Continuous improvement is at the heart of all teaching and learning. Just as we strive to nurture their students' growth and improvement, educators should be continually growing and improving. As a result, Michelle Pledger and Mari Jones designed the Deeper Learning Hub Fellowship. The aim of the fellowship was to increase K-12 teachers'…

By and large, teachers approach their work with the utmost care for students' intellectual, social, and emotional well-being. But even those who hold themselves to high moral standards can sometimes act in ways that harm others when they disengage self-sanctions like guilt or self-criticism. These mechanisms of moral disengagement include (1)…

Albert Bandura's social learning theory focused on the interaction of personal, behavioral, and environmental factors. This article honors Bandura's legacy with the real-life application of his theories regarding modeling, enactive rehearsal, vicarious learning, and self-efficacy. Included are excerpts from a discussion of a group of teachers from…

This paper discusses the implications of health literacy during the COVID-19 pandemic for adults with lower literacy skills. It highlights the challenges faced by individuals in understanding complex health information and emphasizes the role of adult educators in providing trustworthy and comprehensible health information. Incorporating health…

When Daisy Han first encountered a Montessori classroom, she actually felt free. Free to move, free to create, free to explore, free to try, free to fail, free to be. This freedom is essential to becoming an innovator. Innovators possess an irreverence almost as big as their self-efficacy, both of which have been nurtured in an environment where…

Leadership development programs are an exploratory journey that develop Extension faculty to better themselves in service to the organization. In an effort to mitigate potential barriers for participants, it is imperative that organizations work to create conditions conducive for success. We posit barriers for extension professionals include,…

Among the many elements that make up an effective educator, the most important is self-efficacy, writes ASCD author Chase Mielke. When schools support educators in developing a sense of efficacy, there's often a chain reaction.

Mental toughness in athletes is a difficult concept to explain but essential for long-term success in sport. Fostering mental toughness requires both physical and mental challenges. In sport, this is most often executed during practice sessions. This article defines the concept of mental toughness and provides ideas on the role of coaches in…

One of the most difficult parts of the writing process for many teachers is publishing. It is easy to focus writing instruction on the process itself and give publishing much less time--or leave it out completely. Many teachers are unaware of options they have to help students publish outside of essay contests and often rely on gallery walks or…

Understanding the multidimensional process of college student retention and success and faculty's pivotal role in making a positive difference can be daunting without an easily adaptable organizing framework. Although classic models of college student attrition provided an essential, valuable foundation and a guiding framework for early nursing…

Online courses are growing rapidly in K-12, but teachers often receive no preparation for teaching in these environments. While field experiences in virtual schools may be useful, very few teacher education programs offer such an opportunity and there is very little research on the design and effectiveness of such an approach. In this design case…

The pervasive Eurocentric model of music education in the United States is hegemonic, pursuing a model of performance excellence in large ensembles that, by the time young people reach high school, excludes most from music making opportunities in school. Despite numerous efforts to challenge the dominant paradigm since the 1960s, little change has…

In many mechanical engineering undergraduate curriculums, there are topics that are vital to the students' future careers in the manufacturing and design workforce that are not taught in-depth. As one of those topics, Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing, or GD&T, is vital to companies who develop and manufacture products because it allows…

Over the last four years of my K-12 visual arts teaching career, I faithfully kept visual journals, filling them with stories of my experiences in the classroom. What initially began as an experiment as I searched for a tool to help me navigate new challenges within a public school system, eventually led me to realize that my visual journals were…

Before ever entering a formal educational setting, children use writing to make themselves known. Yet by the time students reach the fourth grade, only a small minority of students demonstrate writing skills considered competent by national standards. By this time in their school career, many have begun to internalize that they are poor writers…