Education & Pedagogy

This article describes an interpretive study that evaluated a new subject in teacher education called "Education for Sustainable Development". The study evaluated the subject for its ability to prepare pre-service teachers for their roles as environmental educators. We used perspectives in place-based pedagogy and critical thinking to underpin the subject design and our analysis. Data sources include instructor journals, planning documents, interviews with students and student thinking books. Interpretive analysis of the data corpus was a collaborative process that involved both subject instructors and students who took the subject. Themes that emerged from the research were centred around: (1) how the students built connections between primary school education and environmental education; (2) how students developed action competence through the activities in the subject; (3) how students were challenged to think differently about themselves as educators; and, (4) how the subject design presented its own challenges for both instructors and students.

By not properly addressing economic issues, health care, and educational needs, the United States of America was on the verge of financial collapse and people had to choose between having food or medicine. President Barack Obama emerged with a broad-based plan of change for the country which impacts every major sector of society. He wants peace to replace war, an economy that provides jobs, health care that brings relief to all Americans and education that is effective from preschool to college. This article moves from Obama's general vision for the country to his detailed plan for education. First, a review of literature is conducted to validate the merit of his plan. With a refined agenda, educators are challenged to embrace it and make ready for its implementation. The final charge is to focus attention on strategies for imparting quality education to students around the world. (Contains 1 table.)

This article invites all educators to consider the implementation of the tenets of Invitational Education (IE) as a firm foundation and precursor upon which can be built an Inclusive Education climate and mindset which encourages success for all students. This eighteen month study of two professors from Ohio's Muskingum University shares from inception to implementation, the idea of creating a graduate course for teachers and administrators which merges the practices of Inclusive Education and Invitational Education. The course, entitled Invitational Inclusive Education (IIE), seeks to convince teachers that a belief in and application of IE greatly enhances the chances for a more inviting teacher acceptance of inclusive practices (including co-teaching) for students with special needs. Teacher response to the course has been very positive resulting in the development of the term IIE, as well as a draft tool which helps to define stages of teacher acceptance of inclusive practice.

Models of doctoral education in Africa remained similar to those in European universities, well into the 2000s. However, there has been an increasing realisation that such programmes are ill-suited for the African realities. With recent efforts to revitalise higher education in Africa, considerable attention has been placed on the need to explore more effective models of doctoral education, better suited to the African context. Doctoral education is key to this rebuilding as it offers the potential for developing skilled staff for academic and research institutions, and is central to the development of much-needed locally relevant knowledge in Africa. In the last decade, innovative programmes have emerged that make use of partnerships to achieve more than individual institutions could, working alone. This paper examines the constraints, challenges and opportunities in African doctoral education and identifies critical elements of doctoral education that have particular nuances in the African context. We propose a framework for evaluating the suitability of the structure and practices of such programmes. We review two of the more successful collaborative Ph.D. programmes with reference to this framework.

This research reports the results of a literature synthesis conducted on digital gaming in education research literature. Seventy-three digital gaming research articles in education were identified through a systematic literature search and were coded across several relevant criteria. Our research indicates trends and patterns from empirical studies on digital gaming in education from 2000 to 2010. Most research literature appears in the context of K-12 and higher education, and most literature appears to rely on experimental methods of research. The results show a steady increase in the number of publications related to digital gaming in education being published since 2004. The results also demonstrate that literature in digital gaming in education lacks completeness in reporting vital information, such as treatment intensity and duration, gaming platforms, or the number of players in a game. The missing information is vital in understanding the scope and direction of digital gaming research in education. Recommendations for future research are provided.

This paper draws on research conducted across an English higher education partnership to investigate the ways in which student voice was engaged in further education colleges offering university awards through partnership arrangements. Such collaborations are characterised by the marginal presence of higher education students in an environment that is dominated by further education structures, culture and practice. This provides challenges for both colleges and universities in developing higher education student identity and appropriate mechanisms of student engagement that comply with expectations within the higher education sector but also recognise the contextual situation of students within the college environment. It is argued that student partnership collaboration can be a positive driver in an increasingly marketised global environment, where student voice and feedback mechanisms are at the forefront of quality assessments and institutional reputation. An ideal types framework is suggested as a heuristic device for the evaluation of college strategies of engagement.

The physical education teacher education community in Ireland has developed Beginning Teacher Standards for Physical Education (BTSfPE) at the post-primary (secondary) level. This study explored teacher educators' perspectives on how the BTSfPE could be implemented and considered the possible impact on the profession within the discourses of power. Data collection involved semi-structured interviews with teacher educators in physical education ("n" = 13). Data were analysed inductively and trustworthiness issues were considered. Participants suggested that the teaching standards could serve as a developmental tool to guide individual teacher education programmes and beginning teachers as well as an assessment function to support quality assurance and to hold programmes accountable. The teacher educators were committed to addressing issues of quality and status in physical education in Ireland. However, an agreed vision of how the teaching standards would be used to develop and regulate the profession is necessary to ensure that the intended benefits emerge.

In Australia, languages education in early childhood and primary education includes three main approaches: transitional, enrichment and full bilingual programmes. This article proposes that transitional and enrichment programmes in Australia are constituted and shaped by competing and contested institutional, material, discursive and economic conditions limiting their capacity to deliver quality languages education and home/community language support programmes. Ultimately, this undermines the capacity of community languages programmes and schools to be recognised as valid and legitimate institutions. Such lack of support impedes children's interest in speaking and learning their home language. Drawing on Bourdieu's theory of conversion, specifically, his concepts of the linguistic market and legitimacy, the data presented demonstrate how the unequal distribution of linguistic resources in Australia where home languages or community languages are offered inhibits effective implementation and provision of languages education in early childhood and primary education.

