Formal mentoring has been an effective approach to mitigate challenges facing underserved youth and contributes to observable improvements in behavior, relationships, and emotional well-being (Rhodes, 2008). Mentored youth appear to gain improvements in peer and parent relationships and school performance, while also engaging in lower levels of…

This case study explores how a problem-based learning (PBL), graduate education course could be organized in ways that utilize the current knowledge of how people learn within diverse, real world community settings. Students were asked to identify an educational enterprise and a social problem within a culturally diverse, high-need community.…

This article proposes that in addition to training teams of students to succeed in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling, the contest and the preparation for competition can be successfully used as a framework to teach an auxiliary skill set to undergraduate STEM majors through workshop-style modules. The skills emphasized are collaboration across…

Presented is a project-based learning (PBL) laboratory approach for an upper-division environmental chemistry or quantitative analysis course. In this work, a combined laboratory class of 11 environmental chemistry students developed a method based on published EPA methods for the extraction of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) and its…

In the June 2010 "Harvard Business Review," Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, wrote a column entitled "You Are What You Measure." In it, he thoughtfully prods business leaders to consider the problematic correlation between the tools for measuring progress and actual…

The issues that prompt this study are based on current research indicating the positive effects of inquiry learning on the cognitive development of children. The purpose of this case study was to understand the effects of inquiry learning on the academic achievement and bilingual verbal ability of 5th grade bilingual students in a French/English…

With the economic collapse of 2008, there has been a dramatic increase in government emphasis on the value of science and technology-based study in the nation's high schools as a means for the United States to remain competitive in the world economic market. Financial, political and societal support for the hard sciences, coupled with…

This article focuses on current examples of project or design-based learning at the secondary school level in the context of the increasing importance of creativity and innovative thinking in the twenty-first century. The authors argue that students today learn more effectively in pedagogical practices that emphasise holistic thinking, active…

Finding ways to help primary-grade students overcome difficulties in solving mathematical word problems can be a daunting task for teachers in a regular classroom setting. Student challenges may include: (1) difficulty with vocabulary; (2) lack of confidence when solving problems; (3) confusion on the proper operation to use when solving a…

Project-Based Learning (PBL) connects standards-based content to real-world scenarios through the use of projects to improve student achievement. By engaging students in authentic problems that do not have a predetermined solution, students learn both subject matter and critical 21st-century skills. This "Focus On" addresses what…

This book contains a compilation of papers presented at the International Conference on Education and New Developments (END 2017), organized by the World Institute for Advanced Research and Science (W.I.A.R.S.). Education, in our contemporary world, is a right since we are born. Every experience has a formative effect on the constitution of the…