The authors of this paper examine the use of formative assessment as a tool to assist teachers of mathematics to become more mindful developers of curricula. They focus on instructional design that is based on careful examination of student answers to questions. Empirical studies have shown the effectiveness of formative assessment for students, and recent theoretical work indicates that the positive feedback aspect of formative assessment stimulates self-regulation and transformation,...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Mathematics Teachers, Instructional Design, Feedback, Formative Evaluation,...
In recent times there has been considerable commentary regarding the need to enhance mathematical assessment as evidenced by "Numeracy, A Priority for All: Challenges for Australian Schools" (2000). This emphasis on assessment is timely because, although the mathematical reform movement has produced much needed improvements in both curriculum and instruction, changes in assessment have not kept pace. As Ridgway states in "From Barrier to Lever: Revising Roles for Assessment in...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Educational Change, Curriculum Development, Educational Assessment, Mathematics...
Early childhood teachers are faced with many more choices and decisions regarding the development of their curriculum than ever before. The development of state standards for young children in prekindergarten (pre-K) programs not only provides guidance but also places demands on content that must be addressed. Finding the time to plan creative activities that will meet the diverse range of children's interests and abilities, as well as meet state learning standards, is a challenge for teachers...
Topics: ERIC Archive, State Standards, Creative Activities, Young Children, Story Reading, Emergent...
This paper investigates the questions and considerations that should be discussed by administrators, faculty, and support staff when designing, developing and offering a hybrid (part online, part face-to-face) degree program. Using two Web questionnaires, data were gathered from nine instructors and approximately 450 students to evaluate student and instructor perceptions and opinions of hybrid instruction and activities. In comparison to prior research, the results of this study offer larger...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Educational Technology, Distance Education, Program Development, Curriculum...
This paper reports the results of two interventions involving the integrated study of mathematics and technology practice to girls in Years 6 and 7. The focus of the study was to look at factors that contributed to girls' disengagement with mathematics study and seek pedagogical solutions for this. The key mathematics concepts embedded in the two interventions were proportional reasoning and ratio. A design based research methodology was adopted. The study started with the assumption that by...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Research Methodology, Intervention, Females, Mathematics Education, Mathematical...
This study seeks to determine the state of online course development and faculty attitudes toward online instruction within technical teacher education programs in the United States. This study shows that a majority of research participants reported that less than 25% of coursework in their departments was offered fully online or Web-enhanced. This indicates a relatively low usage of online coursework in technical teacher education programs. One may conclude, therefore, that technical teacher...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Technology Integration, Management Systems, Teacher Education Programs, Preservice...
Increasingly, educational reform is linked to the concept of professional learning communities (PLCs). Definitions of PLCs vary, but generally the concept refers to a group of educators who "continuously seek and share learning, and act on their learning" (Hord 1997, 6). Stoll and her colleagues, concluding their review of the current state of PLCs and research, observe that there is a "paucity of longitudinal research" and that "little is yet known about the potential...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Educational Change, Educational Research, Educational Cooperation, Educational...
This article discusses a new design for the classic Bloom's Taxonomy developed by Anderson, L. W. & Krathwohl, D. (2001), which can be used to evaluate learners' technology-enhanced experience in more powerful and critical ways. The New Bloom's Taxonomy incorporates contemporary research on learning and human cognition into its model. The original taxonomy created consensus about how to use important vocabulary as it helped educators make use of the hierarchical nature of knowledge in...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Curriculum Development, Classification, Cognitive Processes, Foreign Countries,...
Peer tutoring is essentially peers teaching each other. Many teachers already incorporate this idea into their classrooms in other curricular areas and appreciate the benefits that come from this type of teaching. Teachers can implement peer tutoring by teaching a small group of students a subject, or using a group that already understands the subject area, who in turn will be able to teach that concept to their peers. In this article, the author shares how she led an after-school club called...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Curriculum Development, Clubs, Peer Teaching, Student Leadership, Tutoring, Student...
In 1996, a new curricular framework for vocational education in schools called "Lernfelder" (learning arenas) was implemented in Germany. In the concept of learning arenas learning situations in schools have to be related to work activity in a particular occupation. For this reason work process orientation currently plays a significant role in German curriculum development. However, there is not just one approach on how to transform work activity into vocational curricula, but various...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Foreign Countries, Curriculum Development, Vocational Education, Training Methods,...
