The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that jobs within the life and physical sciences will grow by 8% between 2020 and 2030; therefore, it is imperative that students receive an engaging, rigorous, and comprehensive science education. Many urban and minority students have been denied this opportunity as evidenced by their poor performance on…

This appendix is a companion to the report "Evaluation of Departmentalized Instruction in Elementary Schools: Exploring Implementation Experiences." The appendix provides additional information about the study, which sought to explore schools' implementation of departmentalized instruction, teachers' experiences with the strategy, and…

Assigning upper elementary grade teachers to teach their strongest subjects to multiple classes ("departmentalizing"), rather than teaching all subjects to a single class, ("self-contained instruction") could mean more specialized instructional expertise in the classroom or focus for teacher planning time and professional…

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to develop an understanding of the lived experiences of educators who are responsible for implementing SEL strategies in alternative education settings serving kindergarten through twelfth grade students. The daily education practices and strategies in SEL continuously change, and the new…

In this study, I worked with five secondary mathematics preservice teachers (PSTs) in their final year of their undergraduate teacher education program at a large, midwestern university. I examined written lesson plans, observed enacted lessons, and interviewed PSTs about planning and teaching. The purpose of this study was to better understand…

When students walk into a classroom, often the first question is, "What are we going to do today?" It is easy for educators to fall into the trap of using activities exclusively without considering the value or intent of the content. After all, the students are engaged, and if they are busy they must be learning. Simply being busy,…

This study examined the perceptions of participants regarding the use of embedded video demonstration lessons during literacy professional development sessions. The videos were captured in an urban elementary classroom and modeled two new literacy strategies. Based on survey responses from 160 kindergarten through fifth grade elementary school…

This paper contributes to our understanding of the micro-policy experience of an implemented curriculum from the perspective of students, in addition to teachers, as the key coupling agents in the schools of a Chinese global city. Although the phenomenon of decoupling in educational policy is widely recognized, much less attention has been paid to…

Institutions are redesigning gateway courses--lower-division courses known to create student success bottlenecks--to influence persistence and completion goals. These initiatives, student success course redesigns (SSCR), are specialized versions of course design institutes (CDIs). This investigation into SSCRs uses content analysis to examine the…

The challenge of reading across disciplines is often not a matter of word recognition or general comprehension instruction; it is a matter of understanding how ideas are represented in the language and conventions of that discipline. In this article we describe a strategy for foregrounding the disciplines in the design and implementation of…

Some employers contend that the college graduates they hire should have stronger communication and critical thinking skills upon arrival from their various college/university programs in which they majored. As higher education continues its efforts to meet the demands for employers, the authors contend that the benefits of participation in debate…

We have developed an OD3R method that can be applied on Biochemistry learning. This OD3R consists of 5 phases: orientation, decision, do, discuss, and reflect to connect lessons in the class with practice in the laboratory. Implementation of OD3R method was done in 2 universities in Yogyakarta to increase critical thinking skill and practical…

We discuss how a professor worked with six students to design and implement a complex teaching strategy for a course, and used the students' assistance to create a sustainable model for future iterations of the course.

This article describes how one second-grade teacher implemented Follow the Reader, her term for dyad reading. Common Core expects students to read increasingly complex texts. Teachers can implement dyad reading with this end in mind. It is a modified version of the neurological impress method in which a lead reader and an assisted reader sit side…

There is currently strong and widespread support among university administrators for blended learning at the college level, or courses that incorporate some degree of online instruction. As instructors are called on to incorporate online and face-to-face elements into their instruction, they face the critical question of how to intentionally…