Education & Training
The dangers of labels: English as a Second Language
According to the US Census, one-fifth of the American population speaks English as a Second Language (ESL) and speaks another language at home. Professor Lee Gunderson of the University of British Columbia in Canada investigates the negative consequences for people labelled as ESL or English Language Learner (ELL) in the United States. Having first raised these concerns more than 20 […]
Training a new generation of problem solvers: Innovation in STEM education
Humankind faces unprecedented environmental, social, and economic challenges. There is a critical need for STEM education to foster both science learning and the application of learning to problem solving. At the University of Utah, Professor Nancy Butler Songer and her collaborators have developed a suite of interdisciplinary instructional and field-based data collection resources offering elementary and secondary students the chance […]
Online laboratories and Cross-Reality in engineering education
COVID-19 has compelled educators to rapidly transition to online learning methods. This shift is particularly challenging for instructors whose courses involve hands-on laboratory instruction. In his research, Dr Dominik May, an Assistant Professor in the Engineering Education Transformations Institute at the University of Georgia, has been focusing on online laboratories and Cross-Reality learning spaces in engineering education for over a […]
How to use exemplars and rubrics to improve student outcomes
Associate Professors in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Auckland, Eleanor Hawe and Helen Dixon, specialise in evaluating and improving learning assessments. Eleanor is interested in goal setting, feedback, and peer review. Helen focuses on teachers’ beliefs and their effect on learning. In their study, ‘Using rubrics and exemplars to develop students’ evaluative and productive […]
Digital transformation for higher education post COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) across the world to migrate to online environments, with differing degrees of difficulty and success. Lloyd George Waller of the University of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica, argues that success depends on HEIs’ digital readiness which is in turn an outcome of their digital transformation strategic framework. In a forthcoming […]
Self-efficacy in non-routine problem solving in STEM education
Dr Tanya Evans and Emeritus Prof Mike Thomas from the University of Auckland, led by Associate Prof Sergiy Klymchuk from Auckland University of Technology, have developed an intervention that examines whether the employability prospects of students in STEM education could be improved. Their findings suggest that the attitude profiles of students with high and low lateral thinking self-efficacy differ significantly. […]
Reframing understanding as a phase transition
When understanding comes to us, it can come suddenly. As we finally see how the different parts of a problem fall into place, it can bring about feelings of satisfaction, and perhaps even frustration that we did not discern the seemingly obvious solution beforehand. In their research, Dipl.-Phil. Elena Popova and Professor Valentin Popov at Technische Universität Berlin argue that […]
Matching market design: Improving student experience in college admissions in China
How do students access higher education in China? Through the largest centralised matching market in the world, explains Prof Yan Chen. Yet we know very little about how this matching works. Could the design of higher education choice systems across the world be improved by examining the change from immediate acceptance (IA) to the parallel mechanism (PA) in Sichuan Province, […]
Peer observation and review improves university science teaching
STEM subjects in higher education are often taught by staff who have little or no formal training in how to teach. The Peer Observation and Review of Teaching (PORT) program provides a means for university academics to improve their teaching through feedback from their peers. Helen Georgiou and co-workers from the University of Sydney have investigated the effectiveness of the […]
Expansive learning within a teachers’ community of ongoing learners
Good teachers are the critical element in improving education for children everywhere but especially for children in high poverty schools. However, urban schools serving children of poverty rarely attract and retain well-prepared teachers and they seldom provide their teachers with the kinds of support that would improve teaching and learning in their classrooms. To address this need, Professor Frances O’Connell […]