Education & Pedagogy

Usage of technology in educational settings is becoming a standard for 21st century's learners. Flipped classroom presents an entirely new learning environment based on technology for students, thus requiring different research for establishing effective learning and teaching. This paper aimed to explore usability of flipped classroom in higher education from the perspective of students' experience. The study participants are undergraduate students who are enrolled department of primary education in faculty of education. This study used a mixed-method to answer research questions. Students were post tested on usage of flipped classroom model in the frame of instructional materials attitude. And, focus group interview used to get students' perceptions. One of the more significant findings to emerge from this study is that students' attitude toward the flipped classroom were positive. The second major finding was that flipped classroom model is effective on: (1) Instruction and learning environment, (2) Individual changes.

This article explores the ways in which a group of primary school teachers in Cyprus interprets the relationship between religious and citizenship education. The contextualisation of the meaning of religious education shows the extent to which social, historical and political elements shape teachers' perceptions about the entanglements between religious and citizenship education. In particular, the present study reveals two important findings--one concerning the conceptualisation of each school subject and their perceived relationship and the other concerning the contextualisation of this relationship in the cultural and political contexts of Cyprus. The findings also reveal important constraints and political dilemmas for the possible trajectories of "religious citizenship education" in Cyprus. The article discusses the implications for curriculum and policy deliberations, as well as further research on "religious citizenship education" in specific cultural and political settings.

The Association of American Colleges and Universities' (AAC&U's) new five-year strategic plan for 2018-22, "We ASPIRE: Advancing Student Performance through Integration, Research, and Excellence," was officially launched at the association's 2018 annual meeting in Washington, DC, at the end of January. Reaffirming a dedication to AAC&U's mission of advancing the vitality and public standing of liberal education by making quality and equity the foundations for excellence in undergraduate education, "We ASPIRE" reclaims higher education's civic mission of educating for democracy. In the process, it acknowledges that preparing students for work, citizenship, and life in local, national, and global contexts requires connecting the education we offer students to broader societal issues in ways that inspire them to lead change in a society still plagued by profound inequities. In this article, the author discusses how the AAC&U's is planning for the America's future with "We ASPIRE."

The proliferation of the Internet, computers, and mobile devices means that students of all ages, socioeconomic statuses, geographical locations, and abilities have access to higher education institutions that were previously unavailable. As the population of the United States ages and the number of students with diagnosed disabilities grows, colleges and universities will be challenged to accommodate the various needs of their student population. Distance education is often seen as an appropriate outlet to increase enrollment numbers and provide education to students with motor, cognitive, visual, and auditory impairments. Instructional designers, instructors, and institutions are tasked with designing, developing, and maintaining accessible hardware, software, websites, and other technologies that allow disabled students to actively engage in education and become more independent. This paper will discuss how various disabilities effect college coursework and review the best practices, methods, and technologies utilized to create an inclusive education for all learners.

The closing of smaller enrollment programs at public universities in recent years has led to the closure of business teacher education programs. At the same time, existing business teacher education programs are experiencing low enrollments. To use faculty resources efficiently at four state universities in Missouri, required business education courses are offered in a consortium where students from the four universities are enrolled in one online course taught from one of the universities. This consortium is part of the Missouri Alliance for Collaborative Education (MACE) and allows students at universities to enroll in and pay tuition at their home university regardless of where the instructor of the online course is located. This consortium not only increases efficiency in operating each of the business teacher education programs by maximizing course enrollment numbers, but also gives students regular access to courses needed to complete certification or their business teacher education program.

The study reported in this paper investigated foundation phase teacher provision by the public universities in South Africa, with a view to carefully and accurately determine the extent to which foundation phase teacher provision matched national as well as provincial needs. The study draws on data obtained through a survey of teacher provision at the public higher education institutions (HEIs), conducted by the national Department of Education (DoE) in 2009, as well as from data relating to teacher education qualifications and programmes in the Higher Education Management Information System (HEMIS). The study confirmed perceptions that the number of new foundation phase teachers being produced by the public higher education institutions (HEIs) falls short of national and provincial needs, and that the provision of African language foundation phase teachers is particularly problematic, especially in the context of mother-tongue instruction in the early years.

This paper discusses the implementation of a university teaching module, based on Lucy Green's (2008) informal music learning model. The synergy between Green's model and Paulo Freire's critical pedagogy is addressed through explanation of the module and its practices. The module was offered six times, from 2011 to 2016, as an action research project on a mixed-mode distance education undergraduate music program at the Open University of Brazil. The choices of technology in the module were aimed at promoting interactions in a dialogical, humanizing, and problem-posing approach to education in order to achieve conscientization (Freire 1970). However, the uses of technology and some of the practices of students led the author to ponder discourses of technological determinism. [Paper presented at the International Symposium on the Sociology of Music Education (10th, London, United Kingdom, Jun 11-14 2017.)]

In 2015, the New Zealand Ministry of Education released a new curriculum policy document for sexuality education in all schools -- "Sexuality Education: A Guide for Boards of Trustees, Principals and Teachers". This policy is a rare international example of a curriculum document that explicitly values diversity, promotes inclusive school environments, and approaches sexuality education as an area of study (rather than a health promotion intervention). Since its release, the document has, however, gained little attention either of a scholarly nature or in terms of dedicated implementation in schools. One exception is a recent article in this journal by Sarah Garland-Levett, which raises some interesting and important concerns about the possibilities of such policy documents. I follow her lead here and continue the discussion about the place and potential of progressive sexuality education policy, and offer some thoughts about the content and intentions of this text.