The concept of competence is increasingly the basis for (re)designing VET. In competence-based VET academic disciplines are no longer starting points for curriculum development. Competence needed for working in practice, however, is. Competence-based learning is a dominant trend in VET in several countries because of fewer expected problems in the transition from school to work. In this study, by means of a focus group session and a Delphi study, a model for competence- based VET is developed....
Topics: ERIC Archive, Curriculum Development, Focus Groups, Delphi Technique, Vocational Education,...
The primary purpose of this exploratory study is to identify variations in the ways in which individual teachers in different educational contexts interpret their curriculum and plan their lessons and in particular to explore the possibility that cultural differences as identified by Hofstede (1991) may be a contributing factor to understanding how teachers understand their work. "Educational reform" has become a catchphrase in the Anglo-American world, including the United States,...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Foreign Countries, Geography, Cultural Differences, Cultural Traits, Curriculum...
Integrative curriculum design promises much for middle level teachers who wish to develop classroom programmes that will encourage early adolescents to actively engage in their learning (Beane 1990, 1997). Beane's model is highly responsive to the educational and developmental needs of young people. In contrast, multidisciplinary curriculum design (Jacobs 1989) may result in significant but largely unrecognised drawbacks when it is implemented in the middle grades. This paper critically...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Foreign Countries, Educational Change, Curriculum Design, Laboratory Schools,...
In Australia, and internationally, integration is a widely promoted middle school curriculum reform strategy. Integration is claimed to engage students by providing opportunities to work on a few cross-disciplinary objectives, to apply knowledge across the subject boundaries and to work on tasks with meaning and relevance. While these curriculum goals enjoy a certain popularity among middle school reformers and curriculum integration adherents, in practice, the prevalence of integration is...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Foreign Countries, Curriculum Development, Middle Schools, Educational Change,...
Cochran-smith, Davis, and Fries (2004) reviewed the research, practice, and policy of multicultural teacher education during the last decade of the twentieth century and the first few years of the twenty-first century, and pointed out that the field needed to include inquiries that involve the work of practitioners who are studying their own courses and programs (p. 965). As a multicultural teacher educator, the author studied the autobiographical curriculum she developed while teaching...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Student Teachers, Multicultural Education, Preservice Teacher Education, Inservice...
This essay offers a history of a basic writing course that began at a public ivy campus in the 1970s. Relying on principles of universal design and on insights derived from his school's studio program about ways the institution's selective functions can impact curricular matters, the author describes how the basic writing course was merely retrofitted to an English Department's goals, rather than integrated into is mainstream business. In turn, the author suggests that historical studies such...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Educational History, Basic Writing, Undergraduate Study, English Departments,...
Diminishing "standards" and "alignment" to overused buzzwords or superficial checklists masks the dire need for truly systematic and operational standards-based alignment in science education. In this article, the authors report the findings of an ongoing collaborative effort between cognitive researchers and urban science teachers to align everyday teaching with standards, tests, and research-based pedagogy. They begin with an analysis of how the width vs. depth dilemma in...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Science Instruction, Curriculum Development, Science Teachers, Science Achievement,...
Tiered instruction is grouping students for instruction based on their prior background knowledge in a given subject area. In this study, students were either in a control secondary science classroom or a classroom in which instruction was tiered. The tiered instruction was designed to match high, middle, or low levels of background knowledge on astronomy and Newtonian physics. The seven control classrooms received middle-level nontiered instruction, whereas the seven treatment classrooms...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Teaching Methods, Science Curriculum, Prior Learning, Curriculum Development,...
This article reports the findings of a university's pilot project documenting the impact of an intervention entitled Course (Re)design for Internationalization Workshop (CRIW) on faculty perspectives and their subsequent willingness to engage in internationalization of the curriculum. Two main theories, transformative learning (Mezirow, 1991) and faculty development (Ramsden, 2003) in the approach adopted for the CRIW (Saroyan & Amundsen, 2004) informed this study and its procedures. This...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Workshops, Intervention, Faculty Development, Educational Change, Transformative...
In higher education, competing demands for accountability and innovation in the face of globalization, technology, and budget cuts cause us to consider how best to prepare learners who will learn for a lifetime. We contend that a shift in our understanding of curriculum design to accommodate learner-centeredness will provide the framework for preparing graduates for a lifetime of learning. Learner-centered curriculum proposes to create highly developed individuals, providing them the skills to...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Curriculum Development, Curriculum Design, Global Approach, College Students,...
