Search results

Goal 4.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) explicitly frames education as an enabler of change and a means to achieve all SDGs. This study aims to explore the nature and culture of science as an academic discipline and its capacity for the integration of education for sustainable development (ESD).

Drawing upon interviews with academics working in a Life Sciences Department (n = 11), focus groups with students (n = 21) and observations from lectures, laboratory sessions and field trips, the study advances a number of recommendations for the integration of ESD in Science Education programs.

Findings point to the nature and structure of scientific knowledge and the culture of science as articulated by study participants. The study provides a number of recommendations for the integration of ESD in Science Education programs including a greater emphasis on inquiry-based learning, enhancing ESD themes in science-related modules to teach for sustainability and adopting a department wide strategy that promotes ESD.

This study argues that ESD practitioners need to be cognizant of the nature and culture of the discipline area – as a particular discipline propagates a specific culture – encapsulating ways of being, thinking, acting and communicating, which can have implications for the integration of ESD.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the operationalization of the outcome-based education (OBE) model in an accountancy study program in Sri Lanka and the impact of education frameworks on OBE.

This study follows the case study approach to the first academic accounting study program in a Sri Lankan public sector university. Primary data were collected through semi-structured interviews and secondary data through a content analysis of various relevant documents. The data were analyzed thematically using the theory of constructive alignment.

In accounting, the most significant imperative for the OBE stems from normative pressures. Since the accounting education frameworks have closely followed the approach suggested in constructive alignment, the normative institutionalization of professional standards in accounting supports OBE in accounting education. The OBE approach with its diverse range of teaching and learning activities and assessment methods in accounting has yielded multi-stakeholder benefits while posing some challenges in operationalization.

The paper’s insights are based on a single case study in Sri Lanka and may be difficult to generalize to other countries.

This is the first empirical attempt to study the operationalization of the theory of constructive alignment of OBE in accounting for a study program.

Distance learning has proliferated significantly in the last 20 years. This chapter considers some of the issues and implications when teaching and learning moves from an in-person to a distance mode. It begins with a brief history of distance learning, considering both the technologies used and the dominant pedagogical approaches employed. This is followed by a survey of the impact of Michael Moore's theory of transactional distance, which considered the consequences of separating the learner from peers and instructor. Contemporary work on Moore's contribution includes transaction and participation, activity theory, and transactional presence. A second major aspect of distance learning has been the attempt to introduce social presence into learning environments. The history of social presence is explored, as are its levels and consequences for the learner. Contemporary aspects of social presence reviewed include communities of inquiry. While Web 2.0 has spectacularly resulted in connectivity, it remains unclear as to whether this automatically resulted in more strongly connected learners. Connectivist approaches are considered and distinctions made between technological connectivity and pedagogical engagement. It is argued that the full and exciting potential of Web 2.0 in distance learning requires a commitment to the distanced learner, balancing learner autonomy and teacher presence, promoting meaningful social engagement, and meeting the specific needs of the distance learner.

Describes a free market economy as a competitive, self‐regulating market. In this environment, marketing becomes a powerful instrument for matching products and services to people′s needs. The competitive nature of the market necessitates a continuous exploration of changes in people′s needs and a constant adaptation of the organization and its output to these changes. The success of this adaptation enhances product or service quality and ensures institutional survival. Explains that adult and continuing education can become more effective by adopting marketing strategies, and provides important marketing strategies that may be found relevant in the administration of adult and continuing education programmes under a free market economy.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the understanding and presence of sustainability within entrepreneurship education. The extant literature on sustainability within the entrepreneurship discipline remains extremely limited. Previously, sustainability within an entrepreneurship context has related to economic viability as opposed to sustainability in its broadest sense. This study explores, through a survey of entrepreneurship educators, three key research questions, namely, how entrepreneurship educators believe that entrepreneurs can contribute to solving sustainability problems. Second, to what extent education about sustainability is integrated within existing entrepreneurship curricula. Finally, what considerations are being made to include sustainability within future programmes.

This study represented part of a larger university project exploring the associations between the sustainability and entrepreneurship disciplines. This part of the study involved a web-based survey from entrepreneurship academics drawn from Australia, New Zealand, UK, and the USA which provided 54 completed questionnaires.

The study uncovered much good practice led by “champions” within the entrepreneurship discipline. However, embedded sustainability practice was typically limited and it was more typically regarded as an “add-on” to traditional entrepreneurial teaching.

The study proposes three ways in which sustainability might be more meaningfully integrated into entrepreneurship programmes. First, the QAA (2012) guidelines for enterprise and entrepreneurship need to be reconsidered to encapsulate the sustainability agenda. Second, for entrepreneurship educators to reconsider their pedagogical approaches to encapsulate systems thinking as more holistic educational perspective. Finally, the authors call for entrepreneurship educators to revise their programmes to embed the core facets of social, environmental, economic, and more recently ethical sustainability.

The study offers a novel insight into entrepreneurship educators attitudes to sustainability and their approach to it within their curricula. This study provides an initial benchmark regarding the levels of sustainability provision within entrepreneurship curricula which will be of interest to the entrepreneurship academic community, the sustainability community, and policy makers.

To develop a framework for conceptualizing and managing integration in STEM learning, that can help address key issues in its research and implementation worldwide.

Integration in learning is a complicated but not a well-defined concept and therefore it is difficult to illustrate in theory and practice how to conceptualize, manage and implement integrated STEM learning with aims to enhance students' learning effectiveness and multiple-thinking ability. Based on a typology in integrated learning, this article re-conceptualizes integrated STEM learning into a comprehensive framework of three categories, six subcategories and four basic models. With this framework, how to manage integrated STEM learning and related issues in schools for effectiveness are discussed.

As a typology, integration in STEM learning can be classified as content integration, pedagogical integration and learner integration. They can be further differentiated as six subcategories: subject integration, domain integration, method integration, cognitive integration, SEN integration and diverse ability integration in STEM learning. Depending on the extents of content integration and pedagogical integration, four basic models of integrated learning can be identified in theory and practice. The categories, subcategories and basic models have their own characteristics, strengths and limitations. Strategies are developed to address the characteristics and related key issues of each category of STEM learning.

The framework may help to analyze the key issues of integrated STEM learning in research and development, such as “Why and what integration in STEM learning is important and necessary in curriculum reforms for the future?”, “How the integrated STEM approach is different from the traditional subject approach?”, “How the STEM learning activities can be integrated and managed effectively for enhancing students' learning effectiveness and multiple thinking capacity?”, and “What key implications can be drawn for managing and implementing STEM learning?”

Based on the proposed typology and models of STEM learning, various strategies of managing STEM are discussed and developed, which will contribute to policy formulation and professional practice of integrated STEM learning locally and internationally.

The proposed typology and models of STEM learning and related new ideas and perspectives will contribute to future research and development in this area locally and internationally.