Background: Since his stroke 15 years ago, Tony O'Donnell has worked with BLISS, a symbolic, graphical language. BLISS has been used with a variety of clinical populations, including people with severe aphasia. O'Donnell found his adapted version of BLISS was meaningful to him when spoken and written English was not. The present study is part of a…

In this article, the author shares how she designs fun and fascinating western humanities courses at a community college in Minnesota. Using the example provided by many excellent past instructors, and through numerous late-night research sessions, she began to develop techniques and exercises that would help her achieve her goals in the…

In this article Joris Vlieghe, Maarten Simons, and Jan Masschelein attempt to articulate a new way of dealing with the public character of education. Instead of discussing laughter as an instrument that one could use to facilitate established educational goals, the authors provide an extensive analysis of the phenomenon of laughter as a specific…

Little is known of how and when undergraduate students decide to progress to postgraduate studies. This study examined the effect of a single semester on intentions to undertake postgraduate study. The study was conducted twice in two years using approximately 120 students enrolled in a third year "Behaviour in Organisations" unit at a…

The Re-Imagine Project (of the Experiment in Congregational Education) is an attempt to engender innovation in congregational schools. A long-term study of 24 participating congregations in Greater New York examined the extent to which the effort yielded new models of education (radical change). The study included surveys of task force members and…

Making the right choice depends crucially on the accurate valuation of the available options in the light of current needs and goals of an individual. Thus, the valuation of identical options can vary considerably with motivational context. The present study investigated the neural structures underlying context dependent evaluation. We instructed…

Greenfield is a term for an area where there are unobstructed, wide-open opportunities to invent or build. Greenfield schooling presumes that the greatest challenge to improving teaching and learning is the bureaucratic, rule-driven education system and that it is important to create an environment in which innovation can flourish.

The paper has a conceptual nature, and will depart from the literatures on performance management in general and public management in particular and confront them with the literature on higher education studies. Higher education mirrors the developments of other sectors, such as the increasing interest in performance measurement and the continuous…

The Goal-based Scenario method is a design model for applying simulations to instruction. This portfolio item describes an implementation of Goal-based Scenarios for the teaching of statistics. The application demonstrates how simulations can be contextualized and how they can allow learners to engage in legitimate inquiry in the pursuit of their…

Schools often struggle to create lasting learning experiences for students. Teachers can enhance instruction by creating and promoting goals that extend beyond content knowledge. The development of long-term traits such as critical thinking, creativity, cooperation, and others adds meaning to student learning and purposeful teacher planning.

In November 2009 the current Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, gave a speech at the Centre for Policy Studies in which he set out the Conservative Party's priorities for education. This article explores some of the proposals in his speech, with particular references to initial teacher education and his attraction to Nordic and US…

Biological problems in the twenty-first century are complex and require mathematical insight, often resulting in mathematical models of biological systems. Building mathematical-biological models requires cooperation among biologists and mathematicians, and mastery of building models. A new course in mathematical modeling presented the opportunity…

Much has been written on the importance of knowledge management, the challenges facing organizations, and the important human resource management activities involved in assuring the acquisition and transfer of knowledge. Higher business education plays an important role in preparing students to assume the knowledge management and human resource…

The public has always had a keen interest in textbooks on history. Despite all the differences among textbooks on national histories, most countries have a similar focus: the task of shaping the new generations' positive image of their own people in its long or short history, while not disregarding any sinister, dark, at times frightful pages of…

Mentoring is considered among the most effective pedagogical measures, yet it is rarely used in gifted education. One of the main reasons for this neglect seems to be the lack of a thorough analysis of its conceptual foundations from the point of view of giftedness research. This contribution starts with a discussion of conceptual and definitional…