Most teachers have attended countless workshops that advocated new teaching methods, materials, or techniques in addressing special student populations. They politely listen as a series of presenters enthusiastically introduce their information in written and verbal form. They return to the classroom, fully intending to use their new skills, but perhaps feeling a bit anxious about their actual applications and ensuing results. This author believes that teachers, like students, must be both...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Academically Gifted, Interdisciplinary Approach, Problem Solving, Teaching Methods,...
Everybody is doing it: differentiating curriculum to make it deeper, broader, parallel, and more complex. No longer the private property of gifted specialists, differentiation is now a democratic pursuit of classroom teachers, curriculum specialists, and anyone else who subscribes to "Educational Leadership." In an era of competency-based tests that seek to measure schools and students on the lowest common denominator--"Who knows their basic skills?"--differentiation has...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Educational Improvement, Instructional Leadership, Academically Gifted, Educational...
A school's curriculum can appear unrelated, fragmented, or somewhat disjointed if not done with an end in mind. This fragmentation or disjointedness often affects students and their views of the experiences being given them in school. Various curriculum-integration techniques, however, can be used to help make the big picture more understandable to students; and these have the added benefit of allowing teachers to focus better on teaching and student learning. In effective...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Teaching Methods, Curriculum Development, Interdisciplinary Approach, Curriculum...
How should district and school leaders improve education for students traditionally underserved by public education: by increasing control over teaching and curriculum, or by empowering groups of teachers to have more collective autonomy, responsibility, and opportunities for professional learning? The second approach--promoting multiple trajectories of learning among groups of teachers--has advantages, as well as some challenges, as a means of closing various achievement gaps. Sociocultural...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Academic Achievement, Teacher Collaboration, Educational Change, English (Second...
For decades the National Science Foundation has been funding the development of instructional materials whose design is based upon the recommendations of educational research. These recommendations include the idea that learning be sequenced and organized using an experiential learning cycle or an instructional model such as the Biological Science Curriculum Study (BSCS) 5E Instructional Model (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate). More recent research studies such as those...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Curriculum Development, Educational Research, Prior Learning, Experiential Learning,...
The Children Designing & Engineering (CD&E) Project at the College of New Jersey is a collaborative effort of the College's Center for Design and Technology and the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. The Project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), has been charged to develop instructional materials for grades K-5. The twelve thematic units under development integrate science, mathematics, technology and other content through design-and-make activities. Activities are...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Problem Based Learning, Instructional Materials, Teaching Methods, Science Education,...
The word "technology" has evolved through several different meanings during the recent history of education. In 1985, the American Industrial Arts Association changed its name to the International Technology Education Association. This change reflected dissatisfaction with traditional "shop" courses, designed to prepare students for skilled trades and technical vocations. Instead, it was felt, all students needed to gain some familiarity with technology, to prepare them for...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Curriculum Development, Educational History, Familiarity, Technology Education,...
The New Social Studies movement of the 1960s and 1970s represents a significant era of curriculum development and reform in the United States, which had international implications. This article presents an Australian case study of the experiences of curriculum workers involved in the development of an elementary social studies curriculum in the 1980s and their responses to the New Social Studies movement. It addresses the question: How did curriculum workers in the 1980s respond to innovative...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Curriculum Development, Educational Change, Foreign Countries, Thinking Skills,...
Modern teachers live in age of accountability, in which their success as educators is determined by individual and group mastery of specific standards demonstrated by standardized test performance. Even before No Child Left Behind (NCLB), standards and measures were used to determine if schools and students were successful. But NCLB has increased the pace, intensity, and high stakes of this trend. Gifted and talented students are significantly impacted by these local or state proficiency...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Academically Gifted, Federal Legislation, Talent, Standardized Tests, Accountability,...
This study examined the use of science professors acting as mentors to enhance the science competency of early childhood educators. Findings indicate that mentor-mentee dyad interactions varied; however, mentors were able to assist with curriculum, science content, and resources. Although standards-based units were developed, there was little "real" science inquiry present. Findings did not support a higher-quality product that involved a mentoring relationship versus a nonmentoring...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Preservice Teachers, Mentors, Science Instruction, College Faculty, Teacher...
