Education & Pedagogy

The object of this article is to reveal the teaching strategies used by teachers for religious education in Temuco, Chile. The paradigm used was qualitative and the design was a single interpretative case study. The data were collected by semi-structured interviews with pupils and religious education (RE) teachers. The results show convergences of successful strategies, such as the use of conversations to form opinions related with the pupils' everyday interests. We conclude that significant learning for catholic religious education in schools (CRES) includes teaching strategies associated with individual and collective reflections and conversations on topical social issues. Thus, religious education may enable us to advance towards a pluralist approach to the teaching of religion.

The concept of citizenship has changed and evolved over time. Spain, as part of the European Union, has been included in a paradigm shift from a focus on nationalism to the concept of global citizenship. This has spurred a national controversy over the way in which Spanish students should be educated about citizenship. This article provides a concise history of citizenship education in Spain. An overview of the "Education for Citizenship and Human Rights" (EfC) curriculum is also incorporated with a description of the controversy surrounding its implementation as a mandatory school subject. It concludes with an explanation of Kingdom citizenship and implications and recommendations for Christian schools.

This paper presents reflections from recent research on the opportunities and barriers for education in Nepal in the context of federalisation. Public administration of services including education is subject to major reorganisation as a national priority. By 2019, new structures of local governance will be established, presenting an opportunity for improved coordination of education, health and social work at regional and municipality levels. Drawing on interviews with academic, school-based and NGO stakeholders, findings offer a contemporary commentary on processes, power and possibilities to improve educational inclusion and progress towards the Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education.

The paper provides a review of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education policy research completed thus far and continues by calling for STEM analysis that understands policy processes as governance rather than government. Instead of a fixed and easily locatable governmental structure by which one can analyze the nature of governing, governance is comprised of an always-shifting topological manifold. Using such theory, STEM education policy must be analyzed for its context and text. Using such analysis could suggest that the current policy directives in STEM education, including those laid out in the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015, are more related to an increase in the application of market logics to education "rather than" supportive of specific actions related to STEM teaching and learning.

This study explores the experiences of selected teachers undertaking place-based education (PBE) in a prairie region, the challenges they encounter, and their understanding of the knowledge and skills required to implement PBE. PBE is defined and described. Five individual teachers and one teaching team of two who practice PBE are interviewed. The findings are reported thematically and implications for teacher education are discussed. The varied practice of these teachers is instructive for educators interested in holistic, inquiry-based methodologies rooted in local settings and points to directions for teacher education programs to take in implementation.

We acknowledge that some students with severe disabilities are not being taught in general education. We do not agree that inclusion in general education is inherently better, nor do we think it is always appropriate, and we provide some reasons that a full continuum of alternative placements is not only legally mandated but appropriate. We are supportive of placement in general education for children with severe disabilities when it is appropriate. [For "Why Aren't Students with Severe Disabilities Being Placed in General Education Classrooms: Examining the Relations among Classroom Placement, Learner Outcomes, and Other Factors," by Agran et al., see EJ1246688.]

The wide adoption of mobile technology has greatly influenced K-12 education. In teacher education programs, it is necessary for educators to train teacher education students to use mobile technology for educational purpose. This paper reports an exploratory effort in preparing elementary education students for mobile learning. The participants' perceptions of mobile learning and intended use of mobile technology were examined through the analyses of their online discussion posts, responses to survey items and their projects. Their perceived benefits of mobile learning, limitations of mobile technology, their intended implementation of mobile learning and the challenges they anticipated were reported. Implications and recommendations were discussed regarding the knowledge of mobile apps, pedagogical practices and some non-instructional issues.

The purpose of this article is to consider how higher education responds to conflict on campus and in the community. Moving beyond the victim/perpetrator paradigm prevalent in the literature on education in conflict contexts toward the transformative capacity of education, this research suggests that public universities may develop mechanisms that orient the institution toward capacity and consensus building--constructs associated with infrastructures for peace. Findings from comparative case studies conducted in Côte d'Ivoire and Kenya at two public universities demonstrate that both intentional and indirect policies were cultivated to contend with and possibly transform the conditions for localized conflict and begin to theorize university infrastructures for peace.

