This practical book will help readers understand what STEAM is, how it differs from STEM, and how it can be used to engage students in K-8 classrooms. The authors present a conceptual model with recommendations and classroom examples illustrating various key aspects of STEAM teaching in action, including creating the correct teaching environment,…

Literature in the field of school leadership substantiates principals' influence on student achievement. Less clarity is available concerning principals' influence on school turnaround or the competencies needed for principals to effectively engage in and sustain the turnaround of low-performing schools. This study seeks to illuminate principal…

Many children fail to master fraction arithmetic even after years of instruction, a failure that hinders their learning of more advanced mathematics as well as their occupational success. To test hypotheses about why children have so many difficulties in this area, we created a computational model of fraction arithmetic learning and presented it…

"Designing backwards" is presented here as a means to utilize human-centered processes in diverse educational settings to help teachers and students learn to formulate and operate design processes to achieve three sequential and interrelated goals. The first entails teaching them to effectively and empathetically identify, frame and…

Perception is the reconstruction and interaction between the new information and prior knowledge in mind or in the process of internalization about the new information. It has three teaching procedures: First, teachers elicit the learners to acquire text meaning. Second, teachers create situation in practical teaching. Third, learners comprehend…

This article introduces a model entitled, "Responsive Teaching through Problem Posing" or RTPP, that addresses a type of reform oriented mathematics teaching based on posing relevant problems, positioning students as experts of mathematics, and facilitating discourse. RTPP incorporates decades of research on students' thinking in…

Background: This paper describes the Problem-Solving Cycle model of professional development and the Mathematics Leadership Preparation model of PD leader preparation. These models form the backbone of our current research-practice partnership project in which we are working with a large urban district to adapt these models to develop district…

This article presents a lesson that focuses on numeracy. In the lesson, students were tasked to find the best path for a new expressway. The purpose of the activity was for students to gain an appreciation of the complexities associated with designing public infrastructure and to put into practice the mathematical skills. This article also…

This article focuses on three features of professional development (PD) programs that play an important role in developing leadership skills and building teachers' capacity: (1) fostering a professional learning community, (2) developing teachers' mathematical knowledge for teaching, and (3) adapting PD to support local needs and interests. We…

This study examines the effects of the activity of building systems models for school-based problems on problem solving and on conceptual change in elementary science classes. During a unit on the water cycle in an Asian elementary school, students constructed systems models of the water cycle. We found that representing ill-structured problems as…

Education researchers frequently seek out districts, schools, and teachers as partners for professional learning projects. They share their ambitious vision--a new model of professional learning that will support an empowered community, instructional improvement, and student achievement. The authors, along with other members of their research…

The teacher leaders and school administrators at Nipher Middle School in Kirkwood, Missouri, have recently embraced a new set of strategies for supporting learning for all students. During the weekly problem-solving conversations that are a part of their response-to-intervention model, it became evident that clusters of students with unique and…

This report makes recommendations for the development of middle-school assessment in mathematics, based on a synthesis of scientific findings in cognitive psychology and mathematics education. The focus is on background research, rather than test specifications or example tasks. Readers interested in early development and pilot efforts associated…

Explains modeling as a teaching approach and presents two examples of modeling, one example of poor modeling and one example of good modeling. (YDS)

Independent study for gifted and talented middle-level students progresses through five stages, from the affective sensing of a problem to be solved through assessing both product and process. J. Renzulli's Enrichment Triad model can serve as a framework for independent study, which must be carefully structured and guided. (CL)