Over the last twelve years, an innovative community engagement practice has immersed undergraduate students enrolled in a 300-level leadership course in adaptive leadership by giving them power to make progress on complex challenges at the local level. This unique partnership between a university, donors, and a local United Way, makes students…

A growing body of international research has highlighted the importance of students studying mathematics at an advanced level. In Ireland, the subject has been assigned a special status with the introduction of an education policy called the Bonus Points Initiative (BPI) in 2012. Students are now awarded an extra 25 points in their final State…

Project OCCAMS (Online Curriculum Consortium for Accelerating Middle School) is a collaboration between the Center for Talent Development at Northwestern University, the Center for Gifted Education at The College of William & Mary, and Columbus Public Schools with a goal of providing accelerated learning in language arts aimed at increasing…

This article discusses the unique situation of teaching an upper-level, undergraduate Spanish conversation course with a service-learning component at a large, public, urban university. With the help of service-learning literature and anonymous pre- and post-surveys, this study aims to offer some qualitative observations and advice on…

In this study we used grounded theory framework to explore how preparation for studying abroad affects the academic success of East Asian undergraduate students in U.S. universities. Based on interviews with 12 participants from China, Hong Kong, South Korea, and Taiwan, we found that knowledge of English language and American culture, which is…

The Advanced Placement (AP) program offers an opportunity for students to earn college credit and develop college-ready skills in high school. The curriculum was initially designed for "superior" students at exclusive private schools. Recently, however, the AP program has expanded to serve more students from marginalized backgrounds, and…

Dual language bilingual education (DLBE) is a unique form of bilingual education that has the potential to preserve and develop the heritage languages of emergent bilinguals, foster high levels of bilingualism, and address academic disparities, thereby changing emergent bilinguals' educational conditions and learning outcomes. Yet, DLBE schools…

Over the past fifteen years, AP Human Geography has grown in numbers and spread to almost every state. This article synopsizes the early history of the subject, summarizes the course and the exam, highlights positive impacts on the discipline of geography, and focuses on the following three issues: teachers who come to the course having majored in…

In response to the need for a scalable, institutionally supported model of educational change, the Science Education Initiative (SEI) was created as an experiment in transforming course materials and faculty practices at two institutions--University of Colorado Boulder (CU) and University of British Columbia. We find that this departmentally…

Advanced mathematics and science course taking is critical in building the foundation for students to advance through the STEM pathway-from high school to college to career. To invigorate students' persistence in STEM fields, high schools have been introducing applied STEM courses into the curriculum as a way to reinforce concepts learned in…

Numerous studies suggest that attendance may be one of the key factors which influence student performance. Although there have been many studies in introductory science courses, there have been virtually no studies which analyze and compare students' performance from different types of institutions as well as different level of classes. Our study…

This study describes interaction patterns observed during a pilot project that explored the use of web-conferencing (WC) software in two undergraduate distance education courses offered to advanced high-school students. The pilot program replaced video-conferencing technology with WC software during recitations, so as to increase participation in…

Despite the growing popularity of dual-credit courses as a college readiness strategy, numerous reviews of the literature have noted a number of important limitations of the research on the effects of dual-credit on student postsecondary outcomes. This study addressed these gaps in the literature by estimating the impact of dual-credit courses on…

This article describes a faculty-led, multiyear process of formulating learning objectives and assessing the effectiveness of a foreign language requirement for all College of Arts and Sciences undergraduates at a research university. Three interrelated research questions were addressed: (1) What were the levels and patterns of language courses…

This study compared the Mandarin performance of elementary immersion program students and high school world language program students in the same school district. A cross-sectional design was employed to gather information on Mandarin proficiency of fourth and fifth graders and Level 4 and Level 5 (AP Chinese) high school students who took the…