This article offers a personal vision and conceptual design for reimagining specialized science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) academies designed to nurture "decidedly different" STEM minds and ignite a new generation of global STEM talent, innovation, and entrepreneurial leadership. This design enables students to engage…

We developed four separate scenarios focusing on the connections between mathematics, biology, and social sciences. This structure facilitated the coordination of faculty from seven academic departments on campus. Each scenario had students from different majors build mathematical models, gather information from their respective disciplines, and…

Project-based learning is a pedagogy that involves students in applying and developing theories, skills, and techniques to solve real world problems. Three faculty members used project-based learning to involve graduate students in an interdisciplinary seminar on sustainable development in Appalachian Ohio, which was convened under the auspices of…

Collaborative international research projects represent excellent opportunities for students to obtain unique and life-altering educational experiences. Dynamic interactions with people from a variety of countries, institutions, and departments, in diverse situations, provides students with new perspectives, encourages them to operate in a…

The author states that the U.S. is at risk of falling behind in the global economic competition because too few of the young people are choosing to study fields like engineering and science. A 2005-06 Lemelson-MIT Invention Index survey found that while American teenagers are comfortable with rapid technological change and optimistic about the…

This appendix accompanies the report "Taking the Lead in Science Education: Forging Next-Generation Science Standards. International Science Benchmarking Report," a study conducted by Achieve to compare the science standards of 10 countries. This appendix includes the following: (1) PISA and TIMSS Assessment Rankings; (2) Courses and…

Roughly 54 million people with disabilities live in the U.S., and there are many more millions of people with disabilities around the world. Not surprisingly, differences among and between people with disabilities are often as notable as differences between people with and without disabilities. While the lack of homogeneity among people with…

The purpose of this study was to determine if problem solving skills can be improved through the use of an interdisciplinary program incorporating reading, music, and mathematics. The study was conducted in seven fifth grade classrooms, and addresses the need to teach problem solving strategies in elementary school and the importance of problem…

The responses of 472 educators were used to develop the Pre-Referral Intervention Team Inventory (PRITI), a 24-item Likert scale. Principal axis analyses resulted in a one-dimensional structure with high internal consistency that explained 57% of the total variance. Acceptability of team procedures was strongly and positively correlated with a…

In the volatile, global environment of the 21st century, being able to communicate successfully is the key to employment, to citizenship, and to a quality life. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills--a coalition of American businesses with an international focus, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Education--recently released "A…

Bethpage Union Free School District in New York is a high-performing district by almost any current accountability measure. Yet administrators and teachers worried that they were not doing enough to prepare their students as critical thinkers for the 21st century. Inspired by the curriculum framework of the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, the…

As part of a campus-wide, externally funded project to increase performance in, enthusiasm for, and retention within STEM disciplines, we developed an interdisciplinary, team-taught first-year seminar course. The construction and delivery of this course was designed to show the relevance of selected general chemistry topics such as matter and…

The concept of "wicked issues", originally developed in the field of urban planning, has been taken up by design educators, architects and public health academics where the means for handling "wicked issues" has been developed through "reflective practice". In the education of teachers, whilst reflective practice has…

Involving two or more academic subjects, interdisciplinary studies aim to blend together broad perspectives, knowledge, skills, and epistemology in an educational setting. By focusing on topics or questions too broad for a single discipline to cover, these studies strive to draw connections between seemingly different fields. Cases on…

Discusses the failure of traditional approaches to problem-solving in social systems and proposes a cybernetic system as a means of dealing with complex urban problems. (AA)