Education & Pedagogy

Following the qualitative research mode commonly known as content analysis unfolded while exploring the current Ontario provincial government positions arising from the recent 2019 Ontario Health and Physical Education curricular document which includes directives supporting the teaching of ethics. Several questions provoked and framed this content analysis which asked: How should ethics be taught in Health and Physical Education? What level of ethical awareness should Ontario Physical Educators and students have? What are the existing ethical guidelines and orientations impacting Ontario teachers? To what extent are Ontario teachers urged via the curricula to focus and emphasize ethics in the classroom and gymnasium? Eventually, the curricular emphasis on ethics emerges via references to Ontario teacher unions, the Ontario Teachers College, the Ontario Ministry of Education and implications for various other stakeholders complete the picture within a contemporary ethical infused landscape.

Developing strong safety cultures in academic institutions requires that students at all levels be educated by faculty in chemical safety. Yet chemical safety education is missing from the chemistry curriculum. This article considers a report of numerous injuries from incidents from using flammable chemicals in demonstrations as evidence that chemical safety education is needed in the academic curriculum. It offers reasons why chemical safety education should become an integral part of the chemistry curriculum. It offers elements of a chemical safety education with references to materials that can be helpful in accomplishing this process. This article notes that it is important to reach students early in the first and second years of chemistry since many will go on to other vocations for which an understanding of chemical safety is needed. It concludes that a strong safety culture in an academic institution can be accomplished when chemical safety education is included in the curriculum.

In the "what works" agenda, the case for replication studies in education has strong proponents and supporting arguments. This paper outlines some of their key claims and argues that replication studies, whilst potentially making an important contribution to the "what works" and evidence-based agenda, and education more widely, face several challenges in the context-dense, variable-rich field of education. The paper indicates key challenges facing replication studies in education, from definitions to conception, conduct, interpreting, and drawing conclusions from findings. It sets out how replication studies in education might be improved and developed, and how to address challenges. What replications bring to education is important and useful, but exacting, and, like other research in education, they are not straightforward. Changes of mind-set of researchers, publishers, and funders are needed in order to enable replication studies to prosper, together with attention to what constitutes valid and reliable replication.

The challenges of special education leadership require both inspiration and capacity. This qualitative study of a purposeful sample of members of a Midwestern special education professional organization explores how leaders in special education experience spirituality in their work--creating meaning, leading/supporting others, and coping with workplace demands. In response to internal and external struggles, analysis of interviews and journal entries shows spiritually inclined special education leaders cultivate a sense of gratitude, which flows into a cycle with trust. This choice leads to fulfilled feelings from enacting their values, rich collaboration, and success with integrating work into a balanced life. These findings suggest that prospective and current special education leaders can benefit from engaging in a spiritual perspective toward work.

This position article proposes that bankruptcy counseling and education should be tailored so that bankrupts and consumer debtors can attain "solvency literacy," a new construct developed for this initiative. They need to (a) handle their financial affairs "during" the insolvency process while (b) concurrently striving for a fresh start, rehabilitation (financial health), and reduced recidivism after discharge. Each of the Canadian and American insolvency education and counseling curricula is described with attendant discussions of financial education (literacy), consumer education (literacy), and credit education (literacy). Intending to keep bankruptcy insolvency education relevant and effective, a specially tailored curriculum is tendered for consideration. The curriculum represents a hybrid of consumer, financial, and credit education. It is relevant to immediate, situation-specific financial needs anticipating that people can strive for more generic consumer and financial literacy after they have attained solvency literacy.

Trends in higher education include accelerated online learning and an increase in adult learners. The retention of these learners is essential for universities. This study used an exploratory case study methodology to examine factors facilitating the retention of women in an accelerated, online teacher education program. Using the Priorities Survey of Online Learners measuring student satisfaction and interviews exploring factors in student retention, several prominent themes emerged after coding and analyzing survey and interview transcription data. This study found salient factors for retention included: (a) positive interaction with instructors, (b) student drive, and (c) program flexibility.

Higher education today is characterized by a highly diversified student population. This, in turn, calls for greater inclusivity in higher education. To answer this call, this paper introduces a typology of student diversity in, and an inclusive student learning support system for, higher education. More specifically, the typology of student diversity suggests that students in higher education may comprise of adults, school leavers, indigenous students, low socio-economic background students, and international students. The typology explains each student classification in detail using five relevant factors, namely autonomy, anxiety, motivation, discipline, and life experience. Finally, the paper offers some pertinent insights to create an inclusive student learning support system for higher education based on the insights derived from the typology of student diversity in higher education.

