Education & Pedagogy

Current education policy discourse in Ireland, as elsewhere, is replete with reference to innovation, creativity and enterprise. Meanwhile, the "pedagogical turn" is a dominant motif in current discourse in art practice, curating and critique, in Ireland and internationally. This article firstly considers some of the implications of the "turn" as a concept in art and education. In that context, it goes on to address changing patterns of curriculum design, development and reform in Ireland. Next, it describes the evolution of Irish education policy over the past decade in the context of global experiences. The particular experience of art education in Ireland is then considered in the light of the curriculum culture and the wider policy discourses already identified. Finally, some implications of the Irish experience are addressed, in terms of art practice at the edges of art education, and art education at the edges of education practice.

The race to establish regional education hubs is a recent development in cross-border higher education. This article briefly examines the rationales and strategies used by three countries in the Middle East and three in South East Asia which are working towards positioning themselves as regional education hubs. The different approaches and purposes among the six countries highlight the need for a typology of education hubs. Three types are proposed: the student hub, the training and skilled workforce hub, and the knowledge/innovation hub. The final section of the paper takes a closer look at Malaysia's cross-border education initiatives and its actions to establish itself as a competitive education hub in a region where Singapore and Hong Kong have similar intentions. Whether Malaysia has the ability to make a quantum leap from being a student hub to becoming a knowledge/innovation hub remains to be seen and appears to be an optimistic outlook.

Since the 1970s an "ethics boom" has occurred to counter the disappearance of ethics education from tertiary institutions. This "boom" appears to be absent from teacher education programs in Australia and the United States. Given persistent calls to enhance teacher quality this is problematic because quality teaching is inexorably linked to teachers' beliefs, values and professional ethics. This case study, conducted in a regional Australian university, was designed to document examples of ethical dilemmas faced by pre-service and practising teachers, to explore pre-service teachers' perceptions of ethics education and to examine the BEd course curriculum for ethics subjects across the four-year degree course. Results highlight a need for teacher training courses to include ethical philosophy units. This represents a sustainable way to support professional practice and enhance teacher quality, by preparing and equipping teachers with techniques to explore and teach complex ethical issues in the classroom. (Contains 3 tables.)

This paper describes a graduate level engineering education course, "Leadership, Policy, and Change in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education." Offered for the first time in 2007, the course integrated the perspectives of three instructors representing disciplines of engineering, education, and engineering education. Included within this paper is justification for creating such a course for STEM graduate students, information about current efforts to integrate leadership and policy in engineering programs, descriptions of the course units and course deliverables, and lessons learned by course instructors. Authors acknowledge the difficulties of co-teaching such a course and of introducing students within technical disciplines to social sciences content and educational practices. Positive aspects of course development include opportunities to engage students in conversations about STEM policy and to create new literature integrating STEM concepts and leadership, policy, and change principles. Suggestions for creating a course at other universities are provided. (Contains 4 tables.)

Inclusive education policies have been espoused by the Ministry of Education in Brunei Darussalam since the late 1990's. In this paper, the author examines the current state of inclusion in secondary schools throughout the country. Procedures, practices and processes which directly or indirectly impede the realization of national and international imperatives are highlighted. Best practices derived from the literature are recommended to address such challenges. These include a stronger focus upon: the dismantling of organizational barriers to inclusive education; measures to enhance related school and community attitudes; the use of Universal Design for Learning principles and practices; appropriate teacher education and support; collaborative teaching strategies and ongoing dialogue between relevant stakeholders. Modifications to the existing pre-vocational program are suggested, as well as the appointment of special education needs coordinators in all secondary schools.

Drawing on individual interviews with 62 students from three secondary schools, the authors of this study investigate how Singapore students from different educational tracks understand their role as citizens in a democracy. In contrast to most countries, the constitutionally democratic state of Singapore explicitly assigns separate citizenship roles to students from different education tracks. Premised on the principle of meritocracy, the Singapore state has also developed separate citizenship education programs incorporating different values, skills, and knowledge for students from the academic and vocational tracks. The study illustrates sharp disparities in how citizenship and democracy is conceptualized by students from the different education tracks. The differences in civic efficacy, learning outcomes, knowledge, and skills also closely parallel the different goals of the social studies and citizenship education programs for students from the academic and vocational tracks. (Contains 1 table.)

Five essential ideas or understandings that should underlie early childhood teacher education programs are discussed conceptually. Inquiry and reflection into practice are critical for continued teacher learning and development; learning and development are cultural and constructivist processes; the teacher's image of the child should be as a strong and capable participant in the culture; the education of young children is a community privilege and responsibility; and while the child's future is of concern in education, it is just as vital to think of the child in the here and now. These ideas are essential for incorporating a social justice orientation in teacher education. An exemplary early childhood teacher education program is described as a model of the way in which these underlying ideas might be incorporated in preparing early childhood teachers in the pursuit of social justice aims for all of their students and families.

A satisfaction and dissatisfaction level within an individual influences the motivation level and his/her performance throughout the life. When an individual is satisfied with his/her work, he/she gets pleasure and feels motivated. Obtaining satisfaction from their education system is very important for students as this will lead to better learning possibilities. This paper aims to compare the level of academic satisfaction among the students of Traditional Education System and Open Education System. This paper also investigates academic satisfaction of urban and rural based students and comparing them over traditional (Urban: 110; Rural: 90), and open (Urban: 80; Rural: 71) education system. Statistical tests demonstrate that there is significant difference in the level of academic satisfaction among the students of Open Education System (OES) and Traditional Education System (TES). (Contains 12 tables and 5 figures.)

