Teachers at Jackson Elementary School in Hillsboro, Oregon, embrace a growth mindset and continuously try best practices that better reach all students. They collaborate and bounce ideas off one another, and they observe one another and provide feedback. They will even ask another teacher to model lessons with their students so they learn how to…

Partisan politics challenge educators to determine how best to navigate discussions of controversial subjects within their classrooms. This can be particularly true for new educators in the early stages of developing their confidence and classroom management skills. This qualitative case study uses situated learning and the communities of practice…

Recent momentum to develop a trauma-informed education system provides an important opportunity for Pennsylvania schools. About two out of every three school-age children are likely to experience at least one traumatic event, such as abuse, neglect, or exposure to violence, by age 17. The effects of traumatic stress can include negative impacts on…

The collision between a growing, inexperienced teaching force and students' algebra struggles should be one of great concern. A collaboration of four public and private universities in Oregon restructured mathematics methods courses for preservice teacher candidates by using the affordances of technology to counteract this loss of experience. Over…

Playing With Conflict is a weekend course for graduate students in Portland State University's Conflict Resolution program and undergraduates in all majors. Students participate in simulations, games, and experiential exercises to learn and practice conflict resolution skills. Graduate students create a guided role-play of a conflict. In addition…

Creating a space for learning science outside the traditional classroom shifts the expectations for both educators and children. In the classroom, both groups have preconceived notions of their roles and of what classroom science looks like. In the hybrid space of afterschool, students and educators are free to explore alternative ways of teaching…

The use of content-based language instruction (CBI) offers an innovative and effective method for teaching core geographic concepts and skills while students study a second language. This article focuses on a collaborative initiative developed and tested by university and high school level geography and second-language educators. The goal of the…

Developing evaluation capacity in organizations is a complex and multifaceted task. This article outlines a framework for building evaluation capacity. The framework is based on four strategic methods for teaching evaluation: (a) using logic models for sound program planning, (b) providing one-on-one help, (c) facilitating small-team collaborative…

Since 2001, librarians at Oregon State University's Valley Library have been working to build a "teaching library" supported by a clearly articulated instruction program. From the start, we believed that we needed to assess the teaching library's impact, not only to determine the success or failure of our efforts but also to demonstrate…

Ongoing discussion between the Oregon State University (OSU) libraries' acting instruction coordinator and the Assistant Composition Coordinator focuses on improving collaboration between our programs and more effectively integrating the research process into the English composition curriculum. We briefly describe a qualitative analysis of the…

This article describes the author's experience dealing with animal rights protests. It describes a group convened to address the issue of animal care and use in education, comprised of faculty from veterinary medicine, veterinary students, members of the Vegetarian Resources Network, the director of Oregon State's Program for Ethics, Science, and…

This article describes a successful project that demonstrates the effective practice of two important trends in art education today: (1) creating space for art education that is informed by scholarship on community-based pedagogy and environmental design; and (2) collaborating to achieve more comprehensive learning outcomes. The project was a…

The Standards-based Education Project (STEP) was conducted as part of the Eisenhower Initial Teacher Professional Development Program in Oregon, under the Proficiency-based Admissions Standards System (PASS). STEP focused on the development of a framework of teacher knowledge, skills, and materials for pre-service and practicing teachers. High…

Three writing projects in the state of Oregon, each of which uses a different approach to the teaching of writing, are described in this report. The first section of the report deals with the Coos County ESD Composition Improvement Project, which focuses on writing as a three-step process involving prewriting, writing, and postwriting. The section…

This article describes a collaborative project between an English language class in Japan and one in the United States. The institutions involved were Tokyo International University (TIU), located in Kawagoe, Saitama, Japan, and its branch campus, Tokyo International University of America (TIUA) in Salem, Oregon. This project created an…