While ample research has examined how youth in the United States define 'Americanness', little attention has been given to how youth imagine the nation of the future, particularly in light of ongoing immigration. This study investigates how middle school students envision necessary national reforms, and how these views reflect different models of…

While research on embodied learning sheds light on the body's role during science learning, there is a lack of understanding of how the body is drawn upon in subsequent learning interactions. We seek to understand how the body supports cognition and learning during and after embodiment. We elaborate upon the liminal blends framework (Enyedy, N.,…

In the future, what role will the academic research library play in achieving the mission of higher education? This essay describes seven strategies that academic research libraries can adopt to become future-present libraries--libraries that foster what Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown have called "a new culture of learning." Written…

Asking students to imagine the spatial arrangement of the elements in a scientific text constitutes a learning strategy intended to foster deep processing of the instructional material. Two experiments investigated the effects of mental imagery prompts on learning from scientific text. Students read a computer-based text on the human respiratory…

In San Francisco, a partnership between a K-8 school and a non-profit writing program helps students who are achieving below grade level find their voices and blossom into confident thinkers and writers. 826 Valencia is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting under-resourced students ages six to eighteen with their creative and…

Destination Imagination is a creative problem solving competition for school-aged children that encourages creative growth and long-term problem solving skills. These skills are important for young children as they can be directly related to future success in school, home, and the workplace. This extracurricular activity has impacted 1.5 million…

Professional education importantly shapes the way future professionals understand their work and their identity as members of their professional field. Undergraduate business education does this by giving students an understanding of the nature and functions of business as well as what they may hope for from a business career, along with the…

This research examines the influence of college students' electronic portfolios (i.e., ePortfolios) on learning, identity, and assessment. The study creates a narrative of students' experiences with ePortfolios that integrates critical hermeneutic theory. Findings demonstrate the diverse experiences of research participants who used ePortfolios…

It takes more than a vision to be called a visionary. One also needs the organization, determination, and spirit to see it through. Four educators are being chosen to be spotlighted as visionaries conceived, developed, and guided technology-driven initiatives perhaps initially thought to be impractical. But their unusual foresight allowed each of…

The purpose of "Picturing Peace", a digital photography program conducted in 4th and 5th grade classrooms in the U. S. and Northern Ireland, was to enhance students' photographic skills to create visual metaphors of the concept of peace. Two principal research questions were addressed: (a) Could 9-10 year-old students create apt and…

This article is a mixed-methods exploration of the levels of stereotypic views about gifted individuals held by current and future educators. Because educators are often asked to provide recommendations for participation in gifted programs, it is important to determine whether those recommendations are based, in part, on stereotypic thinking.…

This essay argues for a paradigm shift in what counts as learning and literacy education for youth. Two related constructs are emphasized: collective Third Space and sociocritical literacy. The construct of a collective Third Space builds on an existing body of research and can be viewed as a particular kind of zone of proximal development. The…

Does poetry have a place in elementary education? Can reading and writing poetry offer elementary learners a way to imagine (and to image) the world through personal insight, to organize and interpret their experience, and to discover meaningful connections to other areas of knowledge? If so, how should these modes of interaction and…

This article draws from the insights offered by discourse analysis and the study of gesture to examine imagination as a product of, and resource for, social action. Using data collected during ethnographic fieldwork at an architecture firm, the article explores how imagining can emerge from a group of interactants who use many semiotic media,…