Middle school students are naturally curious about their expanding possibilities. This stage of their lives is a time of transition, of figuring out who they are and where they belong in the world. Many students also think that the world they look at through the classroom window is distant and unconnected to the world of chalkboards and pop quizzes they inhabit between the hours of eight and three. Models of middle school education have often included teacher and community expectations...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Middle School Students, Middle Schools, Adolescents, Interdisciplinary Approach,...
Although the phrase "holistic approach" is increasingly used in reference to vocational education and training (VET) in Australia, there appears to be a paucity of literature which extensively conceptualises or details its practical application. Existing references to an "holistic approach" appear indicative of an integrated model seen as a vehicle for the achievement of a broad range of vocational and social capital outcomes, particularly in Indigenous contexts. This paper...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Constructivism (Learning), Curriculum Development, Community Needs, Holistic...
In the Australian vocational education and training (VET) context, attention is often given to what youth work training programs should consist of, resulting in less attention on how youth work education and training programs might be imagined, constructed and implemented. In this paper, a particular South Australian youth work training program is explored with the purpose of investigating the particular educational methodology employed and its impact in the structuring and delivery of a VET...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Youth Programs, Vocational Education, Competency Based Education, Theory Practice...
This article addresses how teacher preparation programs can best respond to the broad, complex calls for reform in ways that are locally meaningful and honor academic integrity, but that are also true to the intent of the reform mandates. The authors begin with an overview of some of the federal and state initiatives that are presenting challenges for schools and teacher preparation programs. They then look at "lessons learned" from several teacher preparation programs that have...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Educational Change, College School Cooperation, Teacher Educators, Teacher Education...
In this article, the authors present a case study of preservice teachers engaged in service-learning in an after-school program while concurrently enrolled in science and language arts methods courses. Two interdisciplinary education faculty worked collaboratively to connect language arts and science methods content with service-learning experiences. Preservice teachers provided a service to elementary school students by developing and teaching integrated, inquiry-based lessons. The...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Preservice Teachers, Methods Courses, Language Arts, After School Programs, Service...
This article explores the theoretical foundations and practical application of Teaching for Intellectual and Emotional Learning (TIEL), a pedagogical model that codifies a powerful way of thinking about the intellectual and social-emotional processes that underlie teaching and learning. It is is organized in three sections, and begins by offering a rationale for a new pedagogy. It goes on to discuss the theoretical foundations of the TIEL model. Finally it looks at contributions to the...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Teacher Role, Teacher Educators, Learning Theories, Educational Theories, Knowledge...
In this article, the authors present a philosophical exploration of the import of a democratic ethic in making decisions concerning curricula. Specifically, the authors offer a guide for ethical decision making that is concerned with promoting fairness and acting on social justice principles. The ethical responsibilities of educators are explored, focusing on an examination of how various contexts play a role in informing educators about curricula. (Contains 8 notes.)
Topics: ERIC Archive, Ethics, Social Justice, Participative Decision Making, Educational Philosophy,...
In this article, the author provides a prefacing narrative that examines the work of Simpson et al. (2004, this issue), situating the reader as the importance of a framework for curriculum design. Importantly, the author illuminates a set a democratic values that animate the framework, and which work to instruct a democratic ethic of curriculum design.
Topics: ERIC Archive, Curriculum Development, Curriculum Design, Educational Change, Democratic Values,...
Health educators are providing students with the health knowledge and health skills that are prerequisites for becoming health literate and using assessment tools to demonstrate effectiveness. In the school health educators' world, accountability equates to improved student knowledge and skills. To expect them to be held accountable for students' behavior would be professional suicide. In this paper, the authors intend to show how and why educators have adopted a standards-based philosophy of...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Comprehensive School Health Education, Public Health, Accountability, Educational...
Sports-related concussions can happen to any athlete in any sport. Each year in the United States, an estimated 1.6-3.8 million sports and recreation-related traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) occur, most of which can be classified as concussions. To help coaches prevent, recognize, and better manage sports-related concussions, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (CDC's Injury Center) applied a comprehensive health-education...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Athletes, Health Education, Prevention, Head Injuries, Athletic Coaches, Sports...
