This article details the development of design principles to support teachers in planning for a Community-Based Mathematical Modeling task with a focus on social justice in the elementary grades. By reflecting on the dilemmas we encountered in the design and enactment of the tasks, we developed five design principles that allowed us to address…

In the face of the global sustainability crisis, schools and teachers are called on to transform education and implement educational innovations to strengthen sustainability education. One of these innovations is 'open schooling': educational practices that involve students in identifying, exploring, and tackling real-world sustainability problems…

Positive creativity involves creative ideas and products that are beneficial to humanity. This paper discusses the importance of fostering positive and transformational creativity in PK-12 and college settings, and concrete classroom strategies for nurturing positive creativity through a service learning pedagogy. A brief history of service…

The study explores the challenges English teachers in Oklahoma's secondary schools face when including diverse perspectives in their classroom literature selections. There is a disconnect between state standards that encourage inclusivity and the pressures from the local community, including conservative opposition to DEI initiatives, increasing…

This case study offers a recounting and analysis of the experiences of one urban educator, in a public high school mathematics classroom setting, working to integrate critical mathematics curricula and pedagogy with youth and in collaboration with a community organization. This project helps to unveil complexities that teachers may experience when…

This article shares lessons from committed and inspirational educators from across the country with whom the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) worked in 2020. Their experiences reinforce that nonpartisan teaching about democracy is possible (i.e., not teaching who to vote for, but rather how the system…

Trauma can impair young people's healthy development and ability to learn. Trauma refers to an adverse experience or pattern of experiences that overwhelms a person's internal capacity to cope and contributes to a feeling of powerlessness. To promote both healthy development and positive educational outcomes for youth, youth-serving professionals,…

Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education has been identified as a keystone teaching and learning area for developing students' knowledge and skills on interdisciplinary critical thinking and problem solving (We use the term 'interdisciplinary' because discipline knowledge and methods were integrated from different…

The aim of this study was to develop a student entrepreneurship education model that integrates the design thinking model into the creative problem-solving process and finds solutions to problems through Lean Canvas. The solutions generated can be translated into a unique value proposition substantiated by ownership of a competitive advantage that…

One in four children in the state of Georgia is food insecure. In the city of Athens, 60 miles northeast of Atlanta, the number approaches one in three. More than 33 percent of residents have significantly limited access to healthy foods, living in areas of the city that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has identified as food deserts.…

Research stresses a need for more contextually nuanced urban teacher preparation programs that explore racially oppressive structures in society. This article presents a case study of five aspiring teachers who participated as mentors in a 2-year program for ninth grade students at Riverview Academy, an urban school. This study uses the…

Systematic inquiry is an inherent part of social work practice. Despite this fact, social work students and practitioners continue to view research as difficult, intimidating and irrelevant. This disconnect is compounded by a lack of rigorous study on how best to teach research concepts to social work students. One way to bridge this gap is to…

Evidence from the UN World Youth Report (2015) suggests that young people, while increasingly disengaged with formal political processes, are motivated by cause-related social action. Higher Education (HE), through research and partnership, provides ideal learning spaces to explore cause-related social action. However, as HE partnership…

During the COVID pandemic, schools have found new ways of working with children and, crucially, their families. This has far-reaching implications for how schools and policy-makers consider homeschool communication as a means of developing parental and community engagement in the future. The Institute of Education's project, "Learning Through…

In this article we discuss an action research experience that took place from 2002 to 2015. We analyze the inception and progress of several project-based learning-centered academic courses that were aimed at developing the project management skills of graduate and undergraduate students. The experience involved approximately 1,800 students from…