21st century educational reform initiatives value creativity, collaboration, innovation, and higher-order thinking (Scardamalia, 2002), the skills needed for students to successfully address the complex engineering challenges facing society. "A Framework for K-12 Science Education: Practice, Crosscutting Concepts and Core Ideas" (NRC,…

This mixed-methods study examined student engagement and the development of twenty-first-century learning skills of collaboration, communication, creativity and critical thinking for Grade 3 students who used immersive game-based learning activities using Breakout EDU strategies compared to students who used traditional small-group methods. BOEDU…

Different schools apply different educational approaches, and different learning concepts interpret knowledge in different ways. The two dominant perspectives classify learning as the acquisition of knowledge, or as participation in school practices. In order to support teachers in choosing the educational method that best fits their teaching…

The best Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) design challenges are student centered, with students themselves making the key decisions. But with young children who are still learning basic academic and social skills, implementing projects where they truly take the lead can be quite challenging. To give students at one…

Following the success of summer-camp-based programs, a new program has been developed for in-school sessions focused around LEGO robotics to foster interest in STEM topics at a young age. The program has been implemented in a very diverse school, and preliminary results on the efficacy of the program are presented. (Contains 1 table and 6 figures.)

Collaborative teaching is an option worth exploring at the elementary school level. The problem is many teachers lack the knowledge to effectively make these co-teaching relationships work. The purpose of this study is to identify effective co-teaching strategies to enhance collaborative teaching relationships. The study documents 1st through 4th…

Literate practice in the arts encompasses both aesthetics and creativity. It is also multimodal in nature and often collaborative. This article presents data collected from a small multi-age school, with children from Prep to Year 7, during their preparation for an end-of-year show. The children had studied the topics of conservation and…

Closing the achievement gap in reading for struggling students is a goal that most urban schools are striving to achieve in this era of No Child Left Behind. Early intervention remains the best approach for successfully supporting those who struggle in the primary grades, but instruction must be targeted or matched to the assessed needs of the…

A third grade teacher examines the effects of cooperative teaching in a two-teacher classroom. After discussing teacher roles in such classrooms, the paper describes how the advantages of such a system greatly outweigh the disadvantages. The paper presents keys to a successful teaching partnership and describes several models for lesson…

Sixteen Hispanic Spanish/English bilingual children (6 boys and 10 girls) participated in a single-subject design study. Their chronological ages ranged from 8 to 9.5 years. The classroom teacher identified all the children as "academic at risk" on the basis of a history of poor academic performance in spelling and low scores on the…