Recent calls for improvement in undergraduate education within STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines are hampered by the methods used to evaluate teaching effectiveness. Faculty members at research universities are commonly assessed and promoted mainly on the basis of research success. To improve the quality of…

The responsibility for college success has historically rested with the student, but since the 1980s, educators have taken increasing ownership of this, designing structures that increase the likelihood of learning, success, and retention. These efforts have included a variety of initiatives--first year seminars, learning communities,…

Schools are increasingly being leveraged as intervention points to address childhood trauma due to the well-established links between childhood trauma exposure and poor child well-being outcomes. However, although preschool-aged children experience higher rates of trauma, such as maltreatment and violence exposure, than their older counterparts,…

Considering how long societies have been educating their youth, the history of teacher education is relatively brief. From the first teacher education innovation in the 17th century through those of the late 20th century--de la Salle, the American normal school, the flood of student teachers into public schools after World War II, the student…

The purpose of the CASEL State Scan is to support the development of high-quality standards for social and emotional learning (SEL), preschool through high school, across the country (Dusenbury, Zadrazil, Weiss-berg & Mart, 2011). This brief summarizes recent findings from CASEL's State Scan (Dusenbury, Newman, Weissberg, Goren, Domitrovich…

The May 2012 State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) report, "The Broadband Imperative: Recommendations to Address K-12 Education Infrastructure Needs," pushed educators and policy makers nationwide to increase high-speed broadband access in schools, with specific recommendations regarding access, funding, and policies…

We have two aims here. Our first is to articulate what gains may be made by students who engage in our course to determine what exactly is gained by students who participate in such experiences. We believe such courses have educational value, but needed to find a way to articulate our course's success in helping students meet our stated learning…

Although advances in prevention science over the past two decades have produced a growing list of tested and effective programs and policies for preventing adolescent delinquency and drug use, widespread dissemination and high-quality implementation of effective programs and policies in communities has not been achieved. The Community Youth…

A call to engagement at Fort Hays State University (FHSU) led to significant curricular and assessment changes in the university's Department of Political Science. The university unveiled the Year of the Department (YOTD) as "an ongoing strategic initiative for orchestrating change and aligning people, systems and culture at the basic unit…

A local focus can give art educators a familiar basis to introduce and expand content. A community-inspired curriculum helps students realize that artists do not operate in a vacuum; rather, they are part of a social world in which art objects are created. In this article, the authors provide an overview of Community-Based Art Education (CBAE)…

The authors present the National Science Foundation project, Teachers Investigating Adult Numeracy (TIAN), a collaborative project of the Center for Literacy Studies at the University of Tennessee and the Technical Education Research Centers, Inc. (TERC) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The project has developed and tested a model for inservice…

A survey is described of the education for health activities being conducted and planned in Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas by official, voluntary, and private health services and health planning agencies. (JMF)

The purpose of the study was to ascertain what evaluation practices were being utilized for vocational programs and also to apply a cost-effectiveness model to four program areas offered in Kansas area vocational-technical (VT) schools. Cost and benefit data for the study were obtained from the Kansas State Department of Education, Vocational…

This paper reports on a qualitative ethnographic research study on the inclusion of children with severe disabilities into a Montessori preschool program in Lawrence, Kansas. The program has served 20 children with disabilities since its inception in 1986. The program's emergent model involves a split program (utilizing a special education…

The applicability of the Critical Incidents Technique as a potential research methodology for those in adult and continuing education is demonstrated in the study of 19 selected Kansas junior-community colleges and their respective administrators (totaling 38) at the vice-president, dean, and director levels. The two populations included those…