Several factors, including the Bologna process, the embargo on university posts, and a larger student population pursuing degrees, have contributed to radical changes in teaching, learning, and assessment in Irish higher education in the last few years. Challenges to academics have resulted in curriculum reform, and most importantly, in innovative…

Community colleges face extraordinary challenges in the 21st century. Driven by the economic downturn, shrinking state funding, and limited facilities, these forces have created a significant impact on community college enrollments as well as instructional methods. Student retention and completion success rates have climbed to the top of the…

Research conducted in nearly the last decade has drawn attention to the fact that adolescents often feel disconnected with schooling. Youth are described as bored, unmotivated, uninterested, not listening, and feeling averse to learning. In studies highlighting urban adolescents, feelings of disconnection, disaffection, and despair are noted.…

This study explored the concept of school connectedness and the factors that may influence its development with a sample of Chinese adolescents. Six focus groups involving 52 high school students were conducted using a set of predetermined discussion topics. Results indicated that the students fully understood the notion of school connectedness…

Students often find themselves disconnected from foundations courses such as Philosophy of Education, citing the abstract nature of some of the ideas studied and a perceived disconnect from practical issues. Moreover, the place/space of the university classroom itself can be seen to contribute to students' disengagement and stunting of their…

This meta-analysis and narrative review synthesizes the literature on classroom goal structures and their relationships with student outcomes, focusing additionally on the ways in which these constructs are operationalized across research studies. Specifically, this study evaluates the relationships between students' perceptions of mastery and…

Situative and sociocognitive analyses were combined to examine engagement in high-level collaborative learning and its relationship with individuals' cognitions. Video footage of 53 science university students' (nine groups) collaborative learning interactions as they worked through a case-based project was analysed in combination with students'…

This experimental study examined how the reading and writing development of sixth-grade L2 students was affected by syntactic enhancement. Visual-syntactic text formatting (VSTF) technology, which visualizes syntactic structures, was used to convert a textbook to the one with syntactic enhancement. The sample (n = 282), which was drawn from a…

This study involves an Australian Western Victorian District High School year nine mixed ability mathematics class learning mathematics using social justice pedagogy. The learning intent of the unit required students to compare their own lifestyles against different families from around the world and use mathematics as a tool to investigate…

This document presents the proceedings of the 21st Annual Research Forum held June 30, 2016, at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Included are the following 11 action research papers: The Use of Mexican Folk Art to Develop Oral and Written Language Ability and Cultural Awareness in the Secondary Spanish Classroom (Antonio…

Caring instruction has been shown to support students' engagement with and learning of academic content. Although previous research has shown that caring instruction matters, research is needed that illustrates the nature of caring instruction in a manner that is situated in relation to specific school subjects. Additionally, information about the…

This study aims to investigate student satisfaction on quality education services provided by institutions of higher learning in Malaysia. Their level of satisfaction based primarily on the data collected through five dimensions of education service quality. A random sample of 250 students studying in an institution of higher learning was selected…

The purpose of this research study was to explore the influence of Confucian-heritage culture on Chinese learners' online learning and engagement in online discussion in U.S. higher education. More specifically, this research studied Chinese learners' perceptions of power distance and its impact on their interactions with instructors and peers in…

The Biological Sciences Curriculum Studies (BSCS) 5E Instructional Model (often referred to as the 5Es) consists of five phases. Each phase has a specific function and contributes both to teachers' coherent instruction and to students' formulation of a better understanding of scientific knowledge, attitudes and skills. Evidence indicates that the…

Over the past decade it has been frequently reported that East Asian students are outperforming their Western counterparts in international tests of mathematics at middle-school level. This paper probes classroom discourse in an attempt to shed some light on this phenomenon. Data were collected from a sample of Chinese Year 8 students in a normal…