By engaging students in everyday issues and events, STEM education can contribute to the development of citizens who are equipped to make the world a better place. However, students' STEM learning with this focus requires teachers to identify age and context appropriate issues. Student investigation of local issues and events can be motivating for…

A new didactical approach named "Learning by Being" (LBB) is proposed and its correlation with current educational paradigms in science teaching is analysed. The key idea in LBB is the assumption by the students of cognitive goals, and three components are mandatory in LBB: a) student's personal learning effort, b) student-teacher mutual…

Myths about students in higher education pervade both popular and academic literature. Such folklore thrives due to the belated development of systematic enquiry into higher education as a field of academic study, the neglect of an historical perspective, and an over-reliance on opinion-based scholarship and interview data drawn from University…

Low enrolment in undergraduate level physics programmes has drawn the attention of the relevant disciplines, education policy-makers, and researchers worldwide. Many reports released during the previous decades attempt to identify the factors that attract young people to study science, but only few of them focus explicitly on physics. In Greece,…

Multicultural courses pose several challenges for counselor educators. This article presents a rationale for using a relational approach to teaching multicultural courses and includes 3 classroom activities based in relational pedagogy and relational-cultural theory. By using a relational approach, counselor educators can encourage students to…

In the context of renewed interest in teachers' identities as writers and the writers as artist-educators, this paper reports upon the findings of "Teachers as Writers" (2015-2017). A collaborative partnership between two universities and a creative writing foundation, the study sought to determine the impact of writers' engagement with…

The chapter analyzes how the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas.org), an online interactive platform developed to visualize and study struggles against environmental injustices worldwide, is used in higher education curricula to teach environmental justice and sustainability themes.

In this article, we review research that has examined the association between race, ethnicity, culture, and student motivation. We begin by describing potential problems regarding how race, ethnicity, and culture are defined in research. Next, we review some of the methods that have been used to examine the associations among race, ethnicity,…

This article synthesizes literatures relating to the fields of andragogy and prison education. It is a key moment to reflect on teaching practices inside carceral settings. As Pell Grant availability for incarcerated students is set to expand dramatically, many college and university faculty are soon likely to be entering prisons as instructors…

Children's memberships in social groups have profound effects on their motivation. Stereotypes about social groups shape children's beliefs about what is expected for their group members. These beliefs can influence children's developing beliefs about themselves (self-perceptions). In this article, I review research on how gender stereotypes…

The effects of video games on self-esteem is an understudied area in social science research, despite the gaming industries massive economic growth and how widespread games have become in everyday lives. This paper explores and investigates literature on how playing video games could impact psychological well-being, specifically self-esteem.…

This paper aims to contribute to the contested body of work about the factors influencing student motivation, expectations, engagement and satisfaction in higher education (HE). Policy surrounding the deployment and use of the National Student Survey (NSS) and the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) constructs social relationships between teachers…

There has been increasing concern about the presence of disengaged test taking in international assessment programmes and its implications for the validity of inferences made regarding a country's level of educational attainment. This issue has received a growing research interest over the past 20 years, with notable advances in both the…

This article -- the first part of a two-part contribution -- considers the current and past state of research on the history of adult education in Britain. Although there has been a broadening of interest among historians of adult education, the field remains to an extent in the shadow of the "Great Tradition" of liberal education…

In a world of globalization and transparency, many academic institutions are prioritizing the accreditation of their teaching and learning environments in order to achieve a strategic advantage over their competitors. This research examines the perceived benefits of accreditation from students' perspectives and, in particular, assesses the extent…