This article reviews the concept of "affordance", a term widely used in the literature on learning and technology to try and explain the properties technologies have. It is argued that the concept has drifted so far from its origins that it is now too ambiguous to be analytically valuable. In addition, it is suggested that its origins in…

Recent educational developments such as constructivism and multiple intelligence theories as well as society requested new trends engendered to radical change in traditional approaches of instruction and assessment. For this reason, alternative assessment approaches are needed in assessing both learning process and learning product. Nowadays, one…

This paper focuses on the scholarship of integration in the field of education and argues that although it has gradually been moving into the mainstream of educational research, it is all too often judged on the basis of criteria more applicable to assess the scholarship of discovery. First, I examine the questions: what constitutes original…

The ability to explain the occurrence of errors in children's speech is an essential component of successful theories of language acquisition. The present study tested some generativist and constructivist predictions about error on the questions produced by ten English-learning children between 2 and 5 years of age. The analyses demonstrated that,…

In responding to the commentaries from Hobson (2007), Moore (2007) and Rakoczy (2007), we first discuss the commonalities our approach has with other theories and then elaborate on the nature of shared practices and their relationship with language and understanding. We then address views of representation, arguing against an empiricist approach…

I examine some of the issues connected with the internalist/externalist distinction in work on the ontology of language. I note that Chomskyan radical internalism necessarily leads to a passive conception of child language acquisition. I reject that passive conception, and support current versions of constructivism [Tomasello, M., 2001. "The…

This paper proposes that transformative social change by community educators is not achievable unless they can challenge the social, economic and political discourses that have an impact on the practice of community education. As educators of community workers, the authors regard the development of voice to be a prerequisite for the challenging of…

In the present paper, we propose an alternative, based on constructivism, to the conventional way of teaching basic physics courses at the university level. We call this approach "coherent teaching" and the underlying philosophy of teaching science and engineering "need-based learning". We have been applying this philosophy in…

Organisations that provide education are businesses and, as such, are not immune from the impact that the Internet has had in recent years, both on the way organisations conduct their business "and" as a business supporting technology. Indeed, the use of the Internet as a facilitating mechanism for educational course delivery has been growing…

This chapter brings together themes from the various practices presented by the educators who contributed to this volume for purposes of reflecting on the implications of the arts for the practice and theory of adult education.

This article presents an overview and results of a semester long course intended to teach current and aspiring faculty how to teach effective learner-centered web-based courses using a constructivist approach. A model to teach these individuals was developed and it recommends a hybrid format, individual assistance, use of online tools, real life…

Within an authentic assessment regime, a student is evaluated in terms of their ability to demonstrate application of a body of knowledge to a scenario situated in an actual, or a near replica of a real-world context. At Universitas 21 Global (U21Global), a completely online graduate school backed by 16 universities from around the world, the…

In this paper the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, a top-down, one-size-fits-all coercive nostrum constructed by politicians purportedly to improve all American public schools that piddles with symptoms rather than deal with root causes, is first delineated and analyzed. Its departure from local educational governance to an accountability-focused…

Online education for post-secondary instruction is a rapidly expanding enterprise among public and private universities. While the quantity of courses over the past 10 years has exponentially increased, the quality of these courses has not. As universities accept the challenge of creating effective and responsive online learning programs to…

Metacognition is a concept in psychology that refers to a variety of self-awareness process that help learners learn better. It grew out of the developments over the past few decades of cognitive models of learning. This paper presents a brief overview of these models and discusses their main features. It begins with a discussion of behavioristic…