Calls for increased international competency in U.S. college graduates and the global nature of the renewable energy industry require an exploration of how to incorporate a global perspective in STEM curricula, and how to best develop faculty providing them with global knowledge and skills necessary to update and improve existing teaching…

Using data in a professional learning community is a promising form of professional development. In this study, we followed a data team of teacher educators, who systematically tried to improve the education of student teachers (by decreasing first year drop-out). By conducting a single case study, we investigated the data team participants'…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore how self-employed entrepreneurs commit themselves to an entrepreneurship training programme and how such commitment relates to their perceptions of learning. Design/methodology/approach: The data were collected through qualitative, inductive methods by interviewing and observing six entrepreneurs…

Undergraduate introductory biology courses are changing based on our growing understanding of how students learn and rapid scientific advancement in the biological sciences. At Iowa State University, faculty instructors are transforming a second-semester large-enrollment introductory biology course to include active learning within the lecture…

Digital technologies make possible new avenues for sharing and accessing literacy research and practices worldwide. Among the myriad of options available, web seminars have become popular online learning venues. The current investigation is part of Global Conversations in Literacy Research (GCLR), a longitudinal and qualitative study now in its…

Raising expectations is nothing new. Every iteration of standards elevates the expectations for what students should know and be able to do. The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM) is no exception, with standards for content and practice that move beyond memorization of traditional algorithms to "make sense of problems and…

Policy discourse officially operates to distinctly influence public perception in an irrevocable and normalising manner. In a Maltese educational scenario of gradual decentralisation and increased accountability, I explore the "effects" of both the global and the local policy discourse of networks and networking on the practising…

When studying informal science programs, researchers often overlook the opportunities enabled and constrained in each program and the practices reinforced for participants. In this case study, I examined the normative scientific practices reinforced in one-week-long "Herpetology" (the study of reptiles and amphibians) program for…

The traditional academic view of research is to derive new knowledge, generally involving studious inquiry and a search for new theories in order to contribute to an existing academic wealth of knowledge. This is alongside the primary objective of publishing peer reviewed articles in academic journals and the publication of relevant texts.

This paper focuses on community participation within the LIRA project--Lingua/Cultura Italiana in Rete per l'Apprendimento (Italian language and culture for online learning). LIRA is a multimedia repository of e-learning materials aiming at recovering, preserving and developing the linguistic, pragmatic and cultural competences of second and third…

Participation in high-quality preschool can improve academic, behavioral, social-emotional, and cognitive outcomes for students of varying backgrounds, including students from disadvantaged backgrounds (e.g., Andrews, Jargowsky, and Kuhne 2012; Barnett 2008; Camilli et al. 2010; Karoly and Bigelow 2005; Reynolds et al. 2007). However, some studies…

The purpose of this contribution is to share reflections and practices in cultivating a community of learners in the context of a professional development programme at Master's level for language teachers. The programme implements a highly participatory pedagogical model of online learning which combines the Community of Inquiry (CoI) model…

In language learning today, students from different geographical locations are able to interact online in a more authentic environment, share their views with their partners, create profiles as well as build online communities enjoying common interests. With this in mind, this paper examines and reports on a study about how students from two…

The OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) is the largest international survey of teachers and school leaders. Using the TALIS database, this report looks at different approaches to school leadership and the impact of school leadership on professional learning communities and on the learning climate in individual schools. It looks…

In January 2012, the West Virginia Governor's Office released an influential report, "Education Efficiency Audit of West Virginia's Primary and Secondary Education System," written by Public Works (2012), a management consulting company headquartered in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Based largely on this report, the West Virginia…