For students in Years 1-10 in Queensland, Australia, The Arts (hereafter referred to as "arts") is one of eight Key Learning Areas in the core curriculum. Yet, while arts--comprising five strands including music--is a mandatory component of the curriculum, implementation varies widely. This occurs for a range of reasons, one of which is…

This article documents an ongoing study of educational policy enactment in a Chinese university. Drawing upon data collected through document analysis, semi-structured interviews and classroom observations, this paper argues that the enactment of China's systemic College English curriculum reform is not a matter of simple implementation but the…

Responsive teaching occurs when teachers take up and "respond" to their students' ideas during instruction (J. L. Pierson, 2008). Although responsive teaching is gaining recognition as an effective strategy for encouraging student learning, few methods of analysis are capable of characterizing the different ways in which teachers take up…

Initiated for the 2013-14 school year, the Common Assignment Study (CAS) is a three-year effort being led by the Colorado Education Initiative (CEI) and The Fund for Transforming Education in Kentucky (The Fund) with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Conceptually, CAS builds on previous efforts to improve instruction through…

The physical sciences, mathematics and technology subjects in Zimbabwe, like in most other African countries, are still male dominated. This is despite numerous efforts over the years directed towards gender equality in these disciplines. Many studies point at teacher education as not doing enough to assist future teachers in these disciplines…

As more districts begin implementing the Common Core State Standards, text complexity is receiving a lot of discussion. It is important for educators to understand the numerous factors involved with text complexity and to have a wide range of strategies to support students with challenging text. This paper shares data from three elementary…

In this paper we focus on variation of the design and the implementation of a specific task during three mathematics lessons in the 8th grade in a learning study (Marton & Tsui, 2004; Runesson, 2008). The theme of the lesson was division, with a denominator between 0 and 1. The teachers wanted their students to understand that when dividing…

This article presents a conceptual model of the field director's role outside of field education, specifically in the following 3 areas of leadership: (1) curricular, (2) programmatic, and (3) institutional. A survey was conducted to explore the field director's input targeted in these areas beyond prescribed field education tasks. The…

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and the Local Control Funding Formula are introducing major changes to California's K-12 system. Implementation of new curricula and instruction is under way at the district level, but California started its transition relatively late and it has taken a more decentralized approach than most other states.…

This article reports on the differential effectiveness of a teacher professional development programme for teachers in urban and rural schools in Indonesia. The study employed an embedded mixed methods design that involved the concurrent collection of both quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative component involved a pre-post design in…

The number of English language students in American schools has dramatically increased in recent years, creating a greater awareness of cross-cultural issues and considerations in education. Globalization as well as an increase in international exchange student programs has proven that pre-service teachers can benefit from traveling abroad and…

The purpose of this study was to inform the deliberations of a policymakers' working group by investigating what key actors in the materials' marketplace are doing to align digital and print-based materials with the Australian Curriculum and what steps need to be taken to deliver aligned materials to schools. Content analysis method was used to…

In this qualitative study, we examined eleven Singapore teachers' conceptions of teaching and learning as related to their experiences implementing integrated curriculum. Interviews revealed that the teachers' conceptions of integration spanned the spectrum of ideas found in relevant literature. Further, although participants saw benefits to…

The Adventure Learning (AL) approach to designing and implementing learning experiences has great potential for practitioners. This manuscript delineates the practical enactment of AL to support the K-12 community, teacher educators, and residential environmental science program providers in the conceptualization and delivery of their own AL…

In the fall of 2011, the state of Nebraska experienced a watershed moment in public education: results of the first standardized mathematics achievement test administered to all students in grades 3-8 and 11 the previous spring (2011) were reported to the public. One state senator referred to some of the results as "shocking." Only four…