Research experience has been proven to be effective in enhancing the overall educational experience for undergraduate students. In this article, two engineering research projects with undergraduate students involvement are discussed. The projects provided the undergraduate student researchers with motivation for independent research work and…

I propose an approach to service-learning that encourages and enables students to engage with human rights and social justice in ways that are democratic and effective. I describe a teaching process in which civic action can be critically reflected on not just to promote engagement and build knowledge but ultimately to encourage and equip students…

We have designed a unique guided-inquiry-inspired course for entry-level graduate students using chemical research as a mechanism to teach research-oriented problem-solving skills. The course has been designed for flexibility around a shared research experience. The curriculum can be modified each year by incorporating a new research project into…

This article will describe a writing assignment designed for use in a liberal arts college whose mission stresses effective written communication both within and across disciplines. In this assignment, students write three separate solutions to the same mathematics problem: one for a mathematical peer, a second for a contemporary that does not…

Today's students require educators who will guide them to think critically, grow in character, and value relationships. These students become empowered to change their world and overcome social and racial oppression and marginalization. Empowered students are those who attain skills and knowledge with their teachers, and become equipped and…

Since the introduction of international achievement assessments, Korea has received a great deal of global attention because of its strong academic performance achieved at primary and secondary education levels. However, Korea has not fully benefited from these achievements in education for several reasons as discussed in this paper. The Korean…

The evolution of Singapore's school mathematics curriculum is in tandem with developments in the education system of Singapore. In the last six decades, economic policies of the government that are necessary for the survival of Singapore in a fast changing world have shaped the aims of the school mathematics curriculum. The present day curriculum…

An English teacher and a math teacher collaborating to improve practices in classroom discussion develop a problem-solving method that steers students away from seeking simple solutions and into an understanding of the complexity and nature of problems.

This paper uses the hammer-and-nail metaphor to highlight the rigidity and impulsiveness that can be found in student mathematical behaviour. The hammer-and-nail phenomenon can be attributed to two plausible causes: (1) the way the human mind works; and (2) the way mathematics is traditionally taught in school. In this paper, the following aspects…

Social work is a profession that draws (or should draw) on available knowledge in the disciplines as well as other sources including other professions in the pursuit of "the betterment of life conditions of individuals, groups, and communities." An historical perspective illustrates opportunities taken and lost to harvest knowledge in pursuit of…

One of Gardner's passions was to introduce puzzles into the classroom. From this point of view, polyomino dissections are an excellent topic. They require little background, provide training in geometric visualization, and mostly they are fun. In this article, we put together a large collection of such puzzles, introduce a new approach in solving…

The Spider and the Fly puzzle, originally attributed to the great puzzler Henry Ernest Dudeney, and now over 100 years old, asks for the shortest path between two points on a particular square prism. We explore a generalization, find that the original solution only holds in certain cases, and suggest how this discovery might be used in the…

In this article we report and discuss a contextual problem solving task that was proposed to a class of 8th grade (13-14-year-old) students. These students had been developing a reasonable experience in the use of the spreadsheet to model relations within contextual problems and chose to use this tool to solve the mentioned problem, engaging in…

This paper argues that academic development is a creative act. Creative acts have potential to inspire, critique, inform and in many cases to change. The creativity literature identifies a number of core features of creative acts that assist in developing independent creative practitioners. Those features are observing, attending to relationships,…

In this article a new parameterization of magic squares of order three is presented. This parameterization permits an easy computation of their inverses, eigenvalues, eigenvectors and adjoints. Some attention is paid to the Luoshu, one of the oldest magic squares.