Volume 8 (2017): Issue 1 (June 2017)

Early childhood education has a role to play in constructing a sustainable society. In particular, increasing global attention has focused on how early childhood may help alleviate poverty among children and their families and promote economic growth. Part of this discourse involves the use of technology as a means to improve the quality of early childhood education and optimize the potential for information and communication technology (ICT) to serve as an agent of development. Jamaica’s appropriation of technology as part of the early childhood development agenda has emulated Western notions of success. However, the introduction of technology innovations has cultural implications. This study describes and explains perceptions, beliefs and practices about technology among four early childhood teachers in a Jamaican infant school. The findings consider issues for capacity building, including teacher professional development in Jamaica.

Teachers are important providers of educational sustainability. Teachers’ ability to adapt themselves to rapidly developing technologies applicable to learning environments is connected with technology integration. The purpose of this study is to investigate teachers’ technology integration experiences in the course of learning and teaching processes. In doing so, qualitative research methods have been applied. The participants of the study were four teachers of different subject fields who work at a public secondary school in 2015–2016 school years and regard themselves as competent in technology integration. The study results indicated that the teachers took a teacher-centered stand in technology integration and the teachers’ most prominent reasons to start technology integration were the search for quality in education. Also the teachers, as IT school teachers, reported receiving support from close friends, the Ministry of National Education (MoNE), and online resources. The problems that the teachers faced in the processes of technology integration were mostly related to issues connected with the access to technology and technology proficiency.

Recent studies indicate that limited understanding about causes and its potential impacts of climate change and fault beliefs by people across different countries of the world including Turkey is a real challenge. Acceptance of climate change as a real threat, believing its existence, and knowing causes and consequences are very significant for climate change adaptation and mitigation. Therefore, exploring underlying factors shaping or affecting beliefs of people is needed for designing educational interventions for a change in individuals’ attitudes and behaviours. The main purpose of the present study was to explore how and to what extent future time perspective, perceived knowledge about global climate change, and environmental attitudes explain the university students’ beliefs about occurrence, causes and consequences of GCC. A quantitative research was conducted with the participation of one thousand, five hundred and eighty undergraduate students (n=1580) of METU and the data was gathered through Future Perspective Related Beliefs about Global Climate Change Scale. The study findings suggested that ecocentric attitude and perceived knowledge are mainly two influential factors for the undergraduate students’ beliefs about global climate change. Future time perspective’s contribution although low, was found to be significant in beliefs about GCC. The results of this study would shed light to evaluate and improve educational programs and curriculum in higher education, and can be a guide because Turkish literature does not serve any research that seek students’ future time perspective related to global climate change.

This article describes one school’s response to the inclusion and education of refugee and asylum seeker students within a mainstream educational setting. Australian government statistics released on 31 March 2016 stated that there were presently 50 children being held on Nauru, 17 children held in detention on the mainland and 317 children held in community detention on the mainland (ChilOut, 2016). Refugee and asylum seeking students are subject to the impact of war and conflict; the cumulative time spent in detention may severely limit a young person’s access to formal education. Whilst it is understood that children will benefit from access to education, the reality is that “little appears to have been written on asylum seekers” in an educational context (Reakes, 2007, p. 94). This represents a concern when it is acknowledged that “sustaining teachers in culturally and linguistically diverse schools has been a prominent issue for years” (Williams, Edwards, Kuhel, & Lim, 2016, p. 17). This article responds to the limitations of current literature by articulating considerations that would likely assist other schools seeking to establish similar inclusive frameworks. Specifically, the thematic grouping of staff observations seek to articulate the cultural considerations that likely influence the sustainability of an inclusive and liberating approach to integrative school enrolment. This paper draws on the authors’ observations and experiences in schools, the published literature and the observations of the two authors – specifically, drawing on their educational and therapeutic expertise. These observations are then grouped into themes outlined by Akinsulure-Smith and O’Hara (2012) as key reasons for therapeutic referral, namely: employment barriers, medical challenges, language barriers, social services and legal challenges.

In the 21st century, numerous complex challenges in education and health care have come to the fore, among them: 1) how to implement the ecological approach in the education process and health care practice; 2) how to implement study programmes in line with the education trends for sustainable development and the process of formation and development of the ecological competence.

