Each edition of the IDRA Newsletter strives to provide many different perspectives on the issues in education topics discussed and to define its significance in the state and national dialogue. This issue focuses on Student Leadership and Engagement and includes: (1) Project Based Learning for Student Success--Teaching Across Content Areas for…

This study investigated the experience of engaging the disengaged learner. Specifically, it sought to more fully understand what conditions, curriculum, and programmatic components in the words of students themselves had a hand in drawing students into the learning endeavor. Chapter One introduced the problem. With the current educational tone in…

(Purpose) This study contributes to the knowledge base about strategies for helping disconnected youth re-engage with schooling. The study presents findings of a rigorous impact evaluation of the Good Shepherd Services (GSS) Transfer School Model that is grounded in developmental theory positing that social and emotional factors are essential to…

This article presents evidence designed to expand scholarly knowledge of how high school co-curricular activities generate the positive effects previous scholarship has found. Studies of empowerment across various fields identify a sense of autonomy, self-belief, self-expression, the ability to work together with diverse others, and a critical…

Leadership capacity-building is a key factor in sustainable school improvement, and the leadership contribution of students is an integral part of an authentic distributed conception of school leadership. Thus it is important to understand the factors which influence high school students' motivations to engage in formal and informal leadership in…

Summer outreach programs provide pre-college participants an introduction to college life and exposure to engineering in an effort to raise the level of interest and bring more students into engineering fields. The Junior Engineering, Mathematics, and Science (JEMS) program is a project-based summer workshop in which teams of high school students…

The study reported here determined the factors that affect teen involvement in 4-H programming. The design of the study was descriptive and correlational in nature. Using a purposive sampling procedure, a survey questionnaire was distributed to all (N=214) 4-H members attending the 4-H State Leadership Conference. The major findings of the study…

This study explored restorative justice arising in the context of an academic high school course in which students learned restorative justice principles and strategies. Given that the literature provided limited guidance of restorative justice in this context, these novel circumstances presented a unique opportunity for study. The central…

The current study examined the association between emotional intelligence (EI) and the Leadership components (L) of high school students in the state of Kuwait. The possibility of predicting each leadership component via emotional intelligence components was investigated for high and low achievers. A sample of 11th grade students from Kuwaiti…

The "High School Puente Program" aims to help disadvantaged students graduate from high school, become college eligible, and enroll in four-year colleges and universities. The program consists of three components: (1) a 9th- and 10th-grade college preparatory English class that incorporates Mexican-American/Latino and other multicultural…

As I began my career as a teacher, I assumed leadership education would naturally be integrated into the elementary classroom curriculum because I was intrigued by this topic. However, as I spent more time in the classroom I quickly realized leadership skills were not part of regular classroom learning or practice for elementary age students. I…

This paper presents the annual report of the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) for 2010. Four years ago, NMSI was just an idea. NMSI not only hit the ground running in 2007, it picked up the best ideas in the country and rolled them out in schools and universities from coast to coast. Within a year of its creation, NMSI had awarded…

This paper asks whether high school leadership activities play an important role in explaining the Hispanic college-completion gap. The analysis in this paper considers the role that English language fluency plays in a Hispanic student's leadership probability and in the student's future educational success. The main results in this paper are:…

The purpose of this study was to assess the leadership practices or behaviors of FFA members participating in a leadership development workshop known as the Success Conference in Georgia. Leadership practices were determined using the "Student Leadership Practices Inventory" (LPI) (Kouzes & Posner, 1998). While success conference…

In communities all over the United States, issues of mistrust, anger, harassment, and bias often accompany the task of cultures learning to live together, and Lewiston, Maine, is no exception. Lewiston High School has recognized the potential conflict and addressed it in a forthright manner. The students have helped lead the way. This article…