In this paper, we contribute to land education research by focusing on the Torres Strait Islands in the Coral Sea at the far north of tip of Cape York, Australia. We describe the Torres Strait Islander concept of Sea Country and Torres Strait "Ailan Kastom" (translated as "Island Custom"). We then analyse some of the ways in…

United Nations of Education Scientific and Cultural Organisation's (UNESCO's) founding statements about environmental education (EE) in the 1970s positioned it as a multidisciplinary field of inquiry. When enacted as such, it challenges traditional ways of organising secondary school education by academic subject areas. Equally,…

Approaches to environmental education which are engaging with place and critical pedagogy have not yet broadly engaged with the African world and insights from Africana Studies and Geography. An African-centred approach facilitates people's reconnection to places and ecosystems in ways that do not reduce places to objects of conquest and…

This article focuses on the concepts of risk and resilience and their potential to inform clinical interventions, school-based prevention programs, and social policies. Research suggests that childhood adversity can trigger a cascade of psychological and neurobiological events that can lead to mental disorders in later life. Yet little is known…

Science education studies have revealed that students often have misconceptions about how nature works, but what happens to misconceptions after a conceptual change remains poorly understood. Are misconceptions rejected and replaced by scientific conceptions, or are they still present in students' minds, coexisting with newly acquired…

Language and gesture are viewed as highly interdependent systems. Besides supporting communication, gestures also have an impact on memory for verbal information compared to pure verbal encoding in native but also in foreign language learning. This article presents a within-subject longitudinal study lasting 14 months that tested the use of…

Games provide important informal learning activities for young children, and spatial game play (e.g., puzzles and blocks) has been found to relate to the development of spatial skills. This study investigates 4- and 5-year-old children's use of scaled and unscaled maps when solving mazes, asking whether an important aspect of spatial…

The general aim of the article is to teach the reader how to transform conceptual models of change, development, and learning into mathematical expressions and how to use these equations to build dynamic models by means of the widely used spreadsheet program Excel. The explanation is supported by a number of Excel files, which the reader can…

Across the country of Ethiopia, a centrally planned and prescribed professional development programme was implemented in schools, with the intention of enhancing teachers' knowledge, skills and disposition, thereby improving student learning and achievement. This article explores and describes the lived experiences of teachers involved in…

Michael Fielding has written about the dangers of over-emphasis on the functional in schooling and a subordination of the personal. He wrote of, "… the need to situate our work within an historical context that requires judgement about matters of significance and purpose, not mere efficiency and effectiveness …" (Fielding 2007, p. 383).…

This paper explores the complex processes involved in the self-construction of academic identity in a UK School of Education. Building on seminal literature in this field and drawing on the research of four academics, it begins by discussing teacher educators' varying perceptions of the need to re-configure their identity to meet the…

Health disparities related to food choices, nutrition behaviours and smoking habits in urban communities in the United States signal the importance of health education (HE) in schools, yet educators in urban communities face unique cultural challenges often unaddressed in professional development (PD). The purpose of this study was to use a…

The increasing cultural diversity of American students makes it imperative for school-based professionals to engage in culturally-competent practice, thereby ensuring high-quality mental health services. Although most cultural competence training occurs in university programs, research shows practicing mental health professionals would benefit…

A narrative literature review was conducted to identify the design features of effective short-term face-to-face professional development (PD) events. The 23 reviewed studies described PD with durations of 30 hours or less and involved participants in education or human service-related professions. Design features associated with positive impacts…

This article argues that evaluation of professional development (PD) requires a focus on student learning and an evidential baseline to enable practitioners and school leaders to determine the impact of the PD in which they are engaged. Several models of evaluating PD are briefly considered and it is suggested that most of these enable programme…