In this article, an approach to unit plans using essential questions is described within the context of general music education and illustrated in the unit "Repetition and Contrasts: Understanding Music Through Form." This unit is founded on the essential question: As musicians, how do we use form to organize and understand music?…

When it comes to improving student achievement in mathematics, a core belief is that curriculum materials are of the utmost importance. However, the link between a curriculum program and student learning is affected by the ways in which teachers use resources to design learning experiences. In the first half of this commentary, I raise questions…

The main purpose of this research was to develop a guide material in line with learning outcomes of the unit for the 5th Graders titled Solving the Puzzle: Our Body in order to be utilized during out-of-school learning activities by science teachers. There is no guide material developed in our country for science teachers to be used in out-of…

Multimodal pedagogy is increasingly accepted among composition scholars. However, putting such pedagogy into practice presents significant challenges. In this profile of Washington State University's first-year composition program, we suggest a multi-vocal and multi-theoretical approach to addressing the challenges of multimodal pedagogy. Patricia…

This book describes how different nations have defined the core competencies and skills that young people will need in order to thrive in the twenty-first-century, and how those nations have fashioned educational policies and curricula meant to promote those skills. The book examines six countries--Chile, China, India, Mexico, Singapore, and the…

The challenge of updating curriculum to align with Common Core State Standards is a national one felt by states, districts, and teachers alike. Teachers generally express enthusiasm for the Common Core, but consistently cite a lack of high-quality curricula as an impediment to teaching them. The demand for core-aligned quality materials has far…

The English Language Arts (ELA) standards are compositionally flawed and further distorted by a high-stakes environment that discourages balanced, meaningful pedagogy; to subvert this reality, teachers must practice subterfuge by foregrounding Personal Standards as the primary drivers of instruction. This author discusses how ELA instructors must…

Over the past few decades, a growing body of evidence demonstrates that students learn best in engaging, interactive, collaborative, and inquiry-based environments. However, most college science classes are still taught with traditional methods suggesting the existing selection of research-based instructional materials has not widely transformed…

We use thematic analysis to explore how mathematical concepts are developed in four enactments of the same task. Thematic analysis emerges from Systemic Functional Linguistics and provides a means to explore the development of mathematical ideas in the classroom discourse. Thematic analysis was used to explore how themes related to the comparison…

In August 2010, the California State Board of Education adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Three years later, the president of the State Board, Dr. Michael Kirst, noted that CCSS "changes almost everything," including what teachers teach, how they teach, and what students are expected to learn (Kirst, 2013). Echoing his…

Digital content is increasingly present in U.S. K-12 classrooms, with a current push by federal officials to increase the rate at which digital textbooks are adopted. While some teachers' use of electronic resources involves locating activities and lessons from various internet sites, textbook and educational software companies have begun to…

English teaching and learning has taken an interesting shift in Hong Kong schools with the implementation of the New Senior Secondary (NSS) curriculum under the "334" education reform. Situating the paper within the broader considerations of the intersection of Cultural Studies and English teaching, this paper examines the challenges and…

The purpose of the present study was to investigate if we could improve retention by redesigning an online programming course from a gender perspective, while maintaining the focus on preferable and sustainable learning approaches. The study builds on results from an earlier study that investigated the relationship between approaches to learning…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate leadership curricula in UAE business and education management programmes and examine the extent to which they are derived from and linked to students' cultural and Islamic values using Habermas' critical theory. Design/methodology/approach: The study employs a mixed methods approach that takes…

The objective of this study is to better understand the process by which K-12 school districts select curricula materials in four critical subject areas: Mathematics, English Language Arts, Science, and History and Social Studies. This research has two primary goals: (1) to understand the process by which K-12 school districts select and adopt…