Assessment involves observing and documenting children's development, their learning experiences and relationships, and how they interact with the world around them. The purpose of assessment is to gather meaningful information about children in order to make informed decisions to benefit their education and development. Using a combination of…

The article explores a community-based project documenting the histories of 15 refugee communities in London with a major exhibition at the Museum of London. While the focus of the article is concerned with the educational aspects of the project, an important argument suggests the inseparability of educational and pedagogic issues from a wider set…

We analyse the implementation of a new New Zealand physics curriculum from a socio-cultural perspective. We explore the development of the curriculum document and examine the obstacles to its implementation. Change was compromised by the lack of any intersubjective linkage between teachers and the curriculum designers. The teachers' own community…

While it is widely acknowledged that classroom practice is shaped by its context, the dynamics of that shaping remain elusive. This study conceptualizes the ways in which changing social conditions and national priorities enter into US curriculum practice. Initially, the focus was on the US Census 2000 results showing an increasingly diverse…

This paper looks at sources of frustration in students of "prerequisite" mathematics courses (PMC), that is, courses required for admission into undergraduate programs in a large, urban, North American university. The research was based on responses to a questionnaire addressed to students and interviews with students and instructors. In the…

This article argues that certain philosophically devised quality control parameters should guide approaches to interdisciplinary education. We sketch the kind of reflections we think are necessary in order to produce epistemologically responsible curricula. We suggest that the two overarching epistemic dimensions of levels of analysis and basic…

Current debates about the role of sports in boys' education are part of a larger discussion of men, boys and masculinities. In this paper I reflect on this debate and the research it has led to. I highlight questions of embodiment, of relations between different forms of masculinity, and questions of reproduction and change, in all of which the…

The "knowledge society" has become a central discourse within educational reform. This article posits that the impact of the knowledge society discourse on curriculum and assessment has led to the emergence of what the authors term a new-form/re-form curriculum, and it asks whether what is transacting in contemporary movements in…

Two challenges often associated with teaching program evaluation at the graduate level are the need to incorporate practical skills development and being limited to a one-semester-long course offering. The existing literature provides some information concerning a practical application component; however, there is almost no discussion of pedagogy…

Science education in Papua New Guinea has been influenced by neo-colonial practices that have significantly contributed to the silencing of the Papua New Guinea voice. This silencing has led to the production of science curriculum documents that are irrelevant to the students for whom they are written. To avoid being caught up in neo-colonial…

This paper explores the perceptions of academics and students towards embedding Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into undergraduate degree programmes in the School for Earth, Ocean and Environmental Science (SEOES) at the University of Plymouth. The main purpose of the research was to identify current ESD related teaching and learning…

Participating in a democracy is learned behavior. It takes years to develop the ability to understand the complexity of issues, to negotiate the challenges of political change and to act effectively on behalf of the common good. One doesn't simply acquire this knowledge and learn these skills through a senior elective civics course in high school.…

The higher education literature abounds with reports and studies calling for reform in undergraduate education. An alphabet soup of higher education associations creates or advocates desired learning outcomes for postsecondary education and endorses approaches for student learning. This article shows connections between some of the major…

Service-Learning has become a popular pedagogical strategy; yet, little attention has been given to the construction of a syllabus that includes a service-learning component. The purpose of this paper is to help instructors identify essential components of high-quality service-learning, to learn ways to incorporate these components into…

This paper discusses a sophomore-level course that teaches engineering design and technical writing. Historically, the course was taught using semester-long design projects. Most students' overall approach to design problems left considerable room for improvement. Many teams chose a design without investigating alternatives, and important…