The traditional, didactic lecture is under attack from diverse quarters. With its origins rooted in the emergence of orality, the lecture now stands as only one of a plethora of educational communication tools, and has been subject to criticism particularly by constructivists for failing to deliver deep and effective learning experiences. This…

The use of authentic tasks is derived from social constructivist principles of locating learning in the context of reality. Authentic tasks can foster learning transfer because collaboration among students not only helps them learn the concepts under discussion, but also exemplifies how these concepts are used in real-world contexts. To achieve a…

This study investigated appropriate pedagogical techniques for workplace e-learning programs in the South African wood products (furniture) manufacturing sector. The study found that learners responded favourably to constructivist teaching approaches, such as asynchronous discussions, open-ended task-based activities, and assignments incorporating…

This article reports on the outcomes of an action research project on gender and science education carried out in two upper secondary schools in Sweden. The article focuses on how student voices draw on wider societal discourses when they talk about what it means to be natural science students at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The…

Along with a socially urgent impetus for revolutionary reform of an educational environment appropriate to the 21st century society, constructivism is highlighted in various fields related to education as an alternative educational ideology and approach. Despite its radical shift from traditional learning environments, and the diverse…

This article examines three conceptual reforms in US teacher education (competency-based teacher education (CBTE), reflective teacher education (RTE) and constructivist teacher education (CTE)) for their effects on the education of multicultural, multilingual youth, as well as considering alternative certification (AC), known here as an…

Increasingly, autistic students are attending college, posing new challenges to writing instructors. In particular, such students may have trouble imagining readers' responses to their texts. Developing an appropriate pedagogy for these students may involve revisiting composition studies' tradition of cognitive research, while not abandoning more…

This article addresses the perennial issue of the criteria by which qualitative research should be evaluated. At the present time, there is a sharp conflict between demands for explicit criteria, for example in order to serve systematic reviewing and evidence-based practice, and arguments on the part of some qualitative researchers that such…

With increasing numbers of students learning science through a second language in many school contexts, there is a need for research to focus on the impact language has on students' understanding of science concepts. Like other countries, Brunei has adopted a bilingual system of education that incorporates two languages in imparting its…

I report on benefits from 26 teacher-participant evaluators of a computer game designed to motivate learning and to ease conceptual understanding of biology in South Africa. Using a developmental, social constructivist and interpretative model, the recommendation is to include the value systems and needs of end-users (through social dialogue);…

Students (N = 124) viewed 14 timed Web pages that distinguished 14 confusing word pairs. In a 2 x 2 factorial design, the authors gave all of the students matrices containing representational pictures for each pair of words, as well as examples of each word in use. One factor in the design was the absence or presence of rules of usage for each…

Teacher educators have suggested that mentoring has the potential to help novices learn to teach in reform-minded ways. This suggestion implies a change in the nature of mentor-novice relationships as conceptualized in the existing literature and an understanding of the complexities of mentoring relationships. Based on critical constructivist and…

Open online courses (OOC) with a massive number of students have represented an important development for online education in the past years. A course on artificial intelligence, CS221, at the University of Stanford was offered in the fall of 2011 free and online which attracted 160,000 registered students. It was one of three offered as an…

To help students meet the demands of society, the University of Houston is using the framework of learning communities and constructivism to create a cross-disciplinary approach to teaching to provide media-rich thematically linked courses to engage a diverse student population. A case study investigated three semesters of thematically linked…

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the instructional effects of using animations, static figures, PowerPoint bulletins, and e-plus software as chemistry texts with the aid of computer-based technology. This study analyzed the characteristics of students involved in three multimedia courses and their achievement and attitude toward chemistry…