Finnish 15-year olds have been among the top overall performers in international student assessment studies during the last decade; metaphors like "miracle" and "paradox" have emerged, especially related to school mathematics. The goal of this article is to situate the good results in the Finnish educational policy in the…

This article discusses how the ESL program at an ethnically/linguistically diverse community college (between San Diego and the Mexican border) moved from a general, grammar-based ESL curriculum to a content-based instruction (CBI) curriculum. The move was designed to better prepare 1st- and 2nd-generation immigrant students for freshman…

Impending change can provide us with the opportunity to rethink and renew the things that we do. The first phase of the Australian Curriculum implementation offers primary school teachers the chance to examine their approaches to science learning and teaching. This paper focuses on the perceptions of three primary school teachers regarding what…

Elementary engineering education (EEE) is an educational innovation. Using Rogers's innovation diffusion model, the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM), and Dreyfus's skill acquisition model as its theoretical frameworks, this study investigated elementary teachers' EEE adoption and EEE expertise development. Data of this study were collected…

The importance of professional development (PD) is clearly understood; however, little is known about how the most effective PD influences teachers' learning and how teachers perceive PD that goes beyond the typical two-hour session on an aspect of instruction. In this article, the authors present the response of a group of middle school teachers…

Purpose: The Department of Pediatrics at SUNY Upstate Medical University in collaboration with the Instructional Design, Development, and Evaluation Department in Syracuse University's School of Education recently undertook a curricular reform effort that included translation of the residency program's annual core didactic lecture series to an…

This case study briefly describes the journey that one professor took in transitioning from face-to-face course instruction to a blended model at the graduate level. The blended lesson format was based on the 14 Learner-Centered Psychological Principles developed (1993) and revised by the American Psychological Association Work Group of the Board…

This dissertation details the experiences of eight teachers who use Whole Brain Teaching (WBT) in their classrooms. Teachers were asked questions regarding factors that impeded the implementation of WBT, administrators' perceptions prior and after the implementation of WBT, and students' reactions to the implementation of WBT. Since teachers…

To help the United States stay globally competitive in terms of innovation and invention, the teaching of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) has become a priority in P-12 education today. As the need for students to become stronger in STEM grows, so does the need for well-qualified STEM teachers who understand what is needed…

This article describes how a multidisciplinary problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum was established at the International Medical University in Malaysia for preclinical education in a 5-semester phase 1 programme. Based on positive feedback from a modified PBL program implemented in one discipline, a multidisciplinary PBL curriculum was…

This paper starts with a brief background of the link between creativity and education, including the beginning of the most recent interest in the two. There is a short summary of the reasons for this renewed interest. This is followed by a discussion into the dissatisfactions over current education and its changing role in the light of increasing…

The article provides a historical perspective on the debate over a New Zealand senior history curriculum that emerged in the 1980s and has remained largely intact over the subsequent 20 years. While the contested nature of history education is an international phenomenon, New Zealand stands apart: there school history is largely Eurocentric in…

This paper investigated how the University of Zululand (Unizulu) has set out to conceptualize and institutionalize service learning as an educational approach in the Curriculum. The University of Zululand Strategic Plan (2008-2012) and Institutional Operating Plan (IOP) indicate a paradigm shift towards academically based community interaction…

Most of the scholarship on learner-centeredness is focused on individual classroom pedagogy, but this book takes learner-centeredness beyond the classroom and asks academic leaders to consider the broader implications of making their institutions fully learner-centered. Systemic change is needed, and curriculum is at the heart of what higher…

The study investigated gender issues in the implementation of social studies curriculum in Nigerian universities. The subjects for the study comprised of all the 200 final-year sandwich social studies students of University of Port-Harcourt in the 2009 contact session. Five research questions guided the study. Researchers developed questionnaire…