This article reviews the educational policy for the integration of society in Georgia. It is an analytical research paper on the current situation of ethnic minority education in Georgia. The problems and opportunities of bilingual education policy are analysed in the article. The content analysis research method was utilised in the study. The author argues that bilingual education is a crucial tool for the integration of Georgian society; however, local control, involvement, and context are crucial in the implementation of a national bilingual educational programme. The changes on the political, institutional and pedagogical levels of bilingual education are necessary for the successful implementation of bilingual education reform.

Calls to establish public education avoid the fact that public education is provided by the capitalist state whose real purpose is the market-based model of private gain. Public against private education is a false dichotomy; rather, public and private are complementary forms of capitalist regulation. Radical alternatives require a more foundational critique of the structures of capitalist education, grounded in an understanding of the contradictory relationship between capital and labour on which the institutions of capitalist civilisation are based. This article suggests a counter project: not public education but social knowing as the basis for a solidaristic form of social life. Our model for social knowing starts with the idea of a co-operative university.

The increased presence of online education in higher education in the United States continues to challenge educators in their perceptions of teaching and learning experiences in virtual environments. While critiques of online education typically focus on its "less than" shortcomings, this literature review encourages educators to take a "more than" approach when providing institutional support. Online education provides beneficial outcomes for faculty, students, and administration when viewed for its potential in providing innovative teaching and learning. The financial challenges involved in providing these practices are addressed to justify investment in faculty effort, organizational support and professional development, and equitable student support.

This research aimed to explore student perceptions of teacher-related factors that may influence academic achievement in the context of Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE) Physical Education. This qualitative study involved 23 VCE Physical Education students from three government and one independent secondary school in Victoria, Australia. Focus groups utilising a semi-structured interview schedule explored student perceptions of teacher-related factors on academic achievement. The importance of teachers having a good 'attitude', a broad repertoire of teaching strategies, making real-world connections, developing positive student-teacher relationships and facilitating access to themselves outside of scheduled class time were perceived by students as important influences.

State-level leaders face a difficult challenge of determining where to invest scarce professional learning dollars. To address this challenge, a team of researchers and state-level science educators surveyed teachers to learn more about their vision for science education and what kind of learning opportunities they preferred. The survey enabled the team to determine how well teachers' ideas about science education aligned with the Framework for K-12 Science Education. They then set state-level aims for professional learning that took into account teacher preferences and any gaps between teacher visions and the vision of science education in the framework. Together, the researchers and state leaders created free learning resources that could help teachers achieve these aims.

This study presents a longitudinal analysis of racial inequities evidenced in placement patterns in the least restrictive environment (LRE). We compared placement trends in neighborhoods and charter schools for Black and White students receiving special education services (SRSES). Drawing from the concept of "institutional isomorphism" and using a longitudinal analysis of odds ratio, we examined annual school data from 2008 to 2012 on students' placement in the LRE in Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Our findings indicate that over time charter schools mirror neighborhood schools' (NS) racial inequities evidenced in access to general education classrooms.

This narrative study contributes to the field of school-based Indigenous education by exploring the central research question: What are the decolonizing processes of practicing teachers involved in a provincially funded initiative to improve schooling for urban Aboriginal students? Excerpts from teachers' narratives are organized using the Anishinaabe medicine wheel, anchoring the exploration of the following five directions and associated decolonizing processes: teachings from the centre/positioning, teachings from the east/honouring, teachings from the south/understanding, teachings from the west/doing, and teachings from the north/knowing. This paper concludes with a discussion of how White, Euro-Canadian teachers' decolonization informs the fields of Indigenous education, teacher education, and narrative inquiry.