial signature' is advanced as a potentially pivotal response to triggers that deepen or act as barriers to intercultural learning. From a postcolonial positioning, empirical data is then examined to consider the responses to intercultural-learning triggers of 14 UK-based student teachers on a study visit to…

The study explored practices of the sampled higher education Philippine STEAM educators in assessing learners. Data sourced from the database of a state-funded research on Philippine STEAM education using a Classroom Observation Protocol, included 106 STEAM teachers from purposely selected institutions drawn from 14 regions. Systematic data…

This action-research study describes a course that emphasized critical language awareness (CLA)--an understanding of how language intersects with identity and power--for additional language (L2) learners of Spanish. As L2 learners have been shown to reproduce racist and monolingual discourses, educating them to recognize and question language…

Reflection, reflective thinking and reflexivity have received significant attention in the scholarly literature on higher education yet there is limited research that explores these concepts in relation to international students. This paper consequently explores what reflection and reflective thinking might look and feel like for international…