The results of this research refer only to the content analysis of the essays written by the first and second year students of the programs in Nursing and Medicine on completing the study course The Ecological Approach in Patient Care. To increase the credibility and validity of the obtained results of the content analysis, the triangulation method has been applied to include quantitative and qualitative data. The research has looked into the concept of ecology, its application and importance in developing the ecological consciousness of students during their transformation from I-Ego to I-Eco in the process of developing their ecological competence (Salīte, 1998).

The objective of teacher-training at university for political science is the development of professional competencies that enable teachers-in-training to act proficiently in all aspects of civic education. Although there are some studies that focus on civic education for teachers’ professional competencies, most of them relate to general capability and do not concern certain significant topics. Empirical results related to the definitive topics within civic education are scarce, particularly in the field of sustainable development. Questions arise regarding teacher-training where it relates to high self-efficacy and interest within the field of civic education compared to other subjects, based on the model of political competence by Detjen and colleagues. In this article, we present the results of a quasi-experimental trial with civic education teachers-in-training (N = 108). Results indicate that their self-efficacy in the field of sustainable development is low compared to other areas, although there is no significant difference in their level of interest in sustainable development compared to other topics.

Considering the massive environmental problems occurring in Malaysia, the media and the ENGOs are said to play pivotal roles in delivering environmental information to the mass society in order to increase their awareness, knowledge and practices towards the environment and sustainability. This study sought to shed the light on the type of roles can be played by the Malaysian media and the ENGOs in environmental sustainability communication. For the purpose of this study, 24 interviewees encompassing 13 media interviewees from two media organizations, namely Utusan Malaysia and The Star, as well as 11 ENGOs interviewees from two ENGOs organizations, WWF and MNS. The result of this study indicated that although both media and ENGOs seem to have different organizational backgrounds, particularly the media is a profitable organization whilst ENGOs are more non-profit oriented, when it comes to environmental communication, most of them agreed that they share quite similar roles particularly in informing and educating the public about environmental issues and in conducting research on environment and sustainability matters.

Creative imagination is a psychic process of creating a new original image, idea or art work based on the acquired knowledge, skills, and abilities as well as on the experience of creative activity.

The best of all primary school learners’ creative imagination develops at the lessons of visual art, aimed at teaching them to understand what is beautiful in art, as well as through their being involved in the creative process and creating art works themselves.

This paper provides the characterization of the psychological process of imagination, and deals with the importance and dynamics of the development of primary school learners’ creative imagination in lessons of visual art when depicting a portrait, and it also looks at a visual art teacher’s role in organizing the educational process of developing learners’ creative imagination in a sustainable education process.

Neo-liberal voices are still very strong in education broadly speaking and have a marginalizing impact on normative pedagogies like religious, worldview, moral and civic education. But there are clear and hopeful signs that pedagogy is coming back. After sketching the current situation and its antecedents, the author addresses the views and ideas here provided by pedagogical spokespersons, teacher-leaders and teachers – most of them working in the domain of religious education or worldview education. How do they perceive the current changes in more normative and pedagogical-laden directions? What precisely has caused these changes? Is the return of pedagogy just a temporal hype or is it a real revitalization? What have been the consequences for them professionally and personally speaking? It is the author’s intention and hope that this article will encourage educators in general and religious and worldview educators in particular with an eye on fostering sustainable pedagogical approaches.

Supportive teacher-student relationships play a significant role in the trajectory of students’ academic life. Teachers may use various strategies to improve this relationship, one of which is teacher stroke (teacher encouragement). The stroking behavior of teachers might be influenced by several factors, including the socioeconomic status (SES) of students. Accordingly, the current study aims to investigate the differences among female English language teachers at three different school districts (i.e., upper, middle, and lower socio-economic class) in Mashhad, Iran, with regard to their stroking behavior. To fulfill this aim, 300 eighth-grade female students responded to an 18-item questionnaire and the collected data were subsequently analyzed using a one-way ANOVA. The results revealed that teachers tend to stroke high-SES students more frequently. The second aim of this study was to find out if there is a significant correlation between teacher stroke and students’ GPA. The results indicated that all the sub-components of stroke significantly correlate with students’ GPA. Moreover, the results of a stepwise multiple regression test indicated that two of the sub-components of stroke, namely valuing and classroom activities, strongly predict students’ GPA. Finally, the findings of the study have been discussed in light of the existing literature and implications have been provided for language teaching in the formal context of education.