The purpose of this open letter is to report on an innovative cross-cultural science education program that was introduced to upper primary and lower high schools across New South Wales over a four-year period. Titled 'Sky Stories', the program blends current Western science understandings with Indigenous Australian knowledge of astronomy in order…

Teacher empowerment is a central issue in relation to the efforts to improve the quality of education. However, teacher empowerment will remain an abstract idea if its implementation is not supported by an appropriate strategy. The demands for a quality education will be unreciprocated if teachers do not have the opportunity to empower themselves.…

This report summarizes the first year of the prekindergarten partnership between AISD, United Way for Greater Austin, and participating child development centers that served 417 students. Classrooms and students displayed high quality of instruction and academic performance, and teacher professional development opportunities are summarized.

Higher education institutions are continually seeking to recruit nontraditional adult students yet struggle at the same time to meet their needs effectively. The following case study offers strategies to address this situation by documenting the pedagogical design and initial outcomes of an interdisciplinary, nineteen-month leadership-themed…

This article reports the effects of attending an elementary full-service community school (FSCS) on a variety of student academic outcomes in high school. The focal FSCS, Key Elementary, serves students in grades K-5 in a diverse southeastern New York State (NYS) school district. The academic performance of students, born between 1991 and 1996,…

This article documents a community-initiated service-learning project within a teacher education program. A social justice model guided the initiative to raise critical awareness on power and privilege while countering deficit-model thinking. Partnering with community agencies serving immigrant children and youth, the faculty researcher worked…

The Year 2 Preschool Expansion Grant (PEG) implementation study focuses on the second year of supports and outcomes for teachers, classroom quality, and supports for families. Overall, compared to its first year of implementation, the PEG programs in Year 2 (which was the 2016-17 school year) appear to have made progress towards delivering the key…

In this paper we provide the first rigorous evidence of the impact of a partnership between public middle schools and informal science institutions (ISIs), such as museums and zoos, on student outcomes. This study focuses on Urban Advantage (UA), a program in New York City (NYC) that explicitly draws upon the expertise and resources of the city's…

When it comes to STEM education, the nation's K-12 public schools cannot do it all. The nature of 21st century proficiency in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics is too complex for any single institution. The good news is that schools do not have to do it alone. Museums, zoos, nature centers, aquariums, and planetariums are among the…

Assessments of U.S. students typically reveal stronger performance in science than mathematics yet their science performance remains uninspiring at best. Whether the metric considered is an international benchmark from TIMSS or PISA or the nation's NAEP report card, the mediocre portrait of U.S. science achievement has remained virtually unchanged…

In central Texas and regions across the country, community leaders are calling for university-community engagement, including development of structures for community-based research and service learning. Including the community in decision making regarding continuing professional education serves as a link between universities such as Texas A&M…

In an effort to increase students' success, schools and communities have begun to develop school-based mentoring programs (SBMP) to foster positive outcomes for children and adolescents. However, experts have called for more research into the effectiveness of these efforts for students across grade levels. Therefore, this study was designed to…

A middle school student and teacher watershed education project supports a large wetland restoration effort. It provides community-based, science education for urban, low-income, multicultural 6th-9th grade students and their teachers. This is a bottom-up approach to extending information to the local community about the restoration. The project…

The authors utilized interviews, competency surveys, and document review to evaluate the effectiveness of a one-year, cohort-based faculty development pilot program, grounded in diffusion of innovations theory, and aimed at increasing competencies in community engagement and community-engaged scholarship. Five innovator participants designed the…

In 1984-85, the New York City Public Schools received $2,374,686 from the state legislature to operate the School Community Education Program (also known as the Umbrella Program). The program consisted of 46 different projects designed to provide innovative solutions to local educational and school problems. Thirteen of these projects are…