High school students need to be prepared for postsecondary education and enter the workforce to solve real-world problems including food and energy sustainability. Real-world problems require students to apply critical thinking and problem-solving skills and transfer their learning across disciplines. Framed as a grand challenge to students, the…

In this essay, we discuss issues related to the integration of career exploration in our nation's middle schools. We discuss the theoretical and empirical basis for career exploration at the middle school level and identify selected barriers to its effective implementation, namely with regards to career advising and parent involvement. We also…

When it comes to readying students for the jobs of the future, America's K-12 education system too often does not sufficiently prepare Black, Latinx, and Indigenous students. Research has shown that this negatively affects these students' life outcomes, specifically in terms of their long-term career prospects and economic security. To change this…

In this brief, JFF (Jobs for the Future) explores what training providers can do to adapt their programming in ways that put the country on a path to an equitable economic recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors conducted research to examine what education and training providers can do to design programs that emphasize equity and…

The Lilly Endowment's Programs for the Theological Exploration of Vocation offered a range of educational activities and opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to reflect on and discern their values, beliefs, and goals across a wide spectrum of collegiate life. Tim Clydesdale has found that these opportunities were of much value to those…

The belief that STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education initiatives have the potential to stimulate both regional and national economies has prompted policy makers and funding agencies to revisit how STEM teachers are recruited, prepared, and retained. This article investigates the impact of a unique prescholarship…

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of Cheering in the Classroom, a four day program designed purposefully to increase female awareness and perceptions of technology fields. The camp included discipline-based activities from the 13 different programs of study based in technology. The camp targeted high school cheerleaders and…

The purpose of this study was to determine whether the areas of teaching methods, teacher-student relationships, school structure, school-community partnerships or school leadership were significantly embedded in practice and acted as a change agent among school systems that achieve higher than expected results on their state standardized testing…