This paper reports on a study of how liminality relates to the facilitation of reflective practice in professional education. Liminality refers to sites and positions that exhibit 'in-betweenness', or bordering positions, that might draw together different institutional conditions. The present project aims to examine the role of liminality in professional educational practice with a specific focus upon how liminality may support student reflection. Using a qualitative and comparative research approach, we analysed interview and observational data from police education and a medical programme. Observations and interviews explore practices of collective interactional (and hence observable) reflection at sites that are characterised by 'betweenness' of work and education. Findings indicate that situations that afford reflection are characterised by a sense of "undeterminedness" in terms of either the subject, space or activity. Thus, we conclude that there is some evidence that liminality affords reflection, but also that liminality and underminedness are fragile states that are not easily organised in a professional education curriculum.

In developing countries, education is regarded as a public good that must be publicly provided. Due to the perceived positive correlation between education and development in development-hungry Africa, the education sector has, over the years, been receiving very generous budgetary allocations. Today, however, particularly post-2008, there are moves to re-define education as a private good, consequently, not deserving of public provision. As a result, there are persistent calls for alternative ways of providing education, particularly at tertiary levels. Similarly, in Botswana, there are developments that unmistakably suggest that the time is ripe for alternative ways of providing tertiary education, mainly, cost-sharing. To be sure, the Ministry of Education and Skills Development drastically cut sponsorships during the 2016/17 academic year. The general lesson from the Botswana case is that there is a need to continually interrogate the architecture of public expenditure. If problems are discovered, the architecture must be promptly reconfigured.

The focus of this study was to examine the influence of special education course on preservice teachers' views of inclusive education. "Scale for view of inclusive education" was applied to 68 pre-service teachers and based on the pre and post-test scores, ten pre-service teachers were selected for identifying their views and perceived competences related to inclusive education. Case study design was used in the study and collected data analyzed by using content analysis. The findings indicated that preservice teachers presented both positive and negative views related to inclusive education while the present inclusive education practices they observed and the fear of unfavorable impact on regular students formed the reasons for negative view of inclusion. The results showed that lack of training in and experience with special needs students caused preservice teachers to illustrate low level perceived competences while experience with students with special needs resulted in high level perceived competences.

Building on the definition of critical education residing in the crossroads of cultural politics and political economy, this theoretical article offers an inquiry into the intersection between critical education research and the central ritual of contemporary capitalism -- capitalisation. This article outlines four current approaches in education research literature to the corporatisation of education. This article argues that the approaches must rely implicitly on one of the two major theories of capitalism: modern neoclassical economics or Marxist political economy, even when the approaches are built on cultural and sociological arguments. Without an explicit engagement with the concept of capital and capitalisation, the approaches risk appearing theoretically weak and reliant on moral assumptions. In this sense, critical education literature would be strengthened by engagement with international political economy (IPE) literature. This article proposes to redress this lacuna in the literature by mobilising Jonathan Nitzan's and Shimson Bichler's theory of capital as power to better understand the corporatisation of education.

This paper presents the findings of a study undertaken by the United Kingdom Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA), with support from the International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE), aimed at investigating the challenges and limits to cross-border cooperation in the quality assurance of transnational education. The study builds on the outcomes of the recently concluded Erasmus Mundus project Quality Assurance of Cross-Border Higher Education (QACHE) and in particular the QACHE Toolkit developed as part of the project to foster cooperation between quality assurance agencies in quality assuring transnational education. Based on the responses to a survey sent to QAA's partner agencies in key sending and receiving countries of transnational education, the study extract recommendations to agencies to help them developing viable strategies for inter-agency cooperation, identifying concrete ways in which they might or might not cooperate across borders.

In this paper, we explored various aspects of Canadian preservice elementary school teacher views about inclusive physical education. Based on prior work by Loreman (2014) that broadly examined preservice teacher views on inclusive education, in this study we looked specifically at inclusive physical education using a different sample of participants in the same program. Preservice teachers were asked a series of open-ended questions relating to their understandings, feelings of teaching self-efficacy, attitudes, and concerns relating to inclusive physical education in elementary school. Their responses reflected a strong focus on ability diversity (e.g., disability) and indicated that inclusive physical education means that all students should be part of the learning environment or that some should be excluded in roughly equal proportion. Depending on the curricular dimension, their self-perceived levels of preparedness ranged from low to high. The participants also presented a strong case for the necessity of resources available for the teaching of inclusive physical education.

Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares: "Everyone has the right to education." This implies that the right to education and training applies to all persons, including all persons in prison. This position is considered here from a philosophical point of view and it will receive some support. Yet it is not obvious that the position is correct, nor, if it is, how it is best explained. I will examine the basis for asserting a right to education on behalf of all prisoners, and consider what is required by way of its defence in the face of common objections. I illustrate how international conventions and principles express prisoners' right to education, and I look at how this right is defended by appeal to education as a means to an end and as a human right--required by respect for persons and their human dignity.