It has been suggested that growing interest in curriculum assessment and development in higher education is the result of a number of external and internal factors. External factors include increasing government interest in quality assurance, accessibility, and degree completion rates; growing recognition of the important role university graduates…

In this study, the authors explore the "apparent gulf between professionals' advice and actual teachers' practices." Their study recognizes the imperviousness of teacher practice to the efforts of researchers and curricular reformers. For over a century, the authors argue, "best practices" in social studies have always included…

This paper explores how worker identities are shaped (and reshaped) in the workplace through the interconnected experiences of assessment, work and learning. Drawing on a study conducted at three food production companies in regional Victoria, the paper locates these workplace experiences as social constructions and considers the significance of…

This study explores teachers' beliefs about pedagogical issues as well as related educational and professional issues. Six hundred K-12 teachers in three Midwestern states received surveys and 60% returned them. Results of the survey indicated that teachers were relatively unified in their beliefs, and few differences emerged around demographic…

This paper focuses on the different ways in which students in lower secondary school (14-16 year olds) experience compound random events, presented to them in the form of combined junctions. A carefully designed ICT environment was developed enabling the students to interact with different representations of such structures. Data for the analysis…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of a one-year regular robotic toys (lego) training on school pupils' performance. The underlying pedagogical perspective is the "constructionist theory," where the main idea is that knowledge is constructed in the mind of the pupil by active learning. The investigation has been made…

This study looked at 30 primary aged children between 10 and 11 years old who were visiting the Eden Project, Cornwall and participating in workshops led and designed by the Eden Education Officers. The study attempted to directly test the effects of the Education Officers' workshops on children's learning. Personal meaning mapping, a…

A study involving upper elementary school students (n=30) was conducted to examine conceptual change and constructivism. It is argued that a constructivist view of learning is antithetical to a vision of conceptual change in which teachers act in a diagnostic and remediate manner to help students rid themselves of their inaccurate ideas. It…

This paper examines past theories and conceptions of epistemology and the work of some key theorists currently working in the field, in the hope of motivating the development of an expanded conception and redescription of epistemology. The paper uses as a metaphor for the study six blind men who describe an elephant as like a rope, a tree, a fan,…

This book is based on the premise that learning in young children takes place through participation in purposeful activity and the learning process includes building on what children already know and enabling children to take responsibility for their own learning. It focuses not just on recent pedagogical developments in science, but shows,…

There is widespread acceptance that teaching from a constructivist paradigm requires a learning environment, a set of teaching-learning strategies, and a method of assessment that differs significantly from those usually found in classrooms that operate from a behaviorist theory or from an objectivist epistemology. There is, however, less…

An investigation was conducted to determine the effectiveness of utilizing analogies to effect conceptual change in mathematics. Forty-one high school seniors participated in a knowledge reconstruction process regarding their beliefs about everyday probability situations such as sports events or lotteries. These mathematics students were given…

This paper describes the use of radical constructivism as a basis for curriculum reform in university mathematics courses and reports on research conducted on two of the courses developed, one in geometry and one in problem solving. The theoretical underpinnings of the project are described along with the implications for course design and…

In education, constructivist theories of knowledge have stimulated research, especially in the fields of mathematics and science education. Less attention has been given to the implications of constructivist epistemology for the overall concepts that guide education, such as the ideals of general or civic education or about the canon. This paper…

The pedagogy underlying online learning and teaching is being reconceptualised to incorporate the opportunities being offered by the development of online educational settings. The pedagogy of constructivism and in particular socio-constructivism is underpinning much of the online learning and teaching developments currently being developed. The…