Education & Pedagogy

This meta-analysis examined special education professional development (PD) designed to improve outcomes for students with disabilities or to train teachers on evidence-based instruction and interventions in special education. The primary focus was on the impact of special education PD on teachers' skills, beliefs, and knowledge. A secondary aim was to examine the impact on student outcomes. Results indicated that PD had a greater effect on teacher-related measures (g = 0.53) compared with student measures (g = 0.17). All studies included active participation opportunities and PD topics covered literacy, behavioral support, explicit instruction, and data-based decision-making. The findings emphasize the importance for PD to apply content knowledge to evidence-based practices in special education.

This report from the Center for Higher Education Policy and Practice (CHEPP) outlines how fundamental belonging is to learner-centered design in higher education. It focuses on the importance and opportunity of belonging work in higher education and highlights the strong correlation between belonging and student outcomes as well as what some higher education institutions and practitioners are doing to cultivate a culture of care and belonging both online and on-campus. The paper also presents a set of key elements for belonging in higher education environments and provides policy recommendations to institutions and at the federal level to advance belonging work across higher education systems. [This report was produced by the Center for Higher Education Policy and Practice (CHEPP).]

In the very near future, the huge and rapidly growing store of free, online learning opportunities will completely transform higher continuing education. The beginnings of this transformation are already evident and the factors compelling this change are so powerful that free learning is no longer a "trend." Rather, free learning is an imperative that must be recognized soon if current higher-education institutions, and particularly their continuing-education arms, are to survive and continue to be useful to society. This article is designed to help CE leaders become aware of and respond to the business challenges posed by the commodification of learning. Driving this practical and financial orientation is a much more profound idea and goal--the possibility that everyone could learn anything, anywhere, anytime, and for free.

Those who are in university-based teacher preparation seem to constantly defend the ethos of teacher education, lately in the face of a concerted, organized, well-funded attempt to obviate the need for traditional preparation. For teacher educators who are preparing candidates to be on the front lines of a high-stakes testing battleground, it is easy to be overcome by the delusions of policies that presume that learners are widgets--interchangeable economic products that ebb and flow with the regularity of engine gaskets and blue jeans. In this article, the author briefly addresses three imperatives for civic engagement in teacher education: (1) relevance of the field of teacher education; (2) responsiveness to the changing needs of society; and (3) resoluteness of purpose, including the need for cautious attention to teacher dispositions. (Contains 4 notes.)

In educational research, investigators in one field are often ignorant of similar research in other fields. Physics education in particular has undergone dramatic reforms in recent years, all based on insights gained from conducting educational research. Often, pedagogical methods resulting from research in one field can be revised and transferred to another. This paper demonstrates that many methods used in physics and other science programmes can be adapted to teaching computer science. The author has pursued action research in computer science and implemented ideas from science education, especially from physics education, in teaching computer science classes at a small religious secondary school in the southwestern United States. This paper presents ideas and teaching strategies with the hope of building bridges between computer science education research and other science education research. (Contains 5 footnotes.)

Enabling preservice physical education teachers to critically consider questionable and taken-for-granted practices is an important component of a physical education teacher education (PETE) program. In an effort to offer a teaching and learning context in which to introduce such critical consciousness, the authors have included a staged physical education lesson (Gym Class with Ed Fizz) as an introduction to their physical education curriculum and instruction courses. This article details the lesson, including its background and rationale, student responses, and possible future directions for practice and research. The purpose of this article is to explore how participation in a unique pedagogical process (a staged lesson) can improve students' understanding of various concepts, including hidden curriculum, personal biographies, and cultural reproduction.

Ever since he stumbled into doing higher education research as a young academic in the 1980s, the author has been trying to understand it as a "field" of study. His career, as a former business lecturer, then an academic developer and now an associate professor for higher education working in an Education Faculty has given him opportunities to see it from different angles. Hence, in many respects, the map the author presents in this article says as much about his own background and experiences as a higher education researcher as about the field more generally. The main point he is seeking to make through the map is the way in which higher education research is crudely split between policy-based and teaching- and learning-oriented researchers who rarely, in his experience, have much awareness of each others' scholarship. (Contains 1 figure.)

In response to the increased demand for qualified early childhood educators in Queensland, many universities are being challenged to tailor make programs and identify innovative practices that support individuals interested in pursuing such a teaching qualification. Although research indicates that beliefs and perceptions are an important influence on pre-service teacher success in teacher education programs as well as in the workforce, little is known about those of students as they enter early childhood education programs. This study focuses on the beliefs and perceptions that students bring to a Graduate Diploma in Early Childhood Education (GDipECE) being offered at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. This snapshot provides key messages for teacher educators interested in improving the quality of teaching and learning. (Contains 4 figures.)

