Teachers participating in curricular reforms, especially reforms based on constructivism, are expected to bring about change in their teaching approach. This is often a difficult, complex and intensive process, and demands a radical reculturing of the classroom. This is also the case for social constructivist reforms in chemistry education, which…

Distance education requires an instructional design approach that can lead to educational transformation. This is characterised by advanced flexibility, learner autonomy and extensive use of digital technologies to enhance learning outcomes. The main feature of such methodology is the physical distance between teaching staff, peers and educational…

Our investigation focusses on a group of eleven lower-middle-class students from classrooms in which the teachers did most of the talking and students rarely asked any questions. We have examined whether spontaneous discussions among the students in a less structured setting would include questioning, and what kinds of questions they might ask.…

Purpose: This study examined the relationship between language and planning, a higher order executive function skill, in children with specific language impairment (SLI) and typically developing (TD) children. We hypothesized differences between groups in planning performance and in the role of verbal mediation during planning. Method: Thirty-one…

Edible verge gardens, which are cultivated sections of public footpaths created by residents for household and community use, have gradually become more common in some Australian cities. As an emergent form of urban agriculture, verge gardens uniquely provide opportunities for encountering and learning about food cultivation and consumption…

Children's participation is valued in early childhood education but how this is achieved in pedagogy is less obvious. The methodology of conversation analysis is used in this paper to show how specific interactional practices afford opportunities for children to initiate, explore, and assert their own perspectives in everyday activities. The…

The purpose of this paper was to review literature on the Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and how it has been used to understand the mediation between emerging technologies and teaching and learning in a mathematics classroom. Specifically, it aimed at understanding the genesis of CHAT and further analyzing the studies that have…

This study examines how the awareness of social situation affects rule learning in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) using computer-based distrust and deception games. Twenty-eight 4- to 7-year-old children with ASD and 28 age- and IQ-matched typically developing (TD) peers learned the distrusting and deceptive rules in a non-social…

Most of the contemporary critiques of university teaching are variants of a central argument that sets up a polarity between socalled 'traditional' teaching, often termed 'teacher-centred' and 'transmissive', and approaches that by contrast are considered 'student-centred', often also referred to with the phrase 'active learning'. This editorial…

E-learning systems have gained nowadays a large student community due to the facility of use and the integration of one-to-one service. Indeed, the personalization of the learning process for every user is needed to increase the student satisfaction and learning efficiency. Nevertheless, the number of students who give up their learning process…

This historical-themed critical paper utilises writings by John Dewey to review how constructions of social democracy might benefit conceptions of contemporary physical education. The review focuses on Dewey's early ethics writings which considered that society functioned best when collective moral purposes merged with individual freedoms in a…

This article explores how gestures contributed to the communicative interaction achieved during puppet performances in indigenous communities in the Chiapas Highlands of Mexico. It presents the case of the Petul-Xun hand-glove puppet shows, which were performed from 1954 to 2000 as part of educational campaigns aimed at "modernising" the…

Human observations can only capture a portion of ongoing classroom social activity, and are not ideal for understanding how children's interactions are spatially structured. Here we demonstrate how social interaction can be investigated by modeling automated continuous measurements of children's location and movement using a commercial system…

The term "cognitive tool" has been used in many areas of academic specialisation, where it has taken on multiple connotations. In this historical and systematic review, we investigate the conceptualisation of cognitive tools in the learning sciences and educational technology. First, the theory of cognitive tools vis-à-vis learning and…

Federal legislation protects the rights of students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to be educated alongside typically developing peers in inclusive settings. The majority of students with ASD are educated with typically developing peers for at least 40% of the instructional school day; however, students with ASD can experience peer…