By definition and purpose, education is the development of human capital towards meeting the individual and social needs of learners and their societies. This transdisciplinary collaboration parallels the underpinning principle of Lave and Wenger's Legitimate Peripheral Participation (Lave & Wenger, 1990) to South Africa's post-colonial…

We evaluated Samaniego and Reneau's 1994 novel weight method for eliciting subjective probability estimates. Experiment 1 replicated their experiment (subjects weighed their prior estimate against 10 new observations), with an additional weight judgment against 50 observations. In Experiment 2, subjects gave prior estimates to questions in a…

The North West Early Childhood and Primary Teacher Workforce Development Strategy offers students in the Pilbara and Kimberley the opportunity to enrol in a Western Australian University's fully accredited Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood and Primary) part time and externally--so they can continue to live and work in their communities. The…

This article reports on findings pertaining to education scholarship in higher education drawn from a wider study on all education research in South Africa from 1995 to 2006. After briefly outlining pertinent aspects of the wider study, it offers a preliminary and descriptive account of what were found to be primary research themes in higher…

Study abroad (SA) is one of the flagship offerings among United States higher education institutions. Approximately 220,000 students studied abroad in the 2005/2006 academic year, 52.8% of whom studied on programs that lasted eight weeks or less. The effect of these short-term programs on second language development has been little investigated,…

Talk is the foundation for thought and understanding and the key to literacy learning. Research demonstrates that powerful metacognitive strategies can be taught to help students self-monitor their comprehension when reading print and digital texts. This article provides a repertoire of speaking and listening strategies to develop the…

Current theoretical conversations in the field of Rhetoric and Composition, particularly conversations related to first-year curricular design, are increasingly concerned with the issue of "teaching for transfer." While developing successful transfer pedagogy is a challenging undertaking, one that may require writing instructors to…

Accreditation bodies, state departments of education, learned societies, and critics of educational leadership programs have emphasized the need for such programs to recruit and select the candidates who have the greatest potential of becoming effective school leaders. To meet this challenge, most university principal preparation programs have…

Pre-tests are a non-graded assessment tool used to determine pre-existing subject knowledge. Typically pre-tests are administered prior to a course to determine knowledge baseline, but here they are used to test students prior to topical material coverage throughout the course. While counterintuitive, the pre-tests cover material the student is…

This article considers various learning theories, applied to three key transforming areas in adult education in general, and distance learning in particular: the andragogical issues, the technical issues, and the cultural issues. Cultural Dimension Indexes from Hofstede (1997) are appended. (Contains 1 chart.)

The recognition of prior learning (RPL/PLAR) has been on the margins of Canada's educational and economic scene for many years. A series of recent developments across Canada prompted this writer to reflect on whether a combination of forces may be moving RPL toward its "tipping point." In examining this possibility, the article situates…

Pre-service teachers face many challenges as they learn to teach in ways that are different from their own educational experiences. Pre-service teachers often enter teacher education courses with pre-conceptions about teaching and learning that may or may not be consistent with contemporary learning theory. To build on preservice teachers' prior…

This study examined the effects of prior knowledge, learner preference for control, and type of control (learner or program) on the achievement of middle-school students in a computer-based instructional program on adding and subtracting integers. Students were blocked by preference-for-control scores and randomly assigned to either a…

Is helping behaviour (i.e., solicited help and peer tutoring) during cooperative learning (CL) related to subsequent learning gains? And can teachers influence pupils' helping behaviour? One hundred and one 5th grade pupils from multiethnic schools, 10-12 years old, participated in the study. Forty-two pupils (31 immigrant pupils) worked in an…

Attitudes toward learning (ATL) have been shown to influence students' learning outcomes. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the ways in which the interaction between ATL, the learning situation, and the level of students' prior knowledge influence affective reactions and conceptual change. In this study, a simulation of acid-base…