Education & Pedagogy

Special education teacher educators face multiple systemic, institutional, and social barriers in preparing teacher candidates to provide students with significant disabilities access to the general curriculum. This qualitative interview study explores how special education teacher educators are working to navigate these barriers while employing strategies at multiple levels. The 14 special education teacher educators in this study utilized strategies to navigate barriers to access the general curriculum in four distinct ways by (a) building relationships, (b) advocacy, (c) increasing knowledge, and (d) being resilient. The discussion includes recommendations for special education teacher educators regarding how to navigate barriers and support pre- and in-service teachers in providing students with significant disabilities access to the general curriculum.

There has been a growth in the last 10 years of higher education provision in the English further education sector. This article examines the thoughts and feelings of three higher-education-level teachers working in the further education sector. Using Ivor Goodson's life history approach, it identifies a high degree of compliance with the system by the teachers. In order to justify the conflict between organisational and teacher concerns, key strategies were formed. These included celebrating further education as a place which gives people a second chance, a students-first focus and the significance of the human connection made at work. There were also similarities between the underlying motivations of teachers to teach at a higher level than many of their colleagues, which included family, class, control and the significance of dominant others in their lives.

Kenya's 2017 competency-based curriculum, the Basic Education Curriculum Framework (BECF), seeks to address the skills gap in the education system and make the curriculum relevant to learners. Using Soka education as the philosophical framework, we provide a comprehensive review of BECF. The analysis in this essay covers the noteworthy provisions, double-edge policies, inconsistencies, issues of concern, and potential hurdles to implementation. It argues that the curriculum is not likely to produce the intended outcome due to inherent contradictions in the framework and the lack of an effective implementation plan. While BECF provides a broad and ambitious roadmap for the transformation of the Kenyan education system, actualizing the bold vision of BECF will require an extensive overhaul of the education system, a herculean task.

The practice of teacher education is inextricably linked to the policy environment in which it occurs. Calls by policymakers and politicians for accountability measures, standardization and performance assessments are efforts to influence the direction of the preparation of educators. In this self-study, I examine my participation in a state-level teacher education policy decision-making body in the United States in order to illuminate how policy decisions are made about teacher education. More specifically, I discuss the kinds of warrants about teacher education practice that I deployed as I navigated the political and practical consequences of policy decisions. This study serves not only to illuminate the nature of policy discussions in teacher education, but also to encourage teacher educators to engage directly the policy-making arenas that implicitly and explicitly influence their work.

In this study, we explore Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and the 'legitimated procedures' of increasing capacity in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education. Conducting interviews with HBCU presidents, we argue that as HBCUs contend with a conflicting national context, investment in STEM education is perceived as a strategic pathway to address institutional concerns. Our findings suggest a departure from institutional theory, in that HBCUs' choices demonstrate a strategic motive of survival and adaptability to changes in the organizational field of American higher education. Their unique location in the American higher education system means they have to balance both organizational and institutional pressures to both survive and maintain fidelity to their historic mission.

Effective health education can positively contribute to a student's school experience. Healthier students are more likely to be ready and able to learn, and students who are academically successful often engage in less risky behaviors. Health education programs can support students' skill development and knowledge acquisition in order to help them be healthy for a lifetime. In addition, health education can help address the critical issue of low levels of health literacy prevalent in today's society. However, in order to achieve these outcomes, health education must be aligned with the National Health Education Standards and implemented using best practices. This article outlines support for health education as a vital component of an educational system and articulates key considerations for developing and implementing effective programming in the PK-12 setting.

This paper focuses on how I have been attending to the TRC's [Truth and Reconciliation Commission's] calls to action within science teacher education. It draws on personal experiences, my dissertation, Canadian policy regarding Indigenous education, and academic literature to explore what the calls ask of teacher educators. Throughout, I consider how Indigenous and Western ways of knowing, being, and doing might circulate together in specific places, and the role that "Land" and the natural world might play in reconciliation via science teacher education. Ultimately, the paper offers a still-in-process glimpse into how I have found a place at home to begin engaging with the Calls to Action of the TRC in science teacher education.

