When the author came to Villa Park High School in Orange County, California back in 1998, having just finished fourteen years in an East Los Angeles school, she expected to find communication technology already operative. It was just beginning at Bell High School where she had been, in Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), with a Video…

Whereas science teachers in the last century were trained to place empirical activities at the heart of school science (Yore, Bisanz & Hand, 2003) and give relatively less attention to language issues, fundamental literacy (as defined by Norris & Phillips, 2003) is now recognised as having a crucial role in learning science. However, there have…

Technology education in Irish post-primary schools is undergoing significant change. In recent years the syllabi of all technology-related subjects have been revised. A new subject, Design and Communication Graphics, has replaced the traditional Technical Drawing subject. This new subject aims to develop students' spatial awareness and graphical…

This article presents the process of recent curricular revision and material development in English at the national level in India in a limited way. Teachers' needs and wants, their participation in the development of materials, the dilemmas of teachers and their implications for classroom transactions are discussed from the experiences of one of…

This case study analyzes five science courses of a United States virtual charter school. Online quizzes and exams are provided by the corporate partner, while local teachers have selected report topics, virtual labs and at-home labs for students to complete. These assessments were coded for their correlation to the cognitive levels of the revised…

This manual, "Course Information for the Graduation Program, Grade 10, 11, and 12 Courses: 2009-2010," was approved by the Minister of Education on July 30, 2009 for setting out graduation requirements. The manual provides information for schools about courses that students take in Grades 10, 11, and 12. It is updated annually with…

The rapid changes in information technology in recent years have rendered current high school curricula unable to cope with student needs. In consequence, students do not possess the proper skills required in today's information era. Specifically, many students lack the skills to search efficiently for information. Moreover, even when abundant…

This article provides a conceptual basis for a teacher preparation course designed to improve the writing skills and teaching practices of in-service teachers. To propose this course, we first examined the research on preparing all secondary in-service teachers to use writing well. Research suggests that teachers' histories as writers greatly…

This book embraces the idea of listening to and learning from students. Although many educational theorists have long argued that incorporating children's perspectives about teaching and curriculum has the potential for increasing students' interest and participation in learning, their radical perspectives are still ignored or dismissed in theory…

This paper provides a case study of the use of language objectives within a newly developed English language teacher education programme in Hong Kong. The programme development team decided to adopt a content-based language teaching approach to support students' second language development through content learning. The teacher education programme…

Cosmology education has become an integral part of modern physics courses. Directed by National Curricula, major UK examination boards have developed syllabi that contain explicit statements about the model of the Big Bang and the strong observational evidence that supports it. This work examines the similarities and differences in these…

School music has a comparatively low take-up rate as a qualification among English secondary school pupils. Existing research on the issue has proffered possible reasons for this phenomenon but has generally been piecemeal and undertheorised. This paper sets out a fresh theoretical perspective capable of providing a basis for systematic empirical…

The Standards of Learning in this publication represent a major development in public education in Virginia. Adopted in February 2007 by the Virginia Board of Education, these standards emphasize the importance of foreign language instruction in the Commonwealth and, therefore, are an important part of Virginia's efforts to provide challenging…

Raising attainment has become an over-riding concern for politicians and educational administrators on both sides of the Atlantic. The public perception, often generated by adverse reports in the media, is of declining educational standards. However, it is often difficult to compare standards across time and between countries since assessments do…

Secondary vocational-technical education programs in Mississippi are faced with many challenges resulting from sweeping educational reforms at the national and state levels. Schools and teachers are increasingly being held accountable for providing true learning activities to every student in the classroom. This accountability is measured through…