A fundamental goal of critical literacy approaches is to bring a change and empower students as critical agents and subjects of decision making. Students are expected to do more than simply accumulate information; they are encouraged to challenge their "taken for granted" belief structures and transform themselves as well as their…

This article discusses why students should play a designer role in the creation of new (and better!) school experiences. Choosing a school is only the first step in planning an academic career. After making a selection, students must match interests and passions with an academic program and make important decisions about which courses to take and…

With the recent promotion of learner-centered philosophies, educators are beginning to accept the idea that learning is a constructive process. But this philosophical shift has been met with some resistance from both students and faculty. This case study examines the development of a student-designed experiential course from both student and…

It is confusing to be a feminist student. Deconstruction is "de rigueur"; reconstruction less so. Awareness rises while answers recede. Feminist students seek out learning experiences that disrupt, empower, and make them feminist students not only by what they learn, but also by how they learn, by the pedagogy in which they engage. Certainly there…

Recent studies have used students' "voices" to support their claims about the value or otherwise of new technology, university courses and universities as a whole. But such voices are not obtained neutrally: students know there is an agenda here. This article questions whether it is possible to obtain more genuine student voices and whether it is…

Introduction: The MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation consists of psychological components (i.e., empowerment, usefulness, success, interest, and caring) that have been derived from research and theory as ones that are critical to student engagement in academic settings. The purpose of this study was to: (1) determine whether men and women rate…

Budget exercises are frequently used in introductory and social problems courses to facilitate student understanding of income inequality. But do these exercises actually lead to greater sociological understanding? To explore this issue, the authors studied undergraduate students enrolled in introductory sociology courses during the 2008-2009…

This intervention study aimed at helping undergraduate students of psychology learn to use the discursive resources useful to make academic voice visible in their texts and to improve their writing practices. The intervention involved tutorial meetings and collaborative revisions in two different learning environments, on-line and face-to face.…

In June 2018 the Canadian Mathematics Education Study Group/Groupe Canadien d'étude en didactique des mathématiques (CMESG/GCEDM) held its 42nd meeting in the idyllic setting of Squamish, British Columbia. This meeting marked the first time CMESG/GCEDM had been in British Columbia since 2010 and the first time it had been held at Quest University.…

This study explored outcomes in a constructivist career course. Using a pretest-posttest design, the authors assessed the empowerment (operationalized as career decision self-efficacy) and career indecision of 82 culturally diverse college students at a large, midwestern university. Data were analyzed using a multivariate analysis of variance.…

This study explored the response of 28, second year undergraduate students to an innovative approach to a five-day solo. Periods of solitude are more likely to lead to positive outcomes when they are freely chosen than when they are programmed as part of a course. The extent to which a programmed solo can be "freely chosen" by the…

In this article, Tara Yosso, William Smith, Miguel Ceja, and Daniel Solorzano expand on their previous work by employing critical race theory to explore and understand incidents of racial microaggressions as experienced by Latina/o students at three selective universities. The authors explore three types of racial microaggressions--interpersonal…

Against a backdrop of increasing diversity in the United States, the number of Black women undergraduates enrolled at predominantly white institutions across the country is growing. Yet while colleges and universities are eager to diversify their campuses, often the climate of these campuses has not changed in ways that support the success of…

Taking on responsibilities associated with a professional role is an important aspect of experiential learning for undergraduate students on work-based placements. However, responsibility is a complex concept that is connected to issues of trust and risk in the placement context. This paper presents students' perspectives that illustrate that…

Student discussions are a common teaching approach in graduate and advanced undergraduate courses because of their benefits to student learning, and to future professional development for natural resources professionals. However, traditional student-led discussions often are ineffective at meeting course and learning objectives and suffer from…