This historical multi-case study uses the concepts of coloniality of knowledge, critical hybridity, and indigeneity in examining higher education development in Africa through the efforts of Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, two educational reformers and former international students in the USA. We develop a framework for examining how transnational interactions between the Global North and the Global South shape higher education development. Implications are presented for the importance of flexible theoretical understandings of transnational higher education interactions as well as higher education practices in international student and scholar exchange and other transnational higher education engagement.

It has been a key goal to achieve equity in education in Australia and Norway over the last 50 years. This article offers a historical case-oriented comparative analysis of the promotion of equity in education in these 2 countries. While equity in education is primarily understood as students' learning outcomes in national and international tests, such as the OECD's PISA studies, the analysis in this article is based on Espinoza's distinction between equality and equity, which allows for a more complex understanding. The article investigates striking differences in how the governments in Australia and Norway have attempted to enhance equity through education, and discusses factors that may have impeded this process.

This article aligns with recent international approaches to inclusive education and argues for a broadened understanding of the term, specifically in the context of Austria, which currently focuses only on children with disabilities. The article not only sets out the thesis of intersectionality, but calls for the adoption of an intersectional lens in inclusive education in order to identify the interaction of multiple factors that lead to discriminatory processes in schools towards different student groups. Inclusive education means opening access to a wide range of educational and social opportunities for all children, not only those with disabilities or identified special education needs. The current system, in which children possess one identity marker, does not provide the support children need. Furthermore, it also reinforces inequalities not only within the education system, but also within society at large.

In Latin America, intercultural education aims to acknowledge the cultural, ethnic, and linguistic diversity of its citizens, and to advance the efforts to dismantle the oppression of such diversity, particularly that of Indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples. While discussions of intercultural education often reference such peoples as their target beneficiaries, too few studies addressing the professional development of teachers recognize the importance of Indigenous scholarship, pedagogies and methodologies themselves as resources for the advancement of the theory and practice of intercultural education. This article engages in theoretical reflection in order to highlight well-documented Indigenous methodologies for teaching and learning, and their implications for professional development for enriched intercultural education. The authors emphasize the need for greater attention to the work and scholarship of intercultural and Indigenous university graduates to lead the way in the development of intercultural education professionals.

In South Korea, higher education is widely available to all people. However, few people with disabilities have received a college education. In 1995, the Higher Education Special Admission for Students with Special Needs policy was implemented to promote opportunities for individuals with disabilities to have access to higher education. Since the special admission policy was implemented, an increasing number of high school students with disabilities have entered college. Research indicates that the transition from high school to higher education is not smooth for students with disabilities. Accordingly, this article discusses issues surrounding this transition for students with disabilities after briefly describing the college entrance system and policies on transitioning to higher education in South Korea.

This paper describes how the global education community can prepare for the future of education. With the aim of promoting global education and creativity, the paper leverages case studies on Korea's education reform, including the Free Semester Program (FSP) and the SMART Initiative using ICT, which are new education initiatives focused on promoting ICT skills in schools across Korea. The paper highlights critical aspects of successful implementation, the role of government, and the positive impact of these education reform policies. It proposes lessons for scaling up similar practices in other settings.

It is widely accepted that inclusion is the educational expression of normalisation, whereby the child is provided with all possible opportunities which are similarly given to his mainstream counterparts. The current work examines the features and services of the inclusive education programme of New Era University, a higher education institution in the Philippines. This descriptive-evaluative study utilised data-gathering methodologies, which include observation, interview, survey, and documentary analysis. This case study can serve as a prototype of inclusive education as it is anchored on the ecological systems theory, which proposes that the different aspects of the environment influence the development of the child, more so, those with special educational needs. Implications are offered for policy and future research.

This paper seeks to develop a case for (re)thinking education and sustainability with specific reference to rural Australia. It proposes a critical view of rural-regional sustainability, taking into account notions of bioregionality and ecosocial change. Two key points are made. One is the assertion that rural education as such is better reformulated as education for rural-regional sustainability. The other is the introduction of a reconceptualised view of public education, as explicitly embracing formal, informal and non-formal sectors, and considering schools therefore within a larger, more comprehensive view of educational practice addressed to the task of educating the public. Education thus understood is a crucial resource for developing informed, active citizenship and community regeneration in the Anthropocene age. [The paper is rewritten from an earlier one originally presented at the annual conference of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 2010.]