Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the role that the University of Toronto has had in helping to establish a Regional Centre of Expertise (RCE) on Education for Sustainable Development in Toronto, Canada. The way in which the RCE initiative has helped to move forward the university's own five-year plan will also be discussed.…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) and RCE-Barcelona in the context of two organisations with a strategic aim to further Education for Sustainable Development. A special emphasis is put in the role that UPC has had in the creation and development of this project,…

The purpose of this collective case study was to investigate the transitions of three effective teachers of literacy from pre-service to in-service teaching. As their university supervisor, I selected these students out of a group of pre-service teachers assigned to me for supervision during their eight-week student teaching requirement, based…

In this paper, the authors report research focused directly on the validation of the Coding of Academic Teacher-Student interactions (CATS) direct observation instrument. They use classroom information gathered by the CATS instrument to better understand the potential mediating variables hypothesized to influence student achievement. Their study's…

In this article, a spatial lens is used to look at a popular online culture-based writing website as a means of understanding how fan authors' literacy practices and the design features of the site interact to shape a writing space that engenders affiliation with and facilitates access to literacy and language learning. Discussion also focuses on…

This Australasian focused review compares a number of recent studies that have identified difficulties encountered by novices while learning programming and problem solving. These studies have shown that novices are not performing at expected levels and many novices have only a fragile knowledge of programming, which may prevent them from learning…

The purpose of this study was to develop and content validate a Performance Rating Scale and Interview Protocol, enabling study of the social role performance of adult daughters and sons as they fulfill the societal norms and expectations of adult children. This exploratory investigation was one of 13 contemporary adult social roles completed by…

Although the number of high-needs schools that are failing to achieve "Adequate Yearly Progress" (AYP) steadily increases, some are successfully increasing student achievement, staff productivity and collegiality. The purpose of this study was to use a three-round Delphi process to obtain the expert opinions of 10 administrators who…

The purpose of the study was to identify and refine a conceptual foundation for secondary school engineering education. Specifically, this study sought to address the following research questions: (1) What engineering concepts are present in literature related to the nature and philosophy of engineering?; (2) What engineering concepts are embedded…

It has been recognized that in order to drive Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITSs) into mainstream use by the teaching community, it is essential to support teachers through the entire ITS process: Design, Development, Deployment, Reflection and Adaptation. Although research has been done on supporting teachers through design to deployment of ITSs,…

In well-defined domains such as Physics, Mathematics, and Chemistry, solutions to a posed problem can objectively be classified as correct or incorrect. In ill-defined domains such as medicine, the classification of solutions to a patient problem as correct or incorrect is much more complex. Typical tutoring systems accept only a small set of…

Conventionally, apprenticeship is understood as a linear journey from novice to expert in which "old-timers" mould their successors. This paper challenges the assumptions that expertise is equated solely with status and experience in the workplace, and that all novices and experts, regardless of context, are seen as the same.

Professional Development is critical for improving and maintaining teacher quality and the effect flows on into the classroom. Factors influencing the success of Professional Development activities include potential for workplace change, the diverse effect and understanding of adult learning principles, subject specificity, effective mentoring and…

The Office of Postsecondary Education (OPE) in the U.S. Department of Education (ED) sponsors four graduate fellowship programs: the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) fellowship program, the Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) fellowship program, the Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) fellowship …

This article reports a study of literacy instruction in our own elementary preservice program. It examines the views and practices of both the preservice faculty who teach literacy and a sample of graduates of the program during their first three years of teaching. The new teachers reported learning many things from their preservice program,…