Based on the assumption that schools can play a significant role in the citizenship development of students, in most contemporary modern societies schools are obligated to provide citizenship education. However, the effectiveness of different forms of citizenship education is still unclear. From the empirical literature on citizenship over the period of 2003-2009 28 articles were selected on effects of citizenship education on students' citizenship. Our review showed the political domain of citizenship to be emphasized more than the social domain. An open and democratic classroom climate in which discussion and dialogue takes place appears to effectively promote the development of citizenship among secondary school students. Moreover, a formal curriculum that includes citizenship projects and courses also appears to be an effective type of citizenship education. The effects of citizenship education are discussed in relation to the quality of the studies reviewed. (Contains 4 tables and 1 figure.)

In this article, I present my experience with integrating an alternate reality gaming (ARG) framework into a pre-service science teacher education course. My goal is to provide an account of my experiences that can inform other science education practitioners at the tertiary and secondary levels that wish to adopt a similar approach in their classes. A game was designed to engage pre-service teachers with issues surrounding the declining enrolments in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines (i.e., the STEM crisis; Tytler, 2007) and ways of re-engaging learners with STEM subjects. The use of ARG in science education is highly innovative. Literature on the use of ARG for educational purposes is scarce; therefore, I have drawn on a range of available literature on gaming and ARG to define what it is and to suggest how it can be included in school science classrooms. (Contains 9 online resources.)

While there is little political opposition towards sex education as such in Norway, recent attempts at reforming the subject reveal underlying heteronormative presumptions that seem resistant to reform. While a focus on homosexuality is included in the national curriculum at all levels of compulsory education, the sexual practices involved in same-sex relations remain conspicuously absent from the education provided. This paper provides an overview of contemporary Norwegian sex education, and discusses its primary shortcoming: the absence of a focus on sex acts other than coitus. The political challenges to good sex education in Norway emerge when this absence of sex acts is addressed by innovative teaching programmes that focus on sexual pleasure. Norwegian political consensus about a free and equal sexual culture does not seem able to embrace the discussion of specific sexual practices in the classroom. (Contains 1 figure and 6 notes.)

Recruiting high-caliber individuals into education programs in higher education institutions to train them to be tomorrow's educators/teachers has been a perennial challenge. Students in education programs are found to be in general lower in academic standing than their counterparts in other fields, reflecting a seemingly distressing phenomenon of "those who cannot, educate". In contrast to such a discouraging phenomenon, this article shows that in Taiwan, based on a nationally representative data set of 12,246 college students, students in education programs are academically more outstanding than their non-education counterparts. Furthermore, among education majors, those who aspire to be future teachers have even higher academic quality than their non-teaching counterparts. The underlying policy and socio-cultural contexts of such a positive phenomenon of "those who can, educate" are further explained and implications for educators in other countries are discussed. (Contains 7 tables.)

This article derives from a qualitative study in which four women artists/educators of color shared narratives of the input of feminism and ethnicity in various areas of their lives that included identity, education, professional activity, and artmaking. The scope of the article is limited to their art making (connected to personal experience) because of the significant role that art production plays in K-12 art classrooms, preservice, and inservice art education. I provide a connection to Laurie Hicks' (1990) recommended feminist approach to art education and suggest that the teaching of cultural diversity can be enhanced and improved upon by sharing the personal experiences of the artists in combination with Hicks' goals of feminist art education. I advocate that the experiences of these women artists of color contribute to strengthening the field of art education by helping us reshape the material we present to students. (Contains 4 footnotes.)

A growing body of literature on community gardening, watershed restoration, and similar "civic ecology" practices suggests avenues for integrating social and ecological outcomes in urban natural resources management. In this paper, we argue that an environmental education programme in which learning is situated in civic ecology practices also has the potential to address both community and environmental goals. Further, we suggest that civic ecology practices and related environmental education programmes may foster resilience in urban social-ecological systems, through enhancing biological diversity and ecosystem services, and through incorporating diverse forms of knowledge and participatory processes in resource management. By proposing interrelationships among natural resources management, environmental education, and social-ecological systems, we hope to open up discussion of a research agenda focusing on the role of environmental education in systems processes and resilience. (Contains 1 figure.)

Despite widespread policy support for education for sustainable development in higher education, and a strong academic literature arguing for a radical rethink of curriculum, pedagogy and institutional culture, progress towards the educational reforms advocated remains limited. Based on in-depth interviews with lecturers at a case-study university, this article explores reasons for the slow pace of change, in particular how constraining variables (such as class size, patchy managerial support, perceived irrelevance to some disciplines, and conflict with prevalent higher education pedagogies) inhibit the widespread use of the holistic, interdisciplinary, transformative learning approaches advocated by theorists. Coping strategies employed by lecturers to bring education for sustainable development into their teaching practices are investigated and reviewed in the context of the "theory of the second best". We conclude with a plea for greater recognition in the literature of the merits of such "second-best" approaches in higher education. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)