In this essay the author attempts to distinguish space as a social aspect of education, see it as a force that shapes the space called school, and evaluate the ability of that public space to represent the needs and desires of the constituents it serves, tackling the essential foundations driving progressive education; seeing and living in the intersections between democracy, freedom, learning, and ownership indispensable to a modern civil state. He argues that "No Child Left Behind"...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Curriculum Development, Federal Legislation, Democracy, Educational Change, Public...
The current movement in spirituality is extending into both K-12 and higher education. There is discussion at both levels of the need for the spiritual (not religion) to be a recognized part of the curriculum, to enable individuals to find personal meaning in the curriculum. This essay explores two themes--first, the importance of educators having a deep understanding of the purpose and meaning of their work, and of themselves in relation to that work; and second, the need for educators to...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Curriculum Development, Elementary Secondary Education, Federal Legislation,...
How do people face the persistent movement in the present historical moment toward Empire and the curriculum of Empire? Hardt & Negri define Empire as the political subject that effectively regulates global exchanges, the sovereign power that governs the world. As Empire develops out goes national sovereignty, in comes supranational governance, controlled by a network of economic (IMF), political (the United Nations), and military (American) interests, whose decisions affect all of the...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Government Role, Political Science, Political Power, Political Attitudes, Critical...
In 1993, William E. Doll, Jr., a professor at Louisiana State University, created a post-modern curriculum matrix. Instead of the old three Rs, reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic, the curriculum framework Doll envisioned is compromised of the four Rs: richness, recursion, relation, and rigor. The different categories of the four Rs are not mutually exclusive. The overlap and the boundaries that differentiate them are blurred, not hard and stable. As elsewhere in the post-modern paradigm, the...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Teacher Attitudes, Case Studies, Postmodernism, Elementary School Teachers,...
Many educators have suggested that teachers hold the authority, and thus the responsibility, for initiating the curricular and instructional changes made within their own classrooms. One implication of this suggestion is that teachers be reflective about their practice. Yet, reflection is a difficult process that requires critical thought, self-direction, and problem solving, coupled with personal knowledge and self-awareness. As classroom teachers, the authors believe that thorough reflection...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Preservice Teacher Education, Curriculum Development, Preservice Teachers, Elementary...
Critical pedagogy. Whatever insurgent energy once pulsed through those words--giving them life and investing them with power and possibility--has been largely lost, their meaning sapped away with overuse and misuse, reduction and dogmatic application. Yesterday's iconoclasts are often today's icons, and every revolution, large or small, finds a way to destroy its own Utopia. Still, there is a lesson and a message here: now is as good a time as any other to challenge teachers' orthodoxy, to...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Curriculum Development, Critical Theory, Social Justice, Teacher Educators, Teacher...
In this article, the authors explore the notion of difficulty and the vital role it can play in the learning journey of student teachers, both with respect to their own and their students' educational maturation. Confronting today's popular but flawed American reductionist learning models, the authors explicate the opportunity for deeper learning provided by a proactive engagement with, rather than suppression of difficulty. Thus, difficulty is seen not as an impediment to learning but as a...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Student Teachers, Transformative Learning, Critical Thinking, Curriculum Development,...
This article examines social justice as a vehicle for equity for all children. It focuses on the training of school leaders who can promote democratic schools and address inequality in K-12 schools. It outlines the needs assessment, consensus building, curriculum, and faculty voice in establishing a doctorate in educational justice. (Contains 1 table.)
Topics: ERIC Archive, Elementary Secondary Education, Needs Assessment, Educational Change, Social Justice,...
Cohorts are increasingly popular management tools for recruiting students into professional education programs, for organizing their learning experiences, for promoting performance-based outcomes, and for developing and using innovative teaching-learning practices. This article explores the role of a cohort leader in ensuring that the curriculum is integrated throughout the life of the cohort, that program coherence is developed and maintained, and that students, faculty, and the program assume...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Curriculum Development, Professional Education, Integrated Curriculum, Learning...
This article recommends raising the bar in elementary physical education by using Laban's movement framework to develop curriculum content in the areas of games, gymnastics, and dance (with physical fitness concepts blended in) in order to help students achieve the NASPE content standards. The movement framework can permeate and unify an elementary physical education curriculum and instruction plan through aspects such as the program's purposes, learning experiences and their organization,...
Topics: ERIC Archive, Curriculum Development, Physical Education, Physical Fitness, Elementary Education,...