Most teachers want to learn and improve, and physical education teachers are no exception. Although their teaching field is not subject to standardized testing, physical education teachers seek to find support structures and development opportunities from within their schools and districts so that they feel connected and a part of the professional team (Lynn & Woods, 2010) wholly devoted to relevancy and other forms of positive development for young adolescents. This study investigated a group of middle school physical education teachers/coaches to determine the degree to which their education and experiences in professional development events and professional organizations influence the application of state or national standards, choice of curriculum, and participation in current initiatives as they relate to physical education in middle grades schools. A more specific research question guided the study: How does the middle school physical education teacher utilize available professional development resources in planning, and to what extent does this impact his or her physical education classroom?

University-business cooperation has risen to one of the top priorities for many higher education institutions, with its importance mirroring attention from scholars and policy makers worldwide. Despite prolific research in this area, however, few have investigated curriculum-related university-business cooperation or its facilitators. Hence, this study investigates five mechanisms as drivers of business engagement in the design and delivery of the curriculum and the alignment of the curriculum with business needs. Results of a European-wide survey of higher education institution managers show the positive impact of senior management engagement, alumni networks and external communication of university-business cooperation, particularly on business engagement in curriculum design and the curriculum meeting industry needs. The higher education institution's dedication of resources emerged as irrelevant in this context. The conceptual model is validated across higher education institutions with different levels of curriculum-related cooperation with business and across three countries, leading to implications for management and future research directions.

This paper explores the theoretical framework of threshold concepts and its potential for LIS education. Threshold concepts are key ideas, often troublesome and counterintuitive, that are critical to profound understanding of a domain. Once understood, they allow mastery of significant aspects of the domain, opening up new, previously inaccessible ways of thinking. The paper is developed in three parts. First, threshold concept theory is introduced and studies of its use in higher education are described, including emergent work related to LIS. Second, results of a recent study on learning experiences integral to learning to search are presented along with their implications for search expertise and search education, forming a case illustration of what threshold concept theory may contribute to this and other areas of LIS education. Third, the potential of threshold concept theory for LIS education is discussed. The paper concludes that threshold concept theory has much to offer LIS education, particularly for researching critical concepts and competencies, and considerations for a research agenda are put forth.

This paper addresses the curriculum overlap and gap between LIS education and intelligence education by analyzing the content of the websites of the intelligence education programs and courses in 27 representative intelligence education universities in the United States, and the intelligence-related programs and courses in the 56 LIS programs in the United States and Canada. The curriculum overlap lies in computer skills for information collection management, geographic information systems, data mining, knowledge discovery, competitive intelligence and information security, whereas the major curriculum gap lies in most intelligence analysis domain areas (such as military intelligence, political intelligence, science and technology intelligence) and many intelligence tradecraft areas (such as structured analytic techniques, intelligence theory and methods, intelligence policy and organization, intelligence operations, counterintelligence, intelligence writing and briefing). By filling some curriculum gaps based on the overlap, LIS education can extend to open source intelligence analysis in some domain areas.

This article explores what it means to flourish in and through education and why we should position such flourishing as an issue of morality. We draw on the capabilities approach (CA) advanced by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum and locate the argument in the practical context of higher education (HE) in unequal societies. We use qualitative data from year one of a three-year longitudinal study exploring student agency and well-being at a South African university to consider flourishing in and through education. Using the CA concepts of well-being, agency, practical reason and affiliation, we argue that the CA provides a philosophical grounding that takes account of both personal and relational flourishing and morality. Flourishing "in" education requires consideration of the well-being and agency of students. Flourishing "through" education draws attention to the role of education in promoting well-being and flourishing beyond its walls by fostering a social and moral consciousness among students.

This paper reports in brief the pilot study, Distance Education Regulatory Frameworks, undertaken by the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) in 2010-2012 and the implications for openness for higher education in Southwest Pacific/South East Asia region nations. The project developed a methodological approach to identifying, accessing, collating, analysing and presenting the requested regulatory information. Here, the findings of the study are discussed in light of the theme of openness. In particular, what "open" may mean for the region; what inhibitors can be observed and what major changes might need to be considered. The discussion draws on formal and informal literature on regulatory frameworks for distance education (DE) in the Southwest Pacific/South East Asia region. Contextual information was collected about the nominated countries within the region, along with nine case studies from representative institutions whose primary focus was distance and online education.

This paper presents an extensive overview of preschool to 12th grade (P-12) engineering education literature published between 2001 and 2011. Searches were conducted through education and engineering library engines and databases as well as queries in established publications in engineering education. More than 50 publications were found, including books, articles, and reviews that discussed P-12 engineering education research efforts. With the synthesis of literature and distinct criteria to classify the literature, a rubric was developed. This rubric allowed authors to synthesize retrieved publications in seven ways: (1) overarching agenda, (2) nature of the engineering program or intervention, (3) assessment methods, (4) object of the study/unit of analysis, (5) population/sample of interest, (6) informing theory, and (7) standards addressed. Discussions of the current levels of research based on recommendations of National Agencies are presented along with a set of recommendations for the advancement of the P-12 engineering education research.