Founded on the principles of place-based education, land-based learning collaboratively engages learners and community members in a four-step process of identification, understanding, intervention, and evaluation to enhance the sustainability of community-based agricultural systems. While scholars have provided the philosophical foundation for…

This study examined the relationship between psychological empowerment and three demographic variables of secondary educators in an urban public school in the State of Michigan. Psychological empowerment is traced historically from a concept in the business industry that focuses on customer service to a set of processes and sub-dimensions that…

This paper explores enabling conditions for scaling high-quality project-based learning (PBL) to understand factors that influence how PBL spreads, whether and how it can be sustained and the extent to which it informs meaningful change in schools. We report on a year-long collaboration across three research projects. Each project team analyzed…

A tension in designing classroom learning involves balancing the questions and interests of students with the goals of teachers and standards. One approach to navigating this tension in science classrooms is to simultaneously support and constrain students' questions about an observable natural phenomenon in the classroom and then take up those…

Teacher preparation programs commonly use observational instruments to assess the progress and the exit performances of teacher candidates. However, while these instruments have been described and several have been studied for effectiveness, the field lacks a close examination of how they position participants: teacher candidates, K-12 pupils, and…

Over four years the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) led efforts across the state to implement the Safe and Supportive Schools (S3) initiative. This federally funded school reform effort targeted the 22 lowest performing high schools in Michigan. One of the primary objectives of the initiative was to implement interventions to increase…

This article explores using spoken word poetry and song analysis in the classroom to inspire students to analyze their identities and strive for social justice in their research efforts. Poetry is empowering. It can show students how people express themselves, push them to consider their own identities, and inspire them to seek social change.…

Before graduate school, before his undergraduate degree, before community college, all throughout K-12, this author was considered an "at-risk" student--at risk of dropping out of school. During those early years, he took note of the things that seemed unjust and now he directs his academic work toward engaging at-risk students and…