Learning environment research has undergone considerable growth in the past thirty years and has now reached a stage of notable diversity and internationalization. Earlier studies often used questionnaires to assess learning environments, but today both qualitative and quantitative approaches are used. Many contemporary studies are a productive combination of these two approaches.This volume brings together prominent educators and researchers from around the world to share their contemporary research on educational learning environments. The chapters provide information on recent trends and developments and effective applications of different methods to improve teaching and learning. The book will be a critical and specialized source that describes recent advances in learning environment studies across all continents. The contributors come from Australia, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Japan, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Singapore, Turkey, Taiwan, Thailand, and the USA.

This book describes important landmarks in the study of learning environments. First conceptualized as ‘classroom climate’, the field expanded considerably from its roots in science education. Promising areas for future research now include a range of diverse contexts and applications.

This open access book brings together theoretical, empirical, methodological, and practical insights from various countries on effective teaching. It particularly focuses on discussing issues pertaining to effective teaching behaviour including definitions and conceptualizations, measurement, differences, and importance to student outcomes from international perspectives. The book will draw upon the rich cultures with diverse contexts involving Asia, Australia, Africa, America, and Europe which serve as the background setting to better understand teaching quality from a wide spectrum of educational systems and performances. It shows that effective teaching behaviour can be conceptualized and operationalized uniformly using specific frameworks and measures, but also addresses some limitations that should be tackled. The book discusses promising ways to measure and compare effective teaching behaviour from classical test theory (CTT) as well as item response theory (IRT) perspectives. It indicates that effective teaching behaviour in diverse countries follows a systematic level of complexity, which provides an avenue for ongoing teacher education and teacher professional development. It discusses the interrelated domains of effective teaching behaviour including contemporary trends of differentiation. The book continues with examining similarities and differences in effective teaching behaviour across countries. It builds on the understanding of cultural traditions across countries as profoundly reflected in the classroom processes.

This book focuses on the successes and challenges of an innovative new post-compulsory secondary school in creating an outcomes-focused curriculum.

"Context-based science education has led to the transformation of science education in countries all over the world, with changes also visible in learning environments and how these are being shaped. These changes involve authentic problems on research and design, new types of interactions within communities of practice, new content areas and also new challenges for teachers in teaching, motivating, scaffolding and assessing their students, among other things.This book focuses on context-based science education and its resulting changes in the perspective of research on learning environments. It also focuses on the implications for the teachers and the professional development of their competencies and beliefs.The book consists of eleven chapters by experts in various themes surrounding learning environments research and science education, preceded by and concluded with a chapter with reflections on context-based learning environments in science by the editors of this book. The conclusion they draw is that professional development of science teachers may be the most important and the most difficult part of the process of teachers creating context-based learning environments in science, as is the focus in the title of this book."

The focus of this Handbook is on Australasia (a region loosely recognized as that which includes Australia and New Zealand plus nearby Pacific nations such as Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu, and the Samoan islands) science education and the scholarship that most closely supports this program.

The Routledge International Handbook of Social Psychology of the Classroom presents the first comprehensive and integrated compilation of theory and research on topics related to the social cohesion of the classroom. Many of these topics have been studied independently; for example, motivation, self-concept, class management, class climate, and teacher expectations are generally studied separately by different groups of researchers. This handbook brings the evidence from different fields in social psychological classroom research together in one place for the first time to explore how these topics relate and how each factor influences students and their learning. With chapters by established international leaders in their fields, as well as emerging new talent, this handbook offers cutting edge research and surveys the state of the art in the social psychology of the classroom. Major areas covered include: Motivation Belief, self-concept, and personality Emotional engagement Teacher–student relationships Teacher expectation Classroom management Culture and identity The Routledge International Handbook of Social Psychology of the Classroom provides a review of current theories related to the social psychology of the classroom, including how these theories apply to classrooms and learners. Current evidence clearly shows that areas explored by social psychology – and brought together for the first time in this volume – can have a very significant impact on classroom learning and student achievement (J. Hattie, Visible Learning: A Synthesis of over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, Routledge 2009). This handbook is a must for all academics whose research relates to the social psychology of the classroom. It is also an invaluable resource for teachers and teacher education students who want to understand why they are effective instructors and yet still encounter students in their classes who are not responding as expected.