The mission of Thompson Rivers University Open Learning (TRU-OL) can be understood in terms of three entities: the student, the faculty member and the curriculum content. Their conjuncture--when a TRU-OL student works with TRU-OL courseware and is supported by a TRU-OL faculty member--is where learning, assessment and, ultimately, credentialing…

Fostering interdisciplinary learning in biology will require significant changes in the way one teaches science to K-12 students. The perspective on interdisciplinary biology teaching and learning in this essay is based on the author's experiences as a former research cell biologist, high school science teacher, and developer of secondary science…

The acquisition of vocabulary is an important aspect of young children's development that may impact their later literacy skills (National Reading Panel, 2000; Cunningham & Stanovitch, 1997). Deaf children who are American Sign Language users, however, often have smaller vocabularies and lower literacy levels than their hearing peers…

Literacy or instructional coaches are becoming increasingly important in schools at all grade levels (kindergarten through grade 12). Because this is a growing professional leadership role, there is a new excitement about possible improvements to literacy instruction and increases in student achievement that may result from having formalized,…

Evidence suggests (Ofsted, 2007) that the role of the Subject Leader is crucial in how well poetry is taught in schools. This paper attempts to provide some insights on "what it is like" to coordinate poetry teaching in a primary school. Some of the data confirm elements of the findings from earlier research on the state of poetry in…

The Experiential Consultation Training Model (ECTM) provides students an opportunity to develop and practice consultation skills through real-life experiences in actual professional settings. The authors present the structure, process, and evaluation methods of the ECTM and discuss practical applications for counselor education. (Contains 1 table.)

Through ongoing rapid-fire changes in the nature of communications, the social, professional, and political landscapes of our time are rapidly transforming. But the prevailing paradigm in most schools and school systems is a relic of the industrial revolution. Schools and school systems must adopt a new paradigm for learning if they are to remain…

We want to challenge our students, but we need to give them tasks and assessments they can realistically succeed at and are valid indicators of their learning. Deconstructing planning, teaching, and assessment can help teachers instruct and assess more appropriately, leading to more confident, motivated, and higher-achieving learners. In this…

How can history teachers structure learning pathways through historical content in ways that engage and challenge all pupils, that enable them to work at an appropriate pace and that also encourage pupils to self-assess and monitor their own progress? Stainer reports and reflects on classroom experiments in "Mastery Learning" that aimed…

The history education community has long recognised that historical thinking depends on the interplay between substantive knowledge about the past and the procedural, or second-order, concepts that historians use to construct, shape and give meaning to that substance. While the nature of that interplay and the processes by which we enable pupils…

One way to engage all students and ensure that they feel valued within a classroom is to provide opportunities for learning that tap into varied intelligences. According to Howard Gardner, "It is of the utmost importance that we recognize and nurture all of the varied human intelligences, and all of the combinations of intelligences."…

We describe the difficulties advanced undergraduate and graduate students have with concepts related to addition of angular momentum in quantum mechanics. We also describe the development and implementation of a research-based learning tool, Quantum Interactive Learning Tutorial (QuILT), to reduce these difficulties. The preliminary evaluation…

Instructional Leadership faculty at the University of South Alabama redesigned their program's curricula between 2004 and 2006 to include new standards for instructional leaders. Seven of eleven public school superintendents in the University's service area signed a Memorandum of Agreement with the College of Education to plan, implement, and…

This paper examines the current stage of development of blended learning in higher education in China, South Korea and Japan, with a comparison to the city state of Singapore. It is noted that blended learning and e-learning are introduced at institutes of higher learning in these countries with varying degrees of success. A review of existing…

In order to design two distinct engineering qualification levels for an existing University of Technology programme, empirical evidence based on the current diploma is necessary to illuminate the nature of and the relationship between the "contextual" and "conceptual" elements underpinning a multidisciplinary engineering…