Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest partnered with the Arkansas Department of Education (ADE) to examine Arkansas's middle and high school indicators of postsecondary readiness and success, building on an earlier study of these indicators (Hester et al., 2021). Academic indicators include attaining proficiency on state achievement tests,…

We conducted a mixed methods study in an upper-level genetics course exploring the relationships between student motivation, homework completion, and academic achievement at the college level. We used data from an open-ended questionnaire, homework grades and completion reports, and exam scores. We used these data sources to measure self-perceived…

A simple Excel spreadsheet-based program for simulating atomic emission spectra from the properties of neutral atoms (e.g., energies and statistical weights of the electronic states, electronic partition functions, transition probabilities, etc.) is described. The contents of the spreadsheet (i.e., input parameters, formulas for calculating…

Examples are believed to be very important in developing conceptual understanding of mathematical ideas, useful both in mathematics research and instruction (Bills & Watson in "Educational Studies in Mathematics" 69:77-79, 2008; Mason & Watson, 2008; Bills & Tall, 1998; Tall & Vinner, 1981). In this study, we draw on the…

This study explores factors enhancing the likelihood that three demographically disadvantaged groups of selective science high school graduates would complete a university STEM degree 4-6 years later. The target groups are labeled as disadvantaged in terms of STEM pipeline persistence compared to school peers, and include: (1) women, (2) those…

This paper critically examines the integration of online fanfiction practices into an advanced university English language classroom. The fanfiction project, The Blogging Hobbit, was carried out as part of a course in the teacher education program at a Swedish university for students who were specializing in teaching English at the secondary…

Cognitive complexity is traditionally used for describing human cognition along a simplicity-complexity axis in tests like TOFEL IBT and GRE where text creation and rhetorical organization are quintessentially important. Accordingly, this study sought to investigate the impact of mentor text modelling on cognitive complexity of academic writing…

Essay writing is a common type of constructed-response task used frequently in standardized writing assessments. However, the impromptu timed nature of the essay writing tests has drawn increasing criticism for the lack of authenticity for real-world writing in classroom and workplace settings. The goal of this paper is to contribute evidence to a…

The place-based investment model (PBIM) of talent development is a programming model for developing talents of high-potential youth in ways that could serve as an investment in the community. In this article, we discuss the PBIM within rural contexts. The model is grounded in three theories--Moon's personal talent development theory, Sternberg's…

Between 2003 and 2013, the proportion of California eighth graders enrolled in algebra or a more advanced course nearly doubled to 65%. In this article, we consider the organizational processes that accompanied this curricular intensification. Facing a complex set of accountability, institutional, technical/functional, and internal political…

Over the past fifteen years, AP Human Geography has grown in numbers and spread to almost every state. This article synopsizes the early history of the subject, summarizes the course and the exam, highlights positive impacts on the discipline of geography, and focuses on the following three issues: teachers who come to the course having majored in…

A recent (2015) study conducted by the Society of Human Resource Managers concluded that nearly half of US employers, across industries, believe recent college graduates to be lacking in requisite competencies for communication, broadly, and writing, in particular. This paper describes an advanced writing course in public relations that seeks to…

This article presents the Cultural Facilitation Model as a means to guide the investigation of cultural questions with benefits for English Foreign Language (EFL) instructors Native English Speaking Teachers (NESTs) and Non Native English Speaking Teachers (NNESTs) and EFL students alike. It will describe how instructors can act as cultural…

This report provides an overview of Austin Independent School District students' academic performance and interest in the science, technology, engineering and math fields for those who were enrolled in a course with a teacher trained by the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity in the 2016-2017 school year.

This paper reports on classroom observations of senior high school mathematics lessons with a focus on the use of digital technology. The observations were of teachers enrolled in an in-service course, Teaching Advanced Mathematics. The paper reports selected results and comments on: software that was observed to have been used; the use (or not)…