SCALE-UP (Student-Centered Active Learning Environment with Upside-Down Pedagogies) (Beichner et al., 2007) is a reformed pedagogy and classroom design originally developed for large enrollment university physics courses at North Carolina State University. It is currently being used at over 250 institutions worldwide and has since expanded into…

The Big Data movement and the renewed focus on data analytics are transforming everything from healthcare delivery systems to the way cities deliver services to residents. Now is the time to examine how this Big Data could help build smarter universities. While much of the cutting-edge research that is being done with Big Data is happening at…

According to the authors, a social justice curriculum positively influences all students. Social justice, critical pedagogy, and culturally relevant teaching are becoming essential as more and more language educators teach in increasingly diverse world language classrooms. This new publication supports in-service and pre-service teachers in…

Higher education research is a developing field internationally, attracting more and more researchers from a great variety of disciplinary backgrounds within and beyond higher education institutions. As such, it is an arena within which a wide range of theories, methods, and methodologies are being applied. As an expanding multidisciplinary area…

State education agencies (SEAs) and local education agencies (LEAs) made clear in a recent Reform Support Network (RSN) survey and follow-up interviews that staff must have the capacity to successfully engage stakeholders through social media. This is not a new challenge for government; staff capacity -- the number of staff and their access to…

ESEA (Elementary and Secondary Education Act) flexibility provides a voluntary opportunity for states to be released from certain requirements of NCLB (No Child Left Behind). In exchange, states will lead efforts to raise standards so they focus on college and careers, help teachers and principals focus on teaching and learning, and improve all…

Technology firms with substantial cash reserves acquire smaller entrepreneurial firms for diversification. In 2006, 3 large firms acquired 28 organizations, with the combined deals exceeding $4.7 billion. The problem addressed in this study is that new start-up companies with innovative ideas may not mature when they are acquired by larger…

Many innovation-oriented concepts have recently been discussed as means to improve science education and instruction as well as the corresponding tests and exit exams. So far, empirical evidence of whether these new concepts for exam tasks actually find their way into the exam practice is still pending. This contribution takes up this desideratum…

Good times are not just around the corner. Rather, at least for the next half-decade, educators are facing what Secretary Duncan has termed the "new normal." After three generations in which national, nominal per pupil spending went up every single year, learning to operate in an environment of flat or declining spending is a new challenge for…

Modern Catholic doctrine clearly states that education for justice is constitutive of a Catholic university. However, the Catholic university had a long history of educating for justice even before the advent of the Church's social teaching in the late nineteenth century. What are the warrants or precedents, if any, for the contemporary focus on…

In this paper, I argue that research and development organizations (R&DOs) have particular perspectives on what counts as an innovation whereas the potential adopting users usually have quite different often diverse perspectives. If these "worldviews" do not overlap or speak to each other, then what R&DOs consider innovative might constitute a…

National and transnational qualifications frameworks are an increasingly present feature of the education and training landscape. The United Kingdom can be regarded as one of the pioneers of qualifications frameworks, with partial frameworks appearing from the mid-1980s onwards. However, approaches in England if not in the whole of the UK have…

With the advent of mobile phones--and smartphones in particular--people are slowly moving away from the notion that mobile phones are just for making calls and texting. This coupled with the fact that the uptake of mobile phones hit the 5 billion mark in 2010 has spurred many libraries to offer services that can be used by their patrons on these…

In this article, the author asserts that those who teach writing must regularly engage in conversations with "all" teachers about how their work with and on writing connects to work that students are doing across the entire curriculum. In other words, writing and writing instruction are not and should not be considered the sole responsibility of…

Efforts to prepare teachers and other professionals for inclusive education in the Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS/CEE) region are heavily influenced by the legacy of Soviet defectology (the study of children with disabilities) and Soviet traditions of teacher education. The authors identify some…