Perspective is a central tenet of seemingly disparate theories and practices: situated learning; communities of practice and legitimate peripheral participation; metacognition developed through reflective practice; standpoint theory; student voice; and pedagogical partnership. We integrate key insights from these into a single interpretive…

Many colleges and universities utilize faculty advisors for academic advising. In this model, faculty advise students in their discipline on curriculum requirements, as well as career and academic goals. Faculty often report feeling that they have had little training or support for their role as an academic advisor. Faculty advisors in the field…

Purpose: Groups of students were enrolled in a course that sought to produce a three-phase theoretical model over three semesters. Design/methodology/approach: A design project to comprehensively address school violence was launched at a university in eastern Pennsylvania. Findings: This article updates the recent and most critical finding of the…

Whereas most articles in this special issue demonstrate careful and close-up views of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in a performing arts or humanities discipline, my approach is opposite; I look in on music teaching and learning to interrogate current conceptions of SoTL. I begin with Sloboda's cognitive explanation of music…

In public education, procurement reform has been all but ignored in policy discussions and procurement policies have remained virtually untouched. But the high price of ignoring procurement is becoming clear to people trying to reform education on the ground. Often involving long, cumbersome processes and risk-averse central office cultures,…

This article discusses factors to consider as we evaluate the professional learning occurring in our schools. The article describes how a committee of six teachers and one administrator at Hershey Middle School in Pennsylvania's Derry Township School District adapted an activity for use in a two-hour professional learning session called "The…

This study highlights the impact of including stakeholders with expertise in learning theory in a learning space design process. We present the decision-making process during the design of the Krause Innovation Studio on the campus of the Pennsylvania State University to draw a distinction between the architect and faculty member's decision-making…

Afterschool continues to be promoted as a complementary setting to school for strengthening science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education (for example, Krishnamurthi, Bevan, Rinehart, & Coulon, 2013). This is a reasonable idea: 10.2 million children and youth in the U.S. participate in structured afterschool programs (Afterschool…

This chapter describes consortial efforts within the Great Lakes Colleges Association to share expertise and programming to build research skills throughout the undergraduate curriculum. Strategies to scaffold research skill development are provided from Allegheny College, Kalamazoo College, and The College of Wooster.

A goal of geography education is fostering geographic literacy for all and building significant expertise for some. How much time and practice do students need to become literate or expert in geography? There is not an answer to this question. Using two concepts from cognitive psychology--the ideas of ten thousand hours and deliberate…

Students in a senior English class examined the question of whether the "wisdom of experts" or "the wisdom of crowds" is more reliable and useful in a writing course by engaging in a parallel Wikipedia project. Each student either created a new entry or made significant changes to an existing Wikipedia entry, tracked changes to…

One hundred twenty-four undergraduate education majors completed the phrase "a gifted student is ______ " using a metaphor and then explained their choice of metaphor. Qualitative metaphor analysis influenced by Dai's (2009) essential tensions determined that preservice teachers conceive of giftedness as rapid memorization of content…

Teacher collaboration has become an increasingly important lever for school improvement efforts. This is especially true in high need urban districts, which struggle with capacity building in the face of significant teacher turnover, major shifts in curriculum and instruction, and scarce resources. This paper employs a mixed methods approach to…

President Barack Obama's announcement last week of a wide-ranging anti-violence plan in response to the Newtown, Connecticut, school shootings comes as many districts are adopting new and sometimes dramatic measures--including arming teachers and volunteers--intended to prevent similar tragedies in their own schools. School safety experts warn…

Two suggestions for instruction in chemical equilibrium are presented, along with the evidence that supports these suggestions. The first is to use diagrams to connect chemical reactions to the effects of reactions on concentrations. The second is the use of the majority and minority species (M&M) strategy to analyze chemical equilibrium…