'Why study the arts at school?' This book offers a fresh perspective on this question. Informed by rigorous research, the book argues that the arts help young people to develop key skills, knowledge and practices that support them to become both critical appreciative audiences and socially engaged cultural producers. Drawing on a three-year study…

Many college students experience mental and behavioral health challenges that can impede them from achieving their education and career attainment goals, especially if they lack access to appropriate care and resources. Responses to the HMS survey highlight a critical need for readily accessible mental health services at community colleges. While…

The purpose of this open letter is to report on an innovative cross-cultural science education program that was introduced to upper primary and lower high schools across New South Wales over a four-year period. Titled 'Sky Stories', the program blends current Western science understandings with Indigenous Australian knowledge of astronomy in order…

Teachers are charged with connecting classroom science to real-world applications; however, opportunities for teachers to experience real-world applications in the life and biosciences are limited. When provided the opportunity to engage in hands-on learning experiences, teachers' capacity to connect classroom activities to real-world applications…

Grow Your Own programs, with their focus on preparing and placing community teachers, are increasingly being identified as a viable solution for addressing ethnoracial diversity and teacher shortages in schools. Given the heightened interest in these programs, the focus of this article is to consider various "projects," or rather,…

This report summarizes the first year of the prekindergarten partnership between AISD, United Way for Greater Austin, and participating child development centers that served 417 students. Classrooms and students displayed high quality of instruction and academic performance, and teacher professional development opportunities are summarized.

In January 2016, I co-organized a Jamaica cultural immersion and faculty development trip in which ten professors from two Southern California universities participated. Our objective during the week-long program was to explore opportunities for faculty to incorporate community immersion and engagement into existing international programs, and to…

According to a teaching of the Prophet Muhammad, "the quest for knowledge is the duty of each Muslim, male or female", where knowledge is meant as the discovery of the real value of things and of oneself in relationship with the world in which God has placed us. This universal dimension of knowledge is in fact a wealth of wisdom of the…

Today's classrooms emphasize helping students learn not just for the sake of learning but to become prepared to join the workforce. While teachers across the U.S. know students must be ready for college and career, many may not be sure exactly which skills, competencies, and lessons they need to teach to prepare and animate students for the world…

This article describes a critical service-learning project that resulted from an educational partnership among a national teachers' union, a local teachers' union, and a major research university. The partnership-funded by a grant from the Corporation for National and Community Service, Learn and Serve program--focused on professional development…

The U.S. military has long understood the value of immersive simulations in education. Before the Navy entrusts a ship to a crew, crew members must first practice and demonstrate their competency in a fully immersive, simulated environment. Why not teach students in the same way? K-12 educators in Pennsylvania, USA, recently did just that when…

As numerous studies from 1906 on have confirmed, children lose ground in learning if they lack opportunities for building skills over the summer. Nonetheless, summer learning loss comes up but rarely in the national discussion of education reform. By the end of summer, students perform on average one month behind where they left off in the spring.…

When it comes to STEM education, the nation's K-12 public schools cannot do it all. The nature of 21st century proficiency in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is too complex for any single institution. The good news is that schools do not have to do it alone. Museums, zoos, nature centers, aquariums, and planetariums are among the…

In central Texas and regions across the country, community leaders are calling for university-community engagement, including development of structures for community-based research and service learning. Including the community in decision making regarding continuing professional education serves as a link between universities such as Texas A&M…

In this article, the authors describe a cultural transformation to embrace community-engaged scholarship by faculty members in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia-Vancouver. They describe a transition from community-inquiry faculty projects to community-engaged action research projects achieved through…