The new political dispensation and socio-economic transformation in South Africa do not, unfortunately, guarantee jobs for those who wish to enter the labour market after school. Indications are that only between 5-7% of successful Grade 12 candidates in the country find employment in the formal sector. The problem of unemployment and ways to…

The authors describe how their institution revised its general education writing curriculum and how that change not only affected the university's approach to advanced composition but also transformed the roles and relationships among teachers, librarians, literacy practices, curricula, students, and the community. Part service-learning, part…

This paper reports the current findings in literature on the impact of instructional technologies on teaching and learning environments pertaining higher education institutions. This study investigates the instructional design strategies in terms of (1) the scope of change in design strategies as a result of current school reform in the United…

In recent years, the infusion of multimedia into teaching and learning has altered considerably the instructional strategy in our educational institutions and changed the way teachers teach and students learn. The traditional teacher-centric method of teaching, used for decades in our educational system, has been modified and enhanced. In this…

This article examines the approaches to storytelling used by Greek parents with their preschool children. The first part of the article discusses the types of stories chosen and the reading approaches employed by the parents. The second part examines the extratextual interactions between parents and children related to content during storytelling.…

This report outlines three educational approaches: (a) "traditional," the currently dominant approach, a largely lecture-oriented, authoritarian style that makes heavy use of assessments "of" learning, which are useful for accountability purposes but only marginally useful for guiding day-to-day instruction; (b)…

Handheld computers have gone beyond the world of business and are finding their way into the hands of teachers and students. The empirical evidence suggests that the integration of handheld technology into the K-12 classrooms promotes 1) teacher productivity and 2) student-centered learning. Despite a wealth of anecdotal evidence little research…

Species identification tasks are a prerequisite for an understanding of biodiversity. Here, we focused on different educational materials to foster the identification of six European reptile species. Our educational training unit was based on natural plastic models of six species and pupils either used an illustrated identification book or a…

Over the past decade calls for reform in higher education have emphasized that education should become less instructor centered with students taking a more active role in their learning. Moreover, there is increasing pressure on university professors to implement student centered teaching strategies that negate time and place restrictions of the…

Teacher insurgency is on the rise as critical educators refuse to accept the authoritarianism of English-only reforms by struggling to undermine current educational policies while at the same time advancing alternatives. Federal hijacking of language policies -- presently manifested by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) -- is being met with…

These proceedings contain the papers of the IADIS International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2013), October 22-24, 2013, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS), co-organized by The University of North Texas (UNT), sponsored by the…