With the research on fostering and cultivating learner autonomy in foreign/second language teaching and learning, teacher autonomy has gained momentum in the research of foreign language teacher education. There have been many theoretical research and discussions about the definitions of learner autonomy. Many researchers acknowledge that language teachers play important roles in developing learner autonomy. However, the relationship between teacher autonomy and learner autonomy needs to be explored. The focal point of the present paper is a tentative discussion on the relationship between teacher autonomy and learner autonomy in foreign language education and teacher education. This paper sheds light to foreign language education and teacher education in that language teachers should change their traditional roles to ones catering and facilitating the development of learner autonomy, and teacher education and training programs should include and design courses, practicum to enhance and promote teacher-learner autonomy.

This paper focuses on a major challenge facing education systems around the world, that of finding ways of including all children in schools. In economically poorer countries this is mainly about the millions of children who are not able to attend formal education (UNESCO, 2015). Meanwhile, in wealthier countries many young people leave school with no worthwhile qualifications, whilst others are placed in special provision away from mainstream education and some choose to drop out since the lessons seem irrelevant (OECD, 2012). Faced with these challenges, there is evidence of an increased interest in the idea of making education more inclusive and equitable. However, the field remains confused as to the actions needed in order to move policy and practice forward.

Recent critics have suggested that character education (either in and of itself or certain instantiations of it) is overly individualised and, as a result, fails to engage adequately with the political. In this paper, I offer an account of character education which takes issue with such criticisms, and seeks to make clear connections between the moral and the political necessary for character formation and expression. Drawing on an Aristotelian understanding of the political, I argue that individuals are intimately connected with their social associations, which in contemporary plural, westernised democracies include the sort of engagement with the political advocated by critics of character education. Through a focus on civic virtue and deliberative engagement, it is argued that an Aristotelian-inspired account of character addresses the precise concerns, including recognising and challenging social injustices and deliberative engagement with difference, which critics suggest are lacking from character education.

Purpose: This paper aims to reconstruct the discoursive shape of student participation on the base of Polish school textbooks for citizenship education. Methodology: The main research question is: What image of student participation can be reconstructed by analyzing the texts of Polish citizenship education textbooks? The method of gathering data was finding secondary sources. The sample included all textbooks used to teach a basic program of civic education at the upper secondary level of education. The applied method of analysis comes from the group of approaches defined as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). The author adopted the approach represented by Ruth Wodak and Martin Reisigl. Findings: Through discursive exclusion and numerous mitigating cases, students become passive objects of adult policy and all forms of their agency are diminished and deprived of features that determine their strength.

Purpose: This quasi-experimental study evaluated the effects on students' autonomous motivation and satisfaction from a program integrating physics concepts in physical education. Method: A total of 487 students (age 13 [plus or minus] 1) participated in the study. The participants were students participating in physical education classes divided into intervention (n = 183), comparison, and control condition (n = 150 and n = 154, respectively). Before the intervention and three times during its implementation, the students responded on measures of situational motivation with good construct validity. Results: The intervention increased the students' autonomous motivation and satisfaction in physical education and decreased the students' amotivation. Conclusion: An effective integration of physics concepts and physical activities can promote meaningful learning, a holistic education perspective, autonomous motivation, and wellness in physical education.

Relying upon the heuristic presuppositions of behavioral economics, this study seeks to offer an expanded analysis of the public mission mandate of the Greek higher education sector. The examination outlines and parses qualitative evidence issued from the Greek Ministry of Education, and in particular from the hitherto untranslated document "A Strategy for Higher Education in Greece: 2016-2020," in conjunction with a growing body of scholarship on the challenges of cultivating public trust in the Greek social landscape. The discussion negotiates the position of the Greek higher education system as a system of sustainable social prosperity and argues that its operational conditions of financial scarcity may entail broader and inadvertent ramifications, namely, the depletion of cognitive resources and the propagation of narrow mental frames in the pursuit of a public mission.

Raising a child engages parents/caregivers in learning knowledge and skills needed for effective, healthy parenting. The field of parent and family education furnishes a variety of approaches and resources intended to assist and guide those raising and working with children. The Diffusion of Innovations Theory presents a clear framework for understanding how particular resources may develop and become more widely used in parent and family education. Among such resources, parenting newsletter interventions represent a unique and valuable approach to facilitating growth in parent/caregiver confidence, knowledge and skills. This paper provides an overview of the history and usage of newsletters in parent education in contexts including public health, extension and other settings. Further, it highlights key findings, challenges and future directions for parent newsletter interventions in the 21st century landscape of family life education.

The role of Environmental education is perceived as one that would generate awareness and provide opportunities to gain knowledge, attitudes and skills which are required to protect and improve the environment. This study examines the role of the newly introduced compulsory Environmental Science course in the undergraduate program in creating a change in the environmental behavior of the students, and the impact of variation in the discipline competency among teachers. The results of the present study reflect that the students with a science background have more interest, knowledge, participation, and contribution towards the environment as compared to students with a non-science background. Similar is the finding where teachers with and without formal training in Environmental Science have been surveyed.