Positive youth development programs such as those offered by Boy Scouts of America (BSA) provide sources of support and opportunities for leadership and character development. Programmatic experts from BSA collaborated with researchers to develop a visual theory of change (pathway model) for youth development in Scouts BSA and for adult volunteer…

Finding effective ways to improve school attendance is more important than ever given the dramatic increases in chronic absence nationwide and in California. This report presents a compelling case for using data about unexcused absences to advance a more preventive, problem-solving, and equitable response to poor attendance. When an absence is…

The purpose of this research was to investigate if the addition of extra credit affected the overall rate of attendance to synchronous lectures in an online asynchronous course, compared to courses in which no extra credit was offered. Further I investigated if the amount of extra credit made a difference to the rate of attendance. I collected…

Although scholars are attuned to the particular transitional dilemmas faced by middle school students, inquiry into middle school breaktimes is largely limited to research on bullying and peer victimization. This study interrogates the geography of middle school breaktime to expand understanding of student safety and recognize the ways that the…

The article addresses the role played by Catholic schools in promoting human dignity among young people. This is a study of Catholic/public high schools in Santa Clara County, California, the USA. It involves qualitative research conducted in public and Catholic private high schools. A comparison of the research results for these two school types…

Providing college students with learning experiences that account for the interdisciplinary nature of most STEM professions has proven challenging. STEM educational practices typically follow a more scripted process designed to build important foundational skills. In contrast, most STEM professions are interdisciplinary and collaborative in…

Extracurricular activities have been known to provide students with learning opportunities not always provided in other traditional learning environments such as communication, leadership, problem-solving skills, and emotional awareness, and have shown benefits in improving student engagement and school attendance. These learning opportunities…

The aim of this report is to highlight efforts to develop a digital badging and e-portfolio environment that will illuminate and validate curricular, co-curricular, and extracurricular learning in cybersecurity. This effort includes Cal Poly Pomona and Coastline College, which are both designated as Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense…

Keep it simple. Focus on the students. Those may be the most important takeaways from the experience of the partnering of two educational institutions for the past eight years to ensure that students consistently and happily graduate with bachelor's degrees. Adult students over the age of 25 juggle many priorities and have responsibilities that…

Adolescent sleep deprivation is a pressing public health issue in the United States as well as other countries. The contexts of adolescents' lives are changing rapidly, but little is known about the factors that adolescents themselves believe affect their sleep. This study uses a social-ecological framework to investigate multiple levels of…

Lardner and Malnarich (2009) identify learning communities as an educational reform strategy designed for intentional student cohorts that engage students in at least one integrative learning opportunity. Colleges and universities are aware that robust educational programs exist on their campuses, yet institutions must identify strategies to help…

Moreno Valley College, a two-year community college in Southern California, experiences an annual migration of cliff swallows. The presence of these birds inspired the development of the undergraduate research program Flying with Swallows. The assessment of the project indicated significant increases in qualitative student outcomes such as…

This book traces the historical background of liberal arts education from west to east, expounds its implication and fundamental goal of universities, and introduces its application in Western and Chinese universities, particularly its experimentation at University of Nottingham Ningbo China. It takes the University of Nottingham Ningbo China as…

Since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged in March 2020, districts across the nation have faced the difficult task of reopening schools safely and keeping them open as community infection rates have risen and fallen. It is useful to learn from the efforts of counties and districts that have been able to reopen schools--and keep them open safely--using…

As nations have sought to keep pace with rapid technological innovation, governments have renewed their focus on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, with emphasis on developing both technical and non-technical skills in STEM students. This article examines which engineering-relevant skills may be developed by…