Positive youth development is a strengths-based, positive psychology approach to fostering adolescents' educational engagement and achievement. It focuses not just on students' academic development but also on their vocational, social, and emotional development. The positive youth development philosophy is at the heart of Cynthia Hazel's unique…

In his book "Drive," Daniel Pink writes that mastery is "the desire to get better and better at something that matters." If we consider this definition in the context of the classroom, students must have a desire to get better and must feel that what they're learning matters. Technology can help ensure these two criteria…

"This class is so [insert expletive] depressing." I overheard a student communicating this to a friend upon exiting one of my ethics courses and I wondered how my classes could generate a sense of empowerment rather than depression, a sense of hope rather than despair. Drawing from David Hume's and Martin Hoffman's work on the…

Grounded in the context of the gap in civic participation, action-based civics curricula, and how classroom interactions may affect student development, we present the CIVVICS (Civic Interactions motiVating diVerse Individuals in Classroom Settings) observation tool. CIVVICS's four domains--Lesson Planning and Implementation, Classroom…

For the deaf or hard of hearing student in the mainstream--today's environment where all children are expected to learn more, produce more, and be assessed more--the high pressure coupled with low expectations can be overwhelming. Since many students with hearing loss have difficulty speaking and using English, administrators and mainstream…

In 2005, New Hampshire abolished the Carnegie unit--the core unit around which schools typically measure credit hours. In its place, the state mandated that all high schools measure credit according to students' mastery of material, rather than time spent in class. This policy shift created the first-ever state-wide effort to create a…

Youth empowerment is the main goal of sex education according to Dutch Government and NGO policies. Academics from different disciplines have argued, however, that the ideal of empowerment through education is problematic, because of the unequal power relations implicated in educational practices. Building on one-and-a-half years of online and…

Over the last twenty-five years, the Minnesota Historical Society, the University of Minnesota Libraries, and Minitex have developed a partnership centered on creating pathways to higher education by engaging local middle school and high school students in immersive programs at academic libraries. These activities vary in scope and content, but…

Recently, there has been renewed interest in the area of school to university transitions within geography. This article focuses upon one aspect of these transitions, namely the induction programmes offered by universities to their new undergraduates. It argues in favour of extending the length of the induction period currently offered by many…

"You are the hope of the future." That's the message Marian Wright Edelman, executive director of the Children's Defense Fund (CDF), gave more than 1,500 excited college students and recent graduates as they began a week-long training for the CDF's Freedom Schools. She was preparing them for a daunting task--that of transforming the…

The use of peer-mediated learning has emerged as a promising practice to transform the classroom experiences of both students with disabilities and their non-disabled peers. This brief summarizes the best practices for implementing peer-mediated learning and advocates situating peer-mediated learning in inclusive, interdependent learning…

This chapter describes the University of Hawaii's work to develop an online navigational tool that helps students develop and execute their educational plans, and assists colleges with ensuring that they have the capacity to meet students' needs.

This article introduces a novel approach to pedagogy within an art school in the UK HE sector, based upon a synthesis of perception theory and communication theory. It is argued that art students' drawing is empowered by strategies of teaching informed by aspects of James J. Gibson's ecological approach to visual perception relevant to an…

A California high school develops a Student Justice Panel to hear student concerns about violations of the student code, providing students with a way to not just have a voice but to effect change in how students are disciplined. Restorative justice gives students a feeling of fairness and responsibility for appropriate behavior. Restorative…

Today's students require educators who will guide them to think critically, grow in character, and value relationships. These students become empowered to change their world and overcome social and racial oppression and marginalization. Empowered students are those who attain skills and knowledge with their teachers, and become equipped and…