The word "bastard" has a richly ambiguous resonance in the Australian meaning-making tradition. It is a term that is variously affectionate, neutral, deleterious and corrosive. This is an ambiguity whose clarification relies almost entirely on the communicational context where its utterance is implaced. Right across the globe the idea of…

School Innovation in Science is a major Victorian Government initiative that developed and validated a model whereby schools can improve their science teaching and learning. The initiative was developed and rolled out to more than 400 schools over the period 2000-2004. A research team worked with 200+ primary and secondary schools over three…

President Obama has embraced an audacious ambition--to renew America's status as the world leader in college attainment. That goal is daunting, and it leads many people to conclude that they should focus federal investments on four-year colleges. If individuals want to realize the president's goal, that would be a terrible mistake. Located in…

The purpose of this article is to describe innovatory online teaching carried out in the inter-university master's "Educational Innovation Policies and Practices for the Knowledge Society", with the participation of Malaga, Almeria and Internacional de Andalucia Universities. The master's focuses on the exploration of a problem-based…

This article describes kindergarten teachers' professional training and their social status in Korea. It includes discussions of the historical development of Korea's kindergarten teacher training system and pedagogical methods, the unequal social status of kindergarten teachers, and the implementation of innovative pedagogical practices modeled…

In the current climate of high stakes testing and tough love rhetoric, many educational stakeholders have become increasingly reliant on standardized test scores to determine whether or not individual students, teachers, and schools--and even entire districts and states--are successful. In contrast to the black and white picture that test-driven…

Whilst researching a teacher's use of miniature "handheld" computers (PDAs) with students, it became apparent that the related research literature implied unwarranted benefits arose from using this technology in the classroom setting. Focusing closely upon one exemplar UK government-commissioned research study, this paper attempts to…

Innovation often happens at the margin. For the past 5 years, in the academic equivalent of an ecotone, Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan has built and continues to refine offerings in its 4-year Bachelor of Science degree in Sustainable Business. Emerging out of the demands of a rapidly changing business world and the sustainable business…

This paper provides a history of ETS's role in developing assessment instruments and psychometric procedures for measuring change in large-scale national assessments funded by the Longitudinal Studies branch of the National Center for Education Statistics. It documents the innovations developed during more than 30 years of working with…

Despite healthy growth in past decades, in a time of national and global economic instability small, private Christian colleges now find themselves in a precarious position. Leading effectively in such colleges and universities in a time of external and/or internal crisis is a great challenge. This research is about a small, Christian college with…

Using constructivist principles and autonomous learning techniques the ELP has pioneered innovative and cutting edge approaches to learning languages that can be applied to learning across the spectrum. Although articles on the success of the ELP project have appeared in some academic journals, "Perspectives from the European Language…

Purpose: This paper seeks to assess the extent to which learning and Web 2.0 technologies are utilised to support learning and teaching in Africa's higher learning institutions, with a specific focus on Tanzania's public universities. Design/methodology/approach: A combination of content analysis and semi-structured interviews was used to collect…

In response to an increasingly interdependent world, educators are demonstrating a growing interest in educating for global citizenship. Many definitions of the "good global citizen" value empathy as an especially important disposition for understanding others across national borders and cultural divides. Yet it may be difficult for…

Although there is significant research on improving college-level teaching practices, most literature in the field assumes an incentive for improvement. The research presented in this paper addresses the issue of poor incentives for improving university-level teaching. Specifically, it proposes instructor-designed common examinations as an…

The National Center for Academic Transformation (NCAT), a small nonprofit considered to be the intellectual center of the technology-based course transformation movement, has labored mightily and with much success to help more colleges bring their undergraduate courses into the modern age. But it has labored precisely because colleges have yet to…