Creating Quality Assurance in Curriculum: Theory and Practice at a Canadian Community College

Quality Assurance in Curriculum is a customized solution to the problems of assuring curricular quality in a dynamic community college environment. It was designed by Red River College, a large, comprehensive community college in Western Canada, to address academic cross-jurisdictional issues in establishing and verifying curriculum. It is a system based on current theory in educational quality, and it uses a three-stage methodology incorporating a variety of survey, planning, and consultation techniques. Benchmarked data figure prominently in assuring academic program curricular conformance is measured according to accepted college mission and accepted standards. Initiated in 2000, each stage of the Quality Assurance in Curriculum strategy has moved from initial concept to preliminary trials through acceptance to full implementation across all academic faculties of the community college.     

At the Beach

Sam and Jesse went to the beach* with Papa*. When Jesse was in the sea,something grabbed(抓住) his toe(脚趾)! Was it a shark*? Oh, no!"Iam going to the beach."Papa said,"Who wants to come?"     

Mission to Planet Markle: Problem-Based Learning for Teaching Elementary Students Difficult Content and Practices

Research in Science Education - Young children can struggle to learn difficult disciplinary content and important skills for practicing science. Problem-based learning (PBL) may be useful for...     

Object-naming deficits in developmental dyslexia

This paper reports two experiments which focus on the object naming deficits of dyslexic readers. In Experiment 1, dyslexic and normal readers were asked to name objects depicted by pictures or following their spoken definition. Ten-year-old dyslexics named fewer objects correctly than other children of a similar age, performing only as well as a younger group of 8-year-old normal readers. This was true irrespective of the modality through which they were tested. In terms of naming latency, however, they were similar to comparison groups. In Experiment 2, nine-year-old dyslexic and normal readers performed as well as each other in a receptive vocabulary test in which pictures had to be matched to spoken words. However, once again, on a picture naming test, the dyslexics did less well than controls. We argue that dyslexic children are subject to verbal naming difficulties which cannot be accounted for by generally low levels of vocabulary knowledge. Their problems are attributable not to difficulties in semantic representation but to difficulties with the lexical-phonological representation of spoken words they know. We propose that, in turn, these difficulties are related to their memory and reading problems.     

Boxing clever: using shoeboxes to support home–school knowledge exchange

A key tenet of the Home–School Knowledge Exchange Project is that children's learning will be enhanced if the knowledge and experience that are to be found both at home and in school can be brought together. In this paper we explore ways of connecting home and school to support literacy learning at Key Stage 1, focusing on the home‐to‐school direction. We discuss how shoeboxes, filled with children's artefacts, can support a range of literacy‐related activities in school. It is suggested that the extensive diversity of knowledge and interests reflected in the chosen objects presents teachers with an invaluable opportunity to personalise children's literacy learning.     

Routes into English teaching: beginning teachers' reflections on college‐based and school‐based Initial Teacher Education programmes

This article compares student and trainee teachers' experiences of three different routes into secondary English teaching: the standard one‐year PGCE; the newer ‘flexible’ PGCE; and the employment‐based Graduate Teacher Programme. As part of a two‐year study involving over 80 beginning teachers the authors invite students and trainees to reflect on the perceived advantages and disadvantages of their chosen route. This article focuses on a small number of interviews with individuals from the sample as they near completion of their training. It sets the findings of the study in the wider political context of New Labour's agenda for school reform and the future development of Initial Teacher Education.     

Empowering parents of pre-school children

This paper describes a project undertaken with parents from an inner city primary school in Hartlepool, England. The main objectives of the project were to increase the self esteem of the parents, to give them an understanding of the pre-school curriculum and to enable them to develop their skills, knowledge and confidence to become involved in school life and to take ownership of their own children's education. The project focused around the production of a video to show nursery life in the school and this production was used as a vehicle to encourage the fulfilment of the objectives described above. The paper concludes by describing the successful outcomes of the project. Some of the outcomes were planned for, but we were equally delighted with the unexpected ones.