This article is an account of a creative learning project conducted in the author's school in which she worked with a storyteller to engage a class of 14-15-year-old students in exploring other worlds, inspired by the "His Dark Materials" novels by Philip Pullman. The project was conceived as teacher-led action research in which the author…

These "Proceedings" derived from the Commission for International Adult Education's (CIAE) 2018 International Pre-Conference. They contain 23 papers from 32 authors. Eight of the lead authors are graduate students -- four are rounding up their Master's degrees while four are on their doctoral programs. The rest are a mix of seasoned and…

Evidence-based medicine is often seen as a model for evidence-based education, and deservedly so, but evaluators in education have been slow to adopt one of its salient features, attention to side effects. Many education evaluations focus almost exclusively on efficacy, that is on achievement test scores. Regardless of domain, all interventions…

Besides traditional supervised classification learning, people can learn categories by inferring the missing features of category members. It has been proposed that feature inference learning promotes learning a category's internal structure (e.g., its typical features and interfeature correlations) whereas classification promotes the learning of…

As an extension of the effort devoted to updating the questionnaires for TIMSS and PIRLS 2011, this dissertation explored a new reporting strategy for contextual questionnaire data. The study investigated the feasibility of constructing "global indicators" from a large number of diverse background variables, which could provide policy…

Most policy makers and administrators know that by itself good instruction delivered by highly qualified teachers is not enough to ensure that all students have an equal opportunity to succeed at school. Schools continue to suffer from high dropout rates of students and staff, an achievement gap that resists closure, a high incidence of schools…

A limited amount of literature has discussed older adults in formal education, especially their motivations to learn in higher education. This study aims to understand older adults' learning in the context of higher education. Specifically, this study argues that higher education can function as a stimulating learning environment that helps older…

This qualitative case study explores how undergraduate students and their instructor made meaning of students' motivation to learn in a one-credit, pass/fail first-year seminar. The findings point to the importance of addressing structural motivational barriers and ensuring that instructors possess the instructional, motivational, and…

The young people who are the focus of this article grow up in communities ravaged by poverty and conflict. School is where they spend most of their time, but their experience of school is, generally, not motivating and increases their feelings of social exclusion; almost one in ten young people whose family depends on benefits leaves school with…

It has been recognised that the general lack of enjoyment of institutional mathematics learning at the secondary level is one of the basic reasons behind the bad reputation of mathematics in society. Increasing students' motivation to learn mathematics through enjoyment and playing, especially in their free time, might therefore be a relevant…

This study examines the longitudinal trajectories of two Korean ESL immigrants' L2 learning motivation from an Activity Theory perspective. Two highly skilled immigrants participated in monthly semistructured interviews over a period of 10 months. The research questions are as follows: (1) How does the relationship between ESL learners and their…

This paper reviews recent research on learning patterns of student teachers and experienced teachers, mostly in the context of educational innovation and teachers' professional development. The discussion is structured along a model of teacher learning patterns comprising learning activities, regulation of learning, beliefs on own learning about…

Recent advances in mobile and wireless communication technologies have enabled various new learning approaches which situate students in environments that combine real-world and digital-world learning resources; moreover, students are allowed to share knowledge or experiences with others during the learning process. Although such an approach seems…

The process of reflective writing can play a central role in making meaning as learners process new information and connect it to prior knowledge. An examination of the written discourse can therefore be revealing of learners' cognitive understanding and affective (beliefs, feelings, motivation to learn) responses to concepts. Despite reflective…

Framed in Vygotsky's sociocultural theory (SCT) of mind, this paper explores second language (L2) learning beliefs in study-abroad (SA) contexts. Previous research on learner beliefs has relied mostly on survey methods, while regarding belief as a static, internal representation of experience that is resistant to change. Due to the concern…