Identifying and maintaining talent is important in any organization, but in a low-performing school, it is perhaps "the" most important component to achieving turnaround. Given the importance of teachers and leaders for students and schools, districts and states are wise to hone their efforts related to identifying, attracting,…

John McNamara shares his wisdom and humbly credits Camillo Grazzini, Jenny Höglund, and David Kahn for his growth in Montessori. Recognizing more than what he has learned from his mentors, he shares the lessons he has learned from his students themselves. Math, science, history, and language are so integrated in the curriculum that students…

Living-learning communities combine curricular, co-curricular, and residential components of college life. They are a relatively new variation on the residential education that has been part of the undergraduate experience at America's independent colleges and universities for centuries. Research suggests that living-learning communities have a…

This report describes how Ohio's two-year colleges are approaching guided pathways reforms, based on on-site interviews with faculty, administrators, staff, and students at six selected community colleges and telephone interviews with representatives from all 23 Ohio community colleges. In these interviews participants were asked to describe their…

There is an increasing reliance on market principles and values in the education space, particularly in urban contexts, accompanied by a growing diversification of educational service providers. Due in part to increased interactivity amongst constituents in this growing assembly of providers and actors, educational innovation ecosystem…

The National Math + Science Initiative (NMSI) is a nonprofit organization committed to improving educational outcomes that traces its roots back to the early 1990s. NMSI's College Readiness Program (CRP) is a long-standing program with the goal of promoting STEM education in high schools to improve students' preparation for college. The three-year…

While multiple valid measures exist for assessing outcomes of environmental education (EE) programs, the field lacks a comprehensive and logistically feasible common instrument that can apply across diverse programs. We describe a participatory effort for identifying and developing crosscutting outcomes for Environmental Education in the…

Policy makers at the federal level have embraced an educator effectiveness agenda, which in turn has driven many states across the country to rapidly develop and implement new and more complex teacher evaluation systems. It is increasingly clear that the success of these nascent teacher evaluation systems partly depends on the will, skill and…

In late 2006, the Columbus Museum of Art education department adopted a new framework that established creativity as the lens for learning and visitor experiences. But what does creativity look like in a gallery experience? What are visitor attitudes toward creativity? This article explores how the drop-in visitor experience was reimagined at the…

The number of freshmen interested in entrepreneurship has grown dramatically in the last few years. In response, many universities have created entrepreneurship programs, including ones focused on engineering entrepreneurship. In this paper, we report on NEWPATH, an innovative NSF-supported program at Ohio State, designed to nurture students to…

Students, teachers, and school leaders are seeking flexibility and supports to enable powerful, personalized learning experiences both inside and outside of the traditional classroom. In personalized learning, instruction is tailored to each student's strengths, needs, and interests--including enabling student voice and choice in what, how, when,…

During the most recent decade, interdisciplinary instruction at the undergraduate level has increased rapidly. Independent colleges and universities are both innovators in developing new approaches to interdisciplinary education and strong supporters of traditional liberal arts disciplines. Some observers argue that interdisciplinary approaches…

Mary O'Sullivan writes that she spent part of her sabbatical leave interviewing teacher educators from nine countries across three continents exploring teacher education contexts both nationally and locally, and the nature of the 'teacher educators' work in these contexts. Three issues struck her: (1) The intensification of regulation and policy…

This year's "Tech Directions" Inventors Competition asked students to come up with ways to provide electricity to remote villages that traditional electrical utilities have not yet reached. This article presents the results of the judging by inventor/electrical engineer Harry T. Roman. The winners are: (1) First Place--Scott Hulver,…

Piaget's classic work on cognitive development showed that engaging learners in critical discussions with peers about ideas that are "different" than theirs leads to deep conceptual understanding. Implementing such an approach in college-level STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) courses has some specific challenges: (a) Short…