Trust, a relational phenomenon that is an important building block of interpersonal relationships and within society, can also be an intermediary outcome of field-based environmental education programs. Trust creates a foundation for collaboration and decision-making, which are core to many ultimate outcomes of environmental education. Yet,…

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to gain a better understanding of how induction programs might effectively support STEM K-8 teacher preparation. American schools are not producing competent STEM graduates prepared to meet employment demands. Over the next decade, STEM employment opportunities are expected to increase twice as fast…

Students' development of conceptual understandings is a central goal of mathematics education (CCSS-Mathematics, 2010). Such a challenging, yet ambiguous, goal cannot be achieved without empowering teachers with the knowledge and tools critical for their ability to adequately convey the content, and assess and interpret students' performance. This…

This article reports on students' problem-solving approaches across three representations--number lines, coordinate planes, and function graphs--the axes of which conventional mathematics treats in terms of consistent geometric and numeric coordinations. I consider these representations to be a part of a "hierarchical representational…

This study uses an existing evaluation model and previously established measurement tools to evaluate the quality and success of Urban Compass, a private non-profit after-school program for elementary school children in the Watts district of Los Angeles. This evaluation had two major objectives. The first objective was to assess program quality by…

This article contributes to research on the impact of high stakes accountability on social studies teaching where it is "not" tested by the state, and addresses the question of what is happening in middle and higher performing versus struggling schools (Wills, 2007). The author presents complex findings from a qualitative study in five…

Over the years the amount of homework and what kind of homework students are completing on a nightly basis has changed dramatically. From the early 1900s when homework was abolished because it was considered a violation of child labor laws to today when after No Child Left Behind was enacted in 2002, the focus has moved to evaluating academic…

Over the last decade, the number of one-to-one laptop programs in U.S. schools has steadily increased. Though technology advocates believe that such programs can assist student writing, there has been little systematic evidence for this claim, and even less focused on technology use by at-risk learners. This study examined the effect of daily…