This article analyses theorising of constructivism, and discusses various approaches to constructivist pedagogy in schools. There is a consensus in recent research that teachers use constructivist pedagogy to improve learning. It is argued that the effectiveness of constructivist pedagogy is dependent on the quality of teachers, students'…

Building on Shulman's (1986, 1987) construct of Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK), Ball and colleagues (Ball, Thames & Phelps, 2008) created a model of mathematical knowledge for teaching that differentiates between subject matter knowledge and PCK. The model categorises different types of knowledge within these two domains. In this research…

In this study, the authors correlate proficiency rates of seventh-grade civics students to free and reduced-priced (FRPL) lunch status during the 2015-2016 school year at the school level, across all 348 Florida schools for which both statistics were applicable and available. The authors used simple linear regression to test the null hypothesis…

Standardised testing in early childhood education has a direct impact on how teachers teach. In 2015, Western Australian early childhood teachers were invited to complete a questionnaire to provide feedback on their perceptions of standardised testing in the context of the "Early Years Learning Framework for Australia" (EYLF)…

Young children aged 4-5 years are online in rapidly increasing numbers. This is due to the accessibility of the internet afforded young children via touchscreen technologies. In Australian, the United Kingdom and United States of America, calls have been made for cyber-safety education to be provided for young children in their early childhood…

History textbooks in contemporary democracies have often been exposed to censorship and other forms of interference. This article presents the idea of a classification of these forms as a novel way to contemplate the ambivalent relationship between democratic authority and historical instruction. The model primarily distinguishes official forms of…

In recent years the words 'Finnish education' have been accompanied by utterances of 'an education miracle,' 'the best education system,' 'a success' and a number of other adjectives and superlatives to 'describe' education in Finland. While Finland's PISA ranking has declined media interest and discourses on 'Finnish education' have not relented.…

The development of generic skills is a focal issue in education policy and school curriculum reform across countries. This study in the Hong Kong context explores the sources of formal and non-formal curriculum and learning activities related to senior secondary students' perceptions of learning outcomes in creativity, communication, and problem…

In order to enhance ESL students' motivation to learn learning English, teachers around the world have been employing various motivational strategies in classrooms. However, there is scarce research focusing on both alignments and misalignments of secondary students' evaluation of the effectiveness of motivational strategies (MS) and teachers' use…

This study aims to understand teacher emotions through interviewing 53 primary teachers in Hong Kong and Mainland China. Content analysis was employed to analyze the data. Teachers reported 68 different types of emotions which decreases as distance from the teachers increases at the five nested ecological system--microsystem, mesosystem,…

Research reveals that teachers' relational competence is crucial for successful education. However, the field is still small and largely unexplored, and arguably needs a better and more precise theoretical starting point. This article seeks to help establish such a starting point, aiming to outline a relational framework based on the philosophies…

Principal leadership is second only to teacher quality among the most important school-related factors influencing student achievement. As leadership for learning in schools becomes increasingly complex and challenging, principals at every career stage will need better preparation, support, and training. One effective approach to continuous…

Research has shown that participation in the arts at school and in the classroom has many academic and personal well-being benefits. Here we outline some of the key effects of arts participation, with particular focus on one of its psychological yields: "flow." We then define flow and describe its nine ingredients with particular…

Research has drawn attention to a certain gap between the increasing ethno-cultural diversity of school enrolment and the relative ethno-cultural homogeneity of the teaching body. In French-speaking Switzerland very little attention has been paid to this matter. The purpose of this article is to analyse the potential added value associated with…

The aim of this paper is to analyse the disparity between the time adolescents devote to various leisure activities and the significance they attribute to them. The gap between amount and significance mirrors the way that adolescents in Israel perceive the concept of leisure and the content with which they fill it. Leisure is a phenomenon that is…