In this article the manifold aims and theorised benefits of Learning by Design are explored and evaluated through the practices and experiences of an early years mathematics teacher. The article examines and elaborates the ways in which this teacher took up and embraced Learning by Design as both a professional meta-language and as a design…

This article describes the use of assessment in the design and implementation stages of launching online courses and programs. While use of assessment for improving student engagement in both face-to-face and online courses has been commonly used, the authors augmented the strategic planning of programs to include assessment as a tool for…

This article presents partial results of an ethnographic study about literacy practices among adolescents living near the United States-Mexico border. The students became involved in literacy practices with their friends and family at home. These practices were related to the adolescents' interests in popular culture such as reading magazines or…

An e-learning project is a balance of time, cost, and scope measured against learner engagement. With this measure, the learner is part of every stage in the project's development. Assessing decisions with regards to learner impact will contribute to a more engaging and therefore successful project. To illustrate this concept, this paper will…

The Communities of Practice (CofP) framework and theories of engaged participation have profoundly shaped how we theorize, investigate, and represent a variety of learning and teaching processes, both in and out of classroom contexts. Within this framework, useful distinctions have been made between a teaching curriculum and a learning curriculum,…

Social media is changing the world in ways not yet understood. The effects are rippling through news, business, entertainment, and the political arena. A new generation of students is significantly more active in the way that they create and interact with one another. One effect on schools and schooling is apparent. The next generation will live…

Class attendance and out-of-class study time are known to be strongly associated with academic engagement and college GPA. The paper examines two other uses of time as influences on academic outcomes: those devoted to active engagements with friends and community as opposed to passive entertainments, and those that connect students to campus life…

Although an increasing number of teachers carry out action research inquiries in their educational practice, the role of pupils and students is not still sufficiently explored. In spite of the theoretical requirement for pupils to be equal participants, researchers explored the possibility of their becoming fully-fledged action researchers. This…

In this paper, we argue that novels, mysteries and nonfiction books can provide undergraduate students with an accessible and exciting place to explore sociological concepts. Using storytelling as a pedagogical tool, we teach students key theoretical ideas by analyzing the books in their specific sociocultural contexts. First, we put forward three…

Purpose: Although the notion of wisdom confronts the economic rationale of business organizations, this paper aims to argue that organizations are coming under increasing pressure not only to learn, change and adapt, but also to take actions that are ethically acceptable and respond to the expectations of multiple stakeholders, or in other words…

Shouldn't reading be aesthetically, emotionally, and intellectually enjoyable? Yet, as literature becomes complex in middle and high school with multiple characters, points of view, or difficult language, many adolescents forgo the idea of discovering enjoyment in literature. Based on the author's experience as an educator, researcher, and…

In the current climate in Australian higher education, quality assurance in university teaching is a priority. In particular, the introduction of the Learning and Teaching Performance Fund (LTPF) has refocused attention on universities' internal student evaluation survey instruments. This paper reports the development, validation and…

Engagement is crucial for 21st-century students, and nowhere more so than at the middle school level. Middle school is a time of transitions for students--from a single, self-contained classroom with one teacher who knows every student well, to six or even eight classrooms in which teachers see more than 100 students every day; from a pedagogy…

Engagement and integration increase when children have an opportunity to investigate something of great interest to them and have a say in what they learn about the topic. Helm explains how to use webs to introduce required concepts and skills and integrate standards in the project approach. She walks readers through five steps to making an…

To promote inquiry-based learning, the authors integrate the anatomy of a scientific journal article into their secondary science curriculum. In this article, they present three classroom activities used to teach students about the function and format of scientific journal articles. The first focuses on journal article figures, the second on…