Recent reviews of environmental education (EE) research converge with pedagogical trends in the education literature to situated and constructivist learning and the need for greater researcher reflexivity about the assumptions and conduct of research. These trends also elaborate the need in EE and education for sustainable development and related…

In order to help school-age English language learners (ELLs) develop the literacy competencies required for success at school, it is important to recognize and draw on the repertoires of literacy practices that students develop outside school. The concept of multiple literacies provides an analytic heuristic with which to consider the range of…

When teachers participate in professional development and learning opportunities it enables them to reconceptualise their assessment and teaching practices with the support of facilitators and researchers. National programmes of professional development and research, such as the three year Enhancing Effective Practice in Special Education (EEPiSE)…

The opportunities, challenges, and lessons of the pilot phase of a community development program in a small liberal arts college are presented and conceptualized in this paper. We based this program on an experiential learning model derived from Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy and Stephen Brookfield's notion of critically responsive learning. A…

The purpose of experiential education is to combine experience and learning in ways that transform both. Students have experiences outside the classroom, and these experiences are integrated into the course curriculum, enriching both the experience and the class material. Successful experiential education assignments must first provide students…

This paper describes an experiential learning exercise I have used to teach race discrimination in my introductory and criminology courses. The exercise is designed to introduce students to the concept of non-conscious forms of racial bias, a form of race discrimination often difficult for students to grasp. Using a hypothetical criminal case,…

This paper seeks to address assumptions on the effectiveness of fieldwork as a mode of learning in geography. This is approached from an international perspective, both in review of available evidence, which demonstrates a need for rigorous research into the issue, and in providing preliminary findings of research into the value of fieldwork from…

This study aims to investigate the effects of a virtual reality (VR)-based learning environment on learners with different learning styles. The findings of the aptitude-by-treatment interaction study have shown that learners benefit most from the VR (guided exploration) mode, irrespective of their learning styles. This shows that the VR-based…

This paper reports on a cross-disciplinary comparative study that examines the interplay between information and communications technologies (ICT) and experiential learning, in the context of seven fields of professional practice in undergraduate education. Our central claim is that academic teachers' framing of the meaning and nature of…

A 2-credit service-learning biotechnology course designed as a general education elective for students of all majors and at all levels was offered as an 8-week, half-semester course. The course met for a total of 3 hours of lecture/discussion and 2 hours of service-learning workshop weekly, during which students participated in discussions about…

While other research has begun to contribute to our understanding of how pre-college students reason about variation, little has been published regarding pre-service teachers' statistical conceptions. This paper summarizes a framework useful in examining elementary pre-service teachers' conceptions of variation, and investigates the question of…

The process of learning to play a musical instrument involves hours of individual practice. Even for players who do not reach high levels of competence, a considerable amount of time will be spent in working independently of the teacher, meaning that music learning demands a high level of self-sufficiency and the ability to be self-reflective if…

One of the author's first assessment experiences at California State University, Sacramento, began when she was assigned to teach a graduate-level program evaluation research course in the Division of Criminal Justice. The chair of the assessment committee and the division chair approached her with the idea of conducting an assessment of the…

Active and experiential learning theory have not dramatically changed collegiate classroom teaching methods, although they have long been included in the pedagogical literature. This article presents an evolved method, reality based learning, that aids professors in including active learning activities with feelings of clarity and confidence. The…

This article examines an attempt to introduce experiential learning methods in a business strategy course. In organizational behavior and industrial/organizational psychology, experiential teaching methods have been so widely adopted that some authors have suggested dropping the distinction between experiential and traditional teaching. Although…