This paper reports on an introductory world regional geography course with a role-playing exercise. The goal was to situate students in a form of popular geopolitics that engaged them viscerally with positionality and othering. Students were assigned different positionalities in a liminal active learning environment within a context of fear of…

One of the difficult aspects of defining creativity is that the term means many things to each of us, and reflects our unique perspectives and experiences. Our situatedness within a unique, personal context means that the concept of individual creativity defies formal scientific definition. This paper is an attempt to conceptualise creativity…

This article describes issues in measuring school contexts with an eye toward understanding students' experiences and outcomes. I begin with an overview of the conceptual underpinnings related to measuring contexts, briefly describe the initiatives at the National Center for Education Statistics to measure school contexts, and identify possible…

In this one-stop resource for middle and high school teachers, Kristina J. Doubet and Jessica A. Hockett explore how to use differentiated instruction to help students be more successful learners--regardless of background, native language, learning style, motivation, or school savvy. They explain how to: (1) create a healthy classroom community in…

We live in a digital age and technology is constantly changing, therefore the way people learn and perceive information is starting to change. Hence, virtual learning environments may be a new and innovative way to stimulate minds. In the book "Virtually There," Stephen Heppell explains, Learning is breaking out of the narrow boxes that…

Research on the transition of students into Academia has previously focused on intelligence and effort as determinants of success. In this article I will argue that the liminal experience of transition into the academic environment is enhanced by multi-logic spaces where curiosity and focus are key attributes of the academic literacy classroom. In…

The International Consultation, convened in Leiden (the Netherlands) in September 2014, brought together early childhood experts and stakeholders--supported by the International Step by Step Association (ISSA), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the…

What should parents of gifted young learners expect to see in the early grades? How can parents be supportive, yet advocate for their child's needs? After 25 years of working with parents of young children, the author offers some candid advice: Be kind, be gentle, and be relentless in the pursuit of challenge for the child. In this article the…

As schools, districts, and the overall education system are complex entities, both the approaches taken to improve them and the methods used to study them must be similarly complex. Simple solutions imposed with no regard for schools' or districts' unique contexts hold little promise, while seemingly insignificant differences between those…

Although the theoretical framework of cognitive load theory has acknowledged a role for the learning environment, the specific characteristics of the physical learning environment that could affect cognitive load have never been considered, neither theoretically nor empirically. In this article, we argue that the physical learning environment, and…

In this paper I discuss how students use narratives and photography in order to represent their everyday engagement with the university space. I draw on the Lacanian notions of the Real and the drive, and suggest ways in which these notions can be used to develop a different approach to educational spaces, especially when photographic material is…

This article examines the symbolic boundary work that is carried out at a school whose student population is heterogeneous in terms of ethnicity and class. Based on ethnography, the article demonstrates how the school's staff seeks to neutralize ethnic boundaries and their accompanying discourse, while the pupils try to bring ethnic…

Different methods, strategies, or tools have been proposed for teaching Object Oriented Programming (OOP). However, it is still difficult to introduce OOP to novice learners. The problem may be not only adopting a method or language, but also use of an appropriate integrated development environment (IDE). Therefore, the focus should be on the…

Design research is strongly associated with the learning sciences community, and in the 2 decades since its conception it has become broadly accepted. Yet within and without the learning sciences there remains confusion about how to do design research, with most scholarship on the approach describing what it is rather than how to do it. This…

Linking measurements of the physical environment's physiognomies to human behavior and productivity is a rather new task in the fields of education, and social and natural sciences. In education; for example, how can a schoolhouse and its surroundings be measured such that valid and reliable comparisons can be made among student outcomes? For…