Background: Several barriers are hampering the provision of adequate education to students with special educational needs in mainstream primary schools. It is not clear how many and which students in the Netherlands are considered children with special educational needs. The problems that make teachers consider children to have special educational…

Background: HIV/AIDS poses a major threat to development and poverty alleviation, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa. Education has been declared an effective preventative approach and the single most powerful weapon against HIV transmission. However, there is a paucity of research on the type of education required, the appropriate…

Background and purpose: Many holistic anti-bullying interventions have been attempted, with mixed success, while little work has been done to promote a "self-help" approach to victimisation. The rise of the ICT curriculum and computer support in schools now allows for approaches that benefit from technology to be implemented. This study evaluates…

Background: Teachers of sexuality education can often be uncertain about what theoretical basis and pedagogical strategies to use in their teaching. Sexuality educational programmes designed by teachers can often show few evident theoretical principles that have been applied in its construction. Thus, there seems to be a dearth of evidence of ways…

Background: Although much has been written about the ways in which new technology might transform educational practice, particularly in the area of literacy learning, there is relatively little empirical work that explores the possibilities and problems--or even what such a transformation might look like in the classroom. 3D virtual worlds offer a…

Background: Immersive virtual worlds are one of a range of different platforms that can be grouped under the concept of mediated environments, i.e. environments that create a metaphorical space in which participants can position themselves and be embodied. Synthesising the literatures concerning the various mediated environment technologies…

Background: Most policy doctrines promote the use of scientific inquiry in the K-12 classroom, but good inquiry is hard to implement, particularly for schools with fiscal and safety constraints and for teachers struggling with understanding how to do so. Purpose: In this paper, we present the design of a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE)…

Background: In the 1990s, Salmon developed a five-stage model for enabling and scaffolding remote groups to work and learn together using asynchronous bulletin boards. The model has informed online learning and development practice across different levels and education for online and blended learning. Purpose: This paper reports our testing of the…

Background: Many of the potential benefits of using virtual worlds for teaching and learning are difficult to define and often become overly focused on the functionality of the technology or on its ability to support informal or "social" forms of learning. Purpose: The aim of the paper is to highlight the experiential nature of virtual worlds and…

Background: The literature on immersive virtual worlds and e-learning to date largely indicates that technology has led the pedagogy. Although rationales for implementing e-learning have included flexibility of provision and supporting diversity, none of these recommendations has helped to provide strong pedagogical location. Furthermore, there is…

Background: Numerous surveys, articles, ephemera and online information sources indicate that "Second Life" has been the predominant virtual world, for educational purposes, in UK universities for the latter half of the 2000s. However, the infrastructure required to operate "Second Life" presents a number of technical concerns within some…

This position paper focuses on how the new national curriculum for school and the new general plan for teacher education in Norway change the underlying premises for teaching and learning in today's teacher education. This has become particularly pressing as a result of the new educational reform "Knowledge Promotion" in schools,…

In 2003, the Norwegian higher educational system was reformed. The reform, known as the 2003 Quality Reform, introduced changes in the teaching model and student assessment. The authors wished to study how these changes affected male and female students. Therefore, they addressed student learning outcomes, measured through examination results,…

This paper examines whether the Swedish steering documents for English-language education are ethnically biased, that is, whether Swedish culture and language or "Swedishness" are used as norms when teaching and assessing students. To examine whether such bias exists, the central curricula and syllabi from 1994 and 2000, as well as local…

This article examines relations to knowledge among novice teachers educated in a research-based program in Finland and a general professional program in Norway. The curricula of the 2 programs differ in distinct ways with regard to selection and organization of knowledge. We ask whether such differences also play out in the relations to knowledge…