Professional organizations can play an important role in the lives and work of educators. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore Alabama educators' experiences with membership in statewide professional organizations and to determine what benefits, if any, members feel their organizations provide them. Four main benefits that…

This essay reflects on the challenges of facilitating a community program partnership with the Prince George's Memorial Library System. The program, "Community Justice," uses a public syllabus to introduce local teens to social justice concepts, theories, and methods. While issues of sustainability and retention are examined in this…

Partnerships between communities and institutions of higher education have become central ways in which post-secondary students and faculty members interact with teachers and students in community environments. These partnerships can be challenging to develop, however, particularly given the numerous and shifting priorities of both schools and…

Family child care (FCC) is uniquely positioned to address challenges with insufficient early care and education supply and access in the United States. FCC programs were steadily declining before COVID-19, and many child care programs, both center- and home-based, were at risk of closure early in the pandemic. This study examines closure among…

Incorporating instructor continuity into the first-year composition (FYC) sequence represents an opportunity for community colleges to make an informed scheduling and advising decision in order to assist in the goal to increase student success rates in FYC. Utilizing course completion data from a community college in northern Alabama, this study…

The purpose of this study was to determine if participation in the Community Action Poverty Simulation (CAPS) had an impact on rural educator candidates' and practicing rural educators' attitudes toward poverty (ATP). The group of rural educator candidates are students pursuing an undergraduate degree in education at a small, rural university in…

Purpose: Schools in resource challenged communities require principal approaches that break patterns of low expectations and low student achievement. This study identifies Alabama's "outlier" schools that have been consistently successful in attaining higher student outcomes than their neighboring schools despite their similar community…

Rural schools are unique in the challenges they face; therefore, it follows that the policies to address the challenges should also be unique and not adhere to the "one size fits all" mentality. This research uses a qualitative approach and takes the bold step to seek the input of teachers who work in rural schools for suggestions on how…

Preschool aged children's social and emotional adjustment impacts their behavior across settings. Providing high-quality early intervention services that enhance social and emotional skills can help prepare children for formal schooling and improve social and behavioral outcomes. The summer prior to Kindergarten presents a unique opportunity for…

As the COVID-19 crisis disrupts students' sense of community and appreciation for in-person instruction, the author presents a pedagogical experiment involving several collaborative, team-based learning strategies to engage all learners, regardless of location. Students in a sophomore-level required seminar are tasked with various team-based…

Deaf education in the United States began in 1817 with the bilingual co-leadership of Laurent Clerc and Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet. In 2018, Marianne Belsky and Nicole Sutliffe, a bilingual, deaf/hearing team, were officially appointed as co-leaders of the Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center. In this article, Belsky and Sutliffe share the…

The purpose of this reflective essay is to encourage the discussion of community-engaged scholarship (CES) that does not progress as planned. Insufficient attention is given to lessons gleaned from missteps and outright failures experienced by scholars in the field, which results in a paucity of documented cases and recommendations for…

Effective communication about science is a core skill undergraduates should learn, but little research has explored how students communicate about culturally controversial science topics. In this study, we explored how Black undergraduate science students took on the role of science communicators in their communities during the COVID-19 pandemic.…

Typically, when a community's historical materials encounter a large academic library's archives, the engagement is transactional: they sign forms, they hand over their archives, and we assure them that their materials will be valued by researchers. These procedures make assumptions about comfort with gift agreements (what if communities seek…

Technology and globalization in education have dramatically changed the landscape for teachers. New roles for teachers include resource providers, content specialists, learning facilitators, and lifelong learners. This is especially true in the ever-changing fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Therefore, colleges…