A college-going high school program called Rise Up has enjoyed years of success with its program participants but has yet to demonstrate why the program alumni have entered college at such high rates (91.6% of alumni enter college upon high school graduation). Through interviews and focus groups with 46 college-going alumni, this research examined…

It was 2007, and a candidate for head of school had a question for the faculty: "What do you want as a school?" A veteran teacher raised his hand. "We want a faculty and staff evaluation program." Hearing this response, the candidate decided, "This is a place I want to work." Within a year, newly installed McDonogh…

First five years are identified as a critical period of child growth in scientific literature. In 1998, California voters passed Proposition 10 that appropriated a 50 cent per pack tax on cigarettes and other tobacco products to support early childhood development. As a result, Kern County Children and Families Commission administered over $10…

The Summer Curriculum Writing Institute (SCWI) supports graduates of a university-based teacher education program during the induction years and beyond with the aim of impacting teacher quality. The purpose of this article is to describe the development, goals, research, and lessons learned during SCWI from 2005-12. The week focuses around the…

Within the background where education is increasingly driven by the economies of scale and research funding, we propose an alternative online open and connected framework (OOC) for building global learning communities using mobile social media. We critique a three year action research case study involving building collaborative global learning…

Technology and social media, often seen as counter productive to student learning, can provide intriguing new ways to extend and enhance learning across international borders. This article explores one successful learning project, based on the Nobel Peace Prize, that connected students from Norway, South Africa, and the United States through…

Although there is some agreement in the field of education as to what constitutes a mentor and the roles and responsibilities of a mentor, mentoring programs vary drastically across states and across schools with respect to the amount of structure and the resources available to implement these programs. Too often, mentoring programs take on a…

This dissertation is a study of scientific collaboration at the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS), a modern, multi-disciplinary, distributed laboratory involved in sensor network research. By use of survey research and network analysis, this dissertation examines the collaborative ecology of CENS in terms of three networks of…

Knowledge Building is approached in this study from an organizational perspective, with a focus on the nature of school-university-government partnerships to support research-based educational innovation. The paper starts with an overview of what is known about effective partnerships and elaborates a conceptual framework for Knowledge Building…

This article describes the design and delivery of a program, "Global Business in a Digital World." The program integrates the use of social media technologies and business applications in a series of courses that include short-term study abroad components that focus on emerging markets. The objectives are to: (1) provide additional…

To become full and active participants in today's technologically saturated society, young people need to become creators (and not just consumers) of interactive media. Developing the requisite abilities and capacities is not a wholly individual process; it is important for young people to have access to communities where they can collaborate and…

This paper presents the first in a series of studies on the informal advice networks of a community of teachers in an in-service professional development program. The aim of the research was to use Social Network Analysis as a methodological tool to reveal the social networks developed by the teachers, and to examine whether these networks…

This article explores the role of the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory (HASTAC) in facilitating and encouraging a collaborative community of junior and senior scholars on issues of technology and humanistic learning. As a result of its emphasis on collaboration and discussion, HASTAC encourages a form of collective…

Education and health have shared interests. Unifying these allows schools to become better places to enjoy learning, teaching and working. Health promoting schools have shown evidence of improving the health and well-being of the whole school community. At the European level, the Schools for Health in Europe (SHE) network is one of the most…

Teachers are often confined to their classrooms with limited or no time to share with colleagues the difficulties they face, their concerns, and their successful initiatives. This leads to a situation where they end up teaching in ways and approaches they believe to be best with no chance to know how others may be approaching similar difficulties…