From Public Education to Educational Publics

Students tend to comprehend little and lose focus of classroom instruction when their teachers fail to use instructional strategies that match students’ learning styles. Differentiated instruction can alleviate or eliminate this disengagement. This article describes a case involving a child having difficulty learning and shows how differentiated instruction was used to help this student learn. The author describes the theories on which differentiated instruction is based and provides practical strategies teachers can use to implement this method of teaching.     

Understanding Interdisciplinarity: Curricular and Organizational Features of Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Programs

Though the number of interdisciplinary undergraduate programs has increased rapidly over the past several decades, little empirical research has characterized such programs. In this article we report on our investigation of the characteristics of interdisciplinary programs and develop typologies to describe the multiple ways in which such programs are structured with respect to curricular and organizational features. Using cluster analysis, we show differences in both curricular structures and organizational features across programs, irrespective of the program’s content focus. This typology will guide future research to explore differences in student learning outcomes across the interdisciplinary program types.     

Complexity and Curriculum: A process approach to curriculum-making

It is argued that the complex learning with which higher education institutions are concerned is best promoted by coherent curricula. However, curriculum coherence is not widespread. Outcomes-led rational curriculum planning offers one way of creating coherent curricula, but it is argued that, despite its appeal, it is a poor approach to adopt. An alternative, process model of curriculum creation is described and claims are made about the advantages it can have as an approach to planning coherent learning programmes.     

院校研究与质量保证——以美国高等教育为例

自从20世纪80年代的"里根改革"以来,美国高校的成本越来越多地要由学生及其家庭而不是政府分担,使得人们愈益关注投资高等教育的收益。因此,美国高等教育质量倍受社会公众的关注。院校研究在高等教育质量保证方面具有积极的促进作用。它为高校能够对外部的报告、认证、项目审批,以及内部项目评议和专项研究等方面的社会问责做出说明,同时也在学生学习评估、教师行为分析以及学籍管理三方面发挥了关键作用。     

The subject and the setting: re-imagining opportunities for primary teachers’ subject knowledge development on school-based teacher education courses

The landscape of teacher education is undergoing significant change in many countries and this is often associated with a move towards greater school involvement in the preparation of teachers. One aspect of teaching expertise that is particularly challenging for primary student-teachers is the development of subject knowledge across a wide range of subject areas. Subject knowledge for teaching is multi-faceted and is itself linked to broader questions about curriculum and the content that should be taught. It is timely, therefore, to consider how subject knowledge development might be reconceived in a school setting and how university and school staff might work in new ways with student-teachers to this end. Communities of practice theory is employed as a framework for analysing the learning environment and evaluating these future possibilities. It is argued that collaboration with peers, with their mentoring teachers and with a wider professional community is an under-exploited way of integrating facets of subject knowledge: giving this time and status through structured activities might be a particularly fruitful form of hybrid working in situ. The paper concludes by proposing four principles to underpin this sort of practice.     

Problem-Based Learning for Engineering Students: An Evidence-Based Comparative Study

This paper describes two studies, one a pilot and the second, an enhanced study, that compare problem-based learning and lecture-based learning in library instruction for first-year engineering students. Two distinct assessment strategies were used to provide empirical evidence that supports the use of problem-based learning as an effective teaching method. Based on the results of the enhanced study, the authors conclude that problem-based learning leads to better outcomes for the learning styles of engineering students.     

The WIL to learn: students’ perspectives on the impact of work-integrated learning placements on their professional readiness

ABSTRACT

Work-integrated learning (WIL) has assumed life as a central feature of higher education curriculum design in a wide range of disciplines with the ultimate goal of producing work-ready graduates. Under recent Australian government initiatives affecting teacher education, placement forms of WIL have been touted as the panacea for perceived problems with graduate teacher quality; resulting in the national regulation of placement design and length in this discipline. This article reports the findings of a qualitative study into the perspectives of fifteen teacher education students from one regional Australian university. The study investigated these students’ placement experiences and the impact of these experiences on their perceptions of readiness for a career in the teaching profession. Thematic analysis is the method used to identify two key themes in the data collected through semi-structured interviews. Despite recognising the benefits of real-world opportunities for skill development and practice inherent in WIL placement experiences, the study highlights important limitations of these forms of WIL on the development of professional readiness arising from the contextual features of particular placement sites; relationships with workplace supervisors and performance pressure associated with assessment during placements. These findings not only confirm the importance of social processes in the preparation of work-ready graduates but question reliance on placement forms of WIL learning for nurturing graduates’ readiness for professional work.