The Common Core State Standards, released in June 2010, offer an opportunity to shift education away from shallow, test-prep instruction and toward a focus on key cognitive skills, writes Conley. Two consortia of states are now developing common assessments to measure these standards--assessments that will be designed to capture deeper, more…

Given the high rate at which students report participation in cocurricular group experiences during college, it becomes critical to have a clear understanding of how these experiences related to both one another and educational outcomes. Existing research examined specific types of group experiences or simple involvement in general, failing to…

Discussions on history teaching in Turkey indicate that the previous versions of the history curriculum and the pedagogy of history in the country bear many problems and deficiencies. The problems of Turkish history curriculum mainly arise from the perspectives it takes and the selection of its content. Since 2003, there have been extensive…

The purpose of this article is to identify some key areas of the Australian curriculum that remain sites of struggle and contestation. We propose that there remain a number of contentious points in relation to the national curriculum. These points relate variously to the content and form of the curricular documents; assumptions about knowledge,…

For the past sixteen years, the Five Dimensions of Multicultural Education, as proposed by James A. Banks (1995), have been accepted in many circles as the primary conceptual framework used in teaching multicultural education courses: content integration, the knowledge construction process, prejudice reduction, an equity pedagogy and an empowering…

Traditional bilingual education programmes in regional linguistic minority contexts face major challenges within the recent paradigm of linguistic diversity against a background of increasing migration, mobility and trans-locality. Based on three case studies, the authors of this paper focus on how particular dual-medium models are applied in…

The article focuses on the similarities and differences in using new public management (NPM) administrative arrangements in educational policy as they have been presented in the educational reform process carried out this millennium by two governments in Norway: the Centre-Conservative government and the current Red-Green coalition government.…

This paper explores understandings of gender equality and education and the nature of global goal and target setting, drawing on empirical data collected in central and local government departments in Kenya and South Africa reflecting on their implementation of Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 1, concerned with poverty, MDG 2, concerned with…

Students in Finland are obliged to apply for upper secondary education during their 9th year. The main divisions occur between general (academically oriented) and vocational upper secondary education, and within vocational education between female and male dominated sectors. In this article we discuss the tension between these options and explore…

This article is based on a study conducted at the first Arabic and Hebrew bilingual school in Israel (Neve-Shalom/Wahat-Alsalam--NSWAS). The article focuses on Jewish as well as Palestinian parents' perspectives and responses to survey questions and interviews conducted at the school. Parents named reasons for choosing the school, satisfaction…

A new Labour government was elected in May 1997 and wasted no time in signalling its enthusiasm for the education of adults. Secretary of State for Education and Employment David Blunkett gave his first speech in office at the launch of Adult Learners' Week 1997 and announced the creation of a National Advisory Group for Continuing Education and…

We explored the effects of fraternity and sorority membership on first-year students' development across various liberal arts educational outcomes at 11 institutions. Although many educators perceive fraternities and sororities as anti-intellectual organizations, fraternity and sorority members in this study did not differ from their unaffiliated…

A computer adaptive test (CAT) is a delivery methodology that serves the larger goals of the assessment system in which it is embedded. A thorough analysis of the assessment system for which a CAT is being designed is critical to ensure that the delivery platform is appropriate and addresses all relevant complexities. As such, a CAT engine must be…

Instructors are often reluctant to alter their current pedagogies in favor of engaged learning alternatives. In this article the author describes the development and implementation of an engaged learning, simulation-based pedagogy designed to increase student and instructor engagement. Student learning was examined across simulation and…

In this article I report on the ways that an educational philosophies course in a performance-based program enables teacher candidates to identify, reflect upon, and evaluate a wide range of educational purposes. The context for the report is an accelerated graduate program in childhood education at a small urban college where intensive fieldwork…