This article gives an overview of the development of gender equality and women's participation in adult learning and education in the history of the International Conferences on Adult Education (CONFINTEA). Though the equality of rights was highlighted throughout the various conferences, the first Global Report on Adult Learning and Education (GRALE) observed that a gender gap in the participation in adult learning and education still persisted in 2009. This is especially remarkable with regard to the impact of CONFINTEA V in 1997, because it focused on the issue of women's participation and gender equality. A review of the CONFINTEA VI programme elements and the national reports prepared by UNESCO Member States in 2008 reveals that gender issues have to some extent moved from the centre of attention to the periphery. This article therefore tries to explore how gender principles are acknowledged in CONFINTEA VI and its follow-up.

The stellar rise of the education export industry in Australian higher education, and the even more spectacular downturn now occurring, mask underlying tensions that have long dogged the industry and prevented it from improving quality or achieving long-term sustainability. The international education programme has been unbalanced by the drive for revenues at any cost. The tensions are (1) between education policy and immigration policy, (2) between commercial export and the health of the domestic education and research system, (3) between neo-imperial economic exploitation of Asia and a more holistic engagement on the basis of equal respect, (4) between international students as consumers and students as people with comprehensive rights, and (5) between the national political economy and the global public good. The article suggests ways to resolve these tensions, including the forms of a bilateral protocol that would provide more coherent and comprehensive rights for international students.

The Associated Colleges of the St. Lawrence Valley is an educational consortium with four members: Clarkson University, State University of New York at Potsdam, State University of New York at Canton, and St. Lawrence University. Access to higher education at the Associated Colleges has been a special ongoing interest and mirrors a national concern. The Associated Colleges of the St. Lawrence Valley has found that successful opportunities for access to higher education can be increased when resources are pooled into a collaborative consortial effort. This chapter outlines a New York State Department of Education grant-funded consortial holistic program for middle and high school students who may not reach their academic potential. This program keeps the students in school, encourages academic success, shows them the benefits of higher education, and provides them with the tools for access.

This article explores the ongoing evolution of a critical approach to teaching physical education in senior school physical education (SSPE) within a New Zealand context. The nature and development of SSPE is briefly discussed in order to contextualise a shift toward a critical pedagogy in light of recent curriculum changes that focus on socio-critical perspectives within health and physical education (HPE). The adoption of critical pedagogy within SSPE is critiqued through the presentation of a range of critical pedagogical approaches, and through an exploration of the limitations inherent within such an approach. The possibility of a postcritical pedagogy for SSPE in 21st century Aotearoa/New Zealand is introduced in response to traditional critical pedagogical limitations. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

Based on ethnographic fieldwork research of the authors in schools in Chiapas, Mexico, the article provides an overview of efforts being made to address the unique educational needs of Mexico's Indigenous populations through intercultural bilingual education programs. The article examines the Indigenous teachers' commitment to intercultural bilingual education, as opposed to their incomplete understandings of bilingual teaching practices and biliteracy practices. In so doing, the article questions the efficacy of top-down language education policies when they are State reactions to bottom-up efforts of revolutionary movements, such as the Zapatistas. Given the historical and socioeconomic oppression of the Indigenous populations in Chiapas, intercultural bilingual education acts only as a palliative, leaving the Indigenous peoples without the structural incorporation into the economic and political life of Mexico for which they struggled. (Contains 3 footnotes.)

At the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (AERA, 30 April to 4 May), the theme of re-imagining public education arose once again with the most compelling presentation from leading scholars in the field concerned with counter-hegemonic politics and democratic change. The session entitled "Re-imaging public education: Critical politics and democracy" reminded me of the important contribution made by South Africans working in higher education in consolidating and enhancing the country's 16-year old democracy. Their efforts must especially be seen in the light of serious challenges posed by some political groups and their leaders to the democratic agenda of South Africa, which many people have worked very hard to maintain. This essay highlights some of the most salient thoughts that constitute critical and democratic education and what university academics need to focus on to help build our evolving democracy.

First findings of IEA's "Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M)" had revealed differences in the demographic background, opportunities to learn (OTL), and outcomes of teacher education between student teachers from different countries. Two hypotheses are examined: OTL and teacher background are significant predictors of mathematics content knowledge (MCK) and mathematics pedagogical content knowledge (MPCK) as outcomes. OTL effects are partly mediated by differential student teacher intake. Data from multi-level models support our hypotheses with respect to gender, high-school achievement, motivation, OTL in mathematics and the mediating effect of student teacher intake. Background affects only MCK but not MPCK. (Contains 3 figures and 8 tables.)