This paper is based on research to identify common factors that contribute to the effective strategic leadership of teaching and learning centres. The second of three phases of data collection involved a survey of Directors of Australian teaching and learning centres. The data collected were quantitatively analysed using a range of descriptive,…

Given the recent release and widespread state adoption of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM), teachers across the country now have common goals related to what their students should understand about particular mathematical topics. The authors of CCSSM explain, "Asking a student to understand something means asking a teacher to…

In the 1990s, most US states adopted new forms of performance-based accountability, e.g., performance-based budgeting, funding, or reporting. This study analyzed changes in institutional performance following the adoption of these new accountability standards. We measured institutional performance by representative education and research…

People frequently hear competing media and research claims about the educational value of new technologies. But too often it is not clear how, if at all, these technologies are supporting learning. And there is not enough attention paid to the challenges of trying to introduce these technologies successfully into an educational context. To what…

The manuscript examines the relationship between language, identity, and classroom learning. Through an exploration of a series of research studies conducted over the course of 6 years, this manuscript examines how the idea of "Good Teaching" fails to account for the language-identity learning dilemma. In stage one of the research, a series of…

In higher education music, individual practice remains a unique and solitary activity, perhaps the least accessible to the scrutiny of either teachers or researchers. This study reports on an investigation of the variety among student approaches to practice, with reference to year groups, age, instrumental groups and examination results. Data were…

The sectoral divide between vocational education and training (VET) and higher education in Australia is blurring as a consequence of broader social and economic pressures for a more highly skilled population, but also as a consequence of government policies designed to develop tertiary education markets and to diversify institutional types. The…

In this study we described an action research project enacted by a veteran Kindergarten teacher (Sarah) in the context of a professional development program. Over the course of a year, Sarah collaborated with other teachers in a small group to investigate how to use "Science Talks" to promote student learning in Kindergarten classrooms. A…

The notion of Indigenous epistemologies and "ways of knowing" continues to be undervalued within various academic disciplines, particularly those who continue to draw upon "scientific" approaches that colonise Indigenous peoples today. This paper will examine the politics of contested knowledge from the perspective of three…

Drawing on primary data and adjunct material, this article adopts a critical self-reflexive approach to a three-year, Australian Research Council-funded project that explored themes around "employment citizenship" for high school students in Queensland. The article addresses three overlapping areas that reflect some of the central…

We incorporated an active, collaborative-based research project in our undergraduate Research Methods course for first-year sports medicine majors. Working in small groups, students identified a research question, generated a hypothesis to be tested, designed an experiment, implemented the experiment, analyzed the data, and presented their…

Supporting undergraduate students with their academic literacies has recently been a major focus in higher education in the UK. This paper explores the value of tutor mediation in the context of academic writing development among undergraduate business studies students in open and distance learning, following the dynamic assessment (DA) approach…

The benefits of course-management software (CMS) will not be realized if it is underused. The authors investigated one possible barrier to CMS use, students' perceptions of using CMS. After taking a course requiring a group research project, college students reported their perceptions of the use of CMS for the course. Overall, students did not…

This paper addresses the question of whether proximity is always necessary for interactive learning, as proposed by recent European innovation theory. Recent research has provided a refined conceptualization of proximity, but there is little empirically-based knowledge about the actual role that proximity plays in relationships intended to foster…

The study of protein-protein interactions is important to scientists in a wide range of disciplines. We present here the assessment of a lab-intensive course that teaches students techniques used to identify and further study protein-protein interactions. One of the unique elements of the course is that students perform a yeast two-hybrid screen…