Play, which is both a context and process for children's learning, has become a pivotal pedagogical component in global early childhood education. The uptake of intentional teaching has contributed to the shift in understandings of play, from viewing play as a means of recreation and entertainment to a more socio-cultural perspective that…

As part of ongoing collaborations with associate and mentor teachers, we explore teachers' decision making in order to help student teachers and others become aware of the myriad decisions and political choices made by teachers in their everyday work with children. In this article we are particularly interested in care, and in the way the idea of…

In recent years, educators, administrators, policymakers, and measurement experts have called for assessments that support educators in making better instructional decisions. One promising approach to measurement to support instructional decision-making is diagnostic classification models (DCMs). DCMs are flexible psychometric models that…

When instructional designers talk about what they do, they often discuss their outcomes rather than their process. Conjecturing during decision-making requires the instructional designer to build upon their prior knowledge of the situation and experiences and make assumptions based on available information to design an appropriate solution. This…

Learning by Evaluating (LbE) is an instructional approach that involves students making comparative judgements of pairs of artifacts, such as student work, portfolios, prototypes, or curated images related to a topic of instruction to enhance critical thinking and decision-making skills. Situated as a primer for learning, the efficacy of LbE stems…

Community colleges have teaching faculty whose primary focus is educating their students and providing service to their institution. Community college teaching research has focused on innovation, students' expectations, and the use of active learning techniques to foster student success. Research on blended courses has focused on instructional…

In many low- and medium-income countries (LMICs), student-centered pedagogies are often implicitly or explicitly at the heart of innovative pedagogical reforms. In recent years, there has been a growing emphasis on student-centered pedagogies, which aim to shift power dynamics, increase interaction, and prioritize the needs of learners. Many…

Democracy and capitalism are two of the most consequential institutional systems in the world. However, their dynamic complexity, current turmoil, and evolution make them challenging to study. High-engagement teaching can bring the subjects alive, motivate student exploration, inform choices, animate sensible policy recommendations, and make a…

By considering the interconnectedness of various elements, such as curriculum, instruction, assessment, and school organization, systems thinking provides a framework to understand the underlying patterns, feedback loops, and leverage points that shape educational outcomes. Frick's (1993) systems view of restructuring education supports the notion…

The purpose of this study was to explore how teachers engaged in data use for instructional decision making. A grounded theory research design was used to analyze interviews of 10 special education teachers. Special education teachers were asked to complete an online survey and were interviewed with questions to reveal their experiences with…

Although higher education institutions may be described as forward-thinking in areas such as research, their teaching practices are often perceived as lacking in innovation. This disjunction has led educators, researchers, and policymakers to question the role and implementation of change in higher education contexts and the factors that affect…

Nontraditional grading methods have recently become more common, and as with any large pedagogical shift, there are a number of questions to consider when applying a new grading scheme to a course. This article summarizes four types of nontraditional grading and shares experiences from the authors who have applied them to a variety of courses in…

While Reinforcement learning (RL), especially Deep RL (DRL), has shown outstanding performance in video games, little evidence has shown that DRL can be successfully applied to human-centric tasks where the ultimate RL goal is to make the "human-agent interactions" productive and fruitful. In real-life, complex, human-centric tasks, such…

Purpose: Knowledge management (KM) is a process that depends on changes and transfers to different levels of understanding among individuals and acts as a powerful tool to strengthen the organization to remove the barriers, affect the decision-making process and enable individuals and organizations to achieve sustainable advantages. This study…

Team-based learning (TBL) is an instructional strategy where students participate in a set of activities including, applying course concepts to real-life case studies in instructor-selected teams. Here, we describe how TBL has been incorporated into a 3rd year, large, environmental chemistry course and investigate the benefits of using this…