The special national heritage of geography in Australia is discussed, and the educational history and current status of Australian geography is examined. (RM)

Elementary, secondary, and adult students taking private piano lessons were on task for at least 85 percent of the lesson time. Teachers gave frequent reinforcement for academic behavior. While approval/disapproval ratios were not as high as the recommended 80 percent approvals, no evidence of effects on student attentiveness was apparent. (RM)

Curiculum deliberation involves weighing and examining the reasons for and against a curriculum and giving careful consideration and mature reflection to choices. It also often involves considered action by a group of persons. The predominant forms of discourse--persuasive, theoretical, and descriptive--used to codify curriculum deliberations are…

Community service projects that are part of a religious studies program in a Catholic secondary girl's school in Canada are described. The experiential social education projects are intended to foster and nurture responsibility in students and to help them develop participatory skills. (RM)

Differences between British and U.S. economic education with respect to both the rigor of the precollege curriculum and the training of teachers are discussed. The principal difference is that the typical American secondary economics teacher is a social studies teacher, whereas his or her British counterpart is a trained economist. (RM)

Japanese children get 10 years of mandatory music studies, resulting in a population which can read music and appreciate it. History, theory, conducting, instrumental and choral performance, and reading and writing of music are taught. Japanese educators often criticize the approach as emphasizing the intellectual rather than the creative. (CS)

Educational practices and problems in secondary and higher education in Germany are discussed in these nine articles. Topics discussed include language instruction in the gymnasium, the deficit of university students, foreign students in Germany, curriculum development, colleges of advanced technology, women in higher education, and textbook…

Factors affecting traditional laboratory instruction in chemistry are discussed. They include: responses to potential hazards in the undergraduate laboratory; student distaste for laboratory classes; equipment and chemical costs; lack of qualified teaching assistants; and faculty pressures to do research. New directions for introductory…

When we learn, we learn through our own experiences. So when we teach, how do we incorporate our own invaluable life lessons into a state mandated curriculum? Dale Brubaker's "Revitalizing Curriculum Leadership" provides an innovative and liberating solution to this problem. In this updated resource, the author tells why educators need to move…

This book explains and exemplifies formative assessment in practice. Drawing on incidents and case studies from primary classrooms, it describes and analyses how teachers use formative assessment to promote learning. It argues the case for formative assessment with reference to sociocultural perspectives on learning and it examines this in the…

Achieving Education for All (EFA) in Ghana and many parts of sub-Saharan Africa remains an elusive goal. Extensive research in diverse countries has revealed that formalized systems that work on fixed timetables, a loaded curriculum, and trained teachers, are often not performing as well in rural environments in providing basic literacy, numeracy,…

This book examines the main themes in educational management and leadership, including strategy, human resources, teaching and learning, finance, external relations, and quality. The 19 chapters are divided into 7 sections: "The Context of Educational Management,""Leadership and Strategic Management,""Human Resource Management,""Managing Learning…

For schools to spend Title I funds on comprehensive school reform (CSR) programs under the No Child Left Behind Act, there must be empirical evidence of significant improvement in the academic achievement of CSR students. Unfortunately, there is a dearth of convincing evidence that CSR programs have a positive impact on student achievement. Over a…

Considerable efforts have been made to get students to use information technology for educational purposes. This study uses data from the 2003 administration of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) to investigate the relationships between student uses of information technology and other forms of student engagement. The results suggest…

This book sets out to prove that the progressivist tenets that have become the foundation of American education are mistaken. The author does not argue against progressivism on the basis of the usual alternatives of liberal or traditional theories of education because it is not adequately attuned to preparing students for jobs. The author sets out…