In 1998 I had been teaching science for 13 years. I was a good teacher: I had the plaques and certificates to prove it. But often I felt like an impostor (which I have since learned is not unusual--70% of all people feel like a fake at one time or another). While my students could solve problems and ace tests, every June when I sat down to look at…

In this article, Dominic Griffiths reflects upon the current cultural gap between those who locate themselves as working "on the inside" of the world of "special educational needs" and the "inclusion movement" and those who might be described as "mainstream classroom teachers". Griffiths warns of the dangers…

While entropy is often described as "disorder," it is better thought of as a measure of how spread out energy is within a system. To illustrate this interpretation of entropy to introductory college or high school students, several activities have been created. Students first study the relationship between microstates and macrostates to…

The relevance of this subject is due to the changed socio-economic conditions in Russia, which has led to the search for educational paradigms that are appropriate for the new socio-economic development of our country. The purpose of this article is to justify the noospheric pedagogy as an independent branch of the science of teaching that…

The so-called "good-teacher doctrine" has long perpetuated the idea that good teachers don't use pre-packaged curriculum materials. Rather, they create their own lessons intended for the students sitting in front of them. In this article, Janine T. Remillard challenges this assumption and contends that good teachers can--and…

Today's state literacy standards and assessments demand deeper levels of knowledge from students. But many teachers ask, "What does depth of knowledge look like on these new, more rigorous assessments? How do we prepare students for this kind of thinking?" In this article, Nancy Boyles uses a sampling of questions from the PARCC and SBAC…

Inclusive education currently appears to be undergoing a crisis and re-examination. This paper presents a new approach to thinking about inclusiveness in the school context. Many positions within inclusive education seem to take political, social and ethical perspectives as a starting point, which has allowed inclusive movements and initiatives…

This paper considers how we can arrive at a concept of the good university. It begins with ideas expressed by Australian Vice-Chancellors and in the "league tables" for universities, which essentially reproduce existing privilege. It then considers definitions of the good university via wish lists, classic texts, horror lists, structural…

The literature on academic writing in higher education contains a wealth of research and theory on students' writing, but much less on academics' writing. In performative higher education cultures, discussions of academics' writing mainly concern outputs, rather than the process of producing them. This key component of academic work remains…

Emmanuel Levinas, a twentieth century French Continental philosopher, proposed an original understanding of ethics which has serious implications for the particular activities within higher education designated as service learning and community service. First I will define service learning and community service and briefly review the theoretical…

This vignette presents the state of theatre in Education Kenya. The paper argues that though there are several theatre in education like practices, these have not been entrenched in the school curriculum. Theatre in Education finds expression and manifestations outside the mainstream school curriculum for instance in schools and colleges drama…

Integrating popular music as part of the public school music curriculum has been a topic of debate among many educators and researchers. Songs from the Disney Corporation, specifically from movies, television shows, and performers specifically marketed by Disney, are particularly significant due to their widespread popularity. In this article, the…

In this article, I offer four principles relevant to hip-hop cultures (keep it real, flip the script, make some noise, and stay fresh) and explore how these principles might affect music classrooms. I argue that a music classroom that works to keep it real, flip the script, make some noise, and stay fresh might go beyond teaching hip-hop skills…

Due to ongoing cultural-historical transformations, the space-time of learning is radically changing, and theoretical conceptualizations are needed to investigate how such evolving space-time frames can function as a ground for learning. In this article, we argue that the concept of chronotope--from Greek chronos and topos, meaning time and…

Middle grades transitions pose challenges to many students who meet these tasks with varying levels of success. Contemporary developmental and strengths-based literature offers Hope Theory (Snyder, 2002), a research supported approach that can mitigate risks in school transitions. This article describes how middle grades educators can apply the…