Education & Pedagogy

The Amendments to the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1997 require schools to consider assistive technology for students receiving special education. In order to gain insight to the implementation of the mandates, we surveyed special education directors across the state of Texas regarding assistive technology decision-making and implementation procedures. Findings suggest that a team-approach was utilized for device selection. Furthermore, device user-friendliness and previous experience are two factors that influenced decision-making. Finally, results also indicated that school districts in rural areas reported having fewer assistive technology devices available to them in comparison to suburban and urban school districts.

Legislation maintains expectations that educators form partnerships with parents, specifically within the field of special education (IDEA, 2004), and requires schools to allow parents to participate in all phases of educational assessment and planning for students who receive special education services. Many parents, however, encounter barriers in their advocacy efforts. This study adds to the research on parent involvement in special education by examining the advocacy experiences of African American mothers of children with disabilities and providing a perspective that will enable educators to focus on the strengths of rural African American mothers while understanding the barriers they face.

Developing preservice teachers with a strong understanding of culturally relevant pedagogy should be a priority for all teacher education programs. Although much focus is placed on diversity in urban areas, diverse classrooms are found in all education settings. This paper demonstrates how a rural opportunity expanded the cultural awareness and culturally responsive teaching of four preservice special education teachers. Knowledge shared between teachers in an Old Order Mennonite community and these preservice teachers resulted in growth for all participants. Through immersion with the Mennonite community, four key themes emerged: (a) culturally relevant communication, (b) goal setting, (c) culturally sensitive curriculum materials, and (d) creation of a classroom to match the students' needs.

While there has been a long history of modelling the economic impact of higher education institutions (HEIs), little research has been undertaken in the context of Ireland. This paper provides, for the first time, a disaggregated input-output table for Ireland's higher education sector. The picture painted overall is a higher education sector that adds considerable gross value to the national economy, whether via state or other income. In 2010-2011, the gross income of Irish HEIs, as a total of €2.6 billion, generated gross output nationwide of €10.6 billion. This study also contributes to the major challenges facing the sector in a post-Bailout environment.

Children today are spending less time than ever outdoors, contributing to a culture of environmental apathy and separation from the natural world. In the growing field of environmental education, teachers are challenged to introduce the outdoors into their curriculum. In Vermont, some public school teachers have successfully implemented environmental education into their practice in a variety of interesting ways. This paper analyzes a series of teacher interviews and observations in Vermont public schools to identify successful strategies and pedagogies being utilized for environmental education. Several common themes emerged from this study, including place-based education, hands-on exploration, and free choice learning.

The unexpected and vast Syrian refugee crisis with an ever-growing number of young Syrians appears to be one of the greatest challenges for the Turkish education system. While low enrollment rates are alarming, the dual system that emerged in the urban settings creates a main challenge to a comprehensive and supportive education system and unfortunately does not offer a good starting point for the future inclusion of Syrian refugees in society. This article's main argument is that a culture of togetherness and a common future can only be assured by a comprehensive education system that ensures equal opportunity, diversity, and plurality.

The authors' team has been working with virtual worlds since 2006, deploying them in diverse contexts including secondary schools, special schools, vocational education and training, higher education and the community sector. Here the authors outline their operational experience of the complex web of interrelated factors involved in running virtual world projects. The authors discuss project development models, institutional politics, activity types and working with teachers and students. They conclude that embedding virtual worlds in education can be rewarding but also difficult at times, with qualities of nimbleness and self-reinvention required of project teams.

Rural entrepreneurship education programs may be a great tool for enhancing rural livelihoods and reducing rural outmigration. Entrepreneurship has received attention in school based agricultural education, primarily through implementation of Supervised Agricultural Experience (SAE) programs. Very little research has looked at the teaching of entrepreneurship. As a part of a larger research project, this study looked at characteristics of teachers who implement exemplary rural agricultural entrepreneurship education programs. Results revealed that teachers: (a) were experienced, (b) held advanced degrees, (c) had prior experience with entrepreneurship, (d) generally were considered outstanding teachers, and (e) were described as being open minded and enthusiastic. Recommendations are made based on these conclusions.

The term postdigital has been used by various disciplines to draw attention to the changing relationship between digital technology and human social and artistic practices. This article explores multiple definitions of the term postdigital from the disciplines of music, visual art and design, architecture, business, marketing, media and film studies, and education. It then argues that the use of this term reflects a paradigm shift in these fields. This shift has implications for the future practice of K-12 music education including the impact of digital cleanliness and ease of production, the growing hybridity of digital and traditional music making, and the influence of digital technology on human artistic practice.

The current network society, with its primacy of information and communication technologies, is challenging the higher education model. The needs and expectations of today's students differ from those of students in the past, and educational practices should adapt to modern times. But what changes will we see in the relationship between societal transformation and the higher education system? In this research paper, we set out a quantum-based approach in order to analyze this relationship and to advance the understanding about the role that distance education will play in the future. Under this perspective, we provide an illustration that allows for the representation and evaluation of future scenarios.

Using Kymlicka's analysis of conflicts between "imperatives of state control" and "objectives of social movements," I draw on my experiences with multicultural education to extrapolate some trends from the past and present that may inform the future. After briefly describing the origins of multicultural education (mainly within the United States), I situate struggles over education in the context of the global expansion of neoliberalism, critique "neoliberal multicultural education," then briefly describe some efforts that push back. This essay concludes with four recommendations for moving forward.

In the past few years, the provision of mental health services in public schools has received considerable attention. When students with disabilities are eligible for special education and related services under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), mental health services are required if such services are needed to provide students with a free appropriate public education (FAPE). That is, when a student's individualized education program (IEP) team determines that he or she needs mental health services to receive a FAPE, a school district is required to provide these services. Our purpose is to discuss when school district personnel should identify, evaluate, and serve students with disabilities who may have mental health needs.

To demonstrate how changes in both foreign and domestic environments after the Second World War affected primary education and teacher training in Finland, the article presents a historical picture of the post-war reality of the school system, based on a review of sources that include laws, decrees, curricula, textbooks and previous research. The review confirms that the Second World War had a profound effect on foreign policy, Finnish society and school policy. Consequently, the Finnish government made urgent changes to legislation and school curricula that particularly affected primary school education and teacher training. The aim of these provisions was to guarantee a high quality of education for children who were under the compulsory law of education, despite the challenging post-war situation.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a curriculum framework that is utilized most frequently to meet the needs of students with learning disabilities in the regular education inclusive classroom. The primary goal of UDL is the accessibility of the curriculum for all students. To that end UDL focuses on differentiating methods of instruction and delivery, activities for practice, and assessment. The literature reviewed indicates that the use of UDL benefits not only students with identified learning disabilities but also the general education population of students. In addition, UDL is appropriate at all levels of education, from elementary through postsecondary, and the UDL framework can be utilized in the curricula of all subject areas.

This paper acknowledges that there is widespread support in Gifted Education for students' creative aptitudes to be identified as a domain that includes imagination, originality, fluency, and problem solving. I explore where and when these concepts originated and briefly identify how they are represented in Gifted Education. Then various exogenetic factors are considered that contribute to students' realising creative ends, which are often overlooked in educational literature. Drawing on an art education historical archive and my ethnographic research in visual arts education, I show how practice, field dependence, and reciprocity in the reality of social relations in creative classrooms between teachers and students figure more prominently than might be thought. The paper is intended to open up further discussion about some commonly held assumptions of natural creative ability.