Parent engagement is often promoted as a remedy for reducing achievement gaps between students from high socio-economic and low socio-economic backgrounds. However, researchers have found mixed results when examining parent engagement and student outcomes. Drawing on a study investigating the effectiveness of summer literacy camps offered by…

Pipeline programs in health and biomedical sciences have gained attention as students who engage in these programs are more likely to enter into associated fields. In 2012, to support the mission of Oakland University William Beaumont (OUWB) School of Medicine, the Future Physicians Summer Enrichment Program (FPSEP) was launched for regional high…

Undergraduate research experiences are an increasingly common component of STEM education practices. Student benefits associated with these experiences include increased interest and retention in STEM and/or research fields. Across the country, twenty-three states and Puerto Rico are supported through the National Institutes of Health's…

Deaf students are under-enrolled in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors, making it important to explore how and why deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students connect (or fail to connect) with STEM. Engaging students in informal STEM with attention to how such experiences interact with their identities has the potential…

In the current study, the researchers qualitatively explored the life significance of a university summer outdoor education (OE) course. The data included 15 in-depth interviews with alumni who had participated in one of the university's summer OE courses over 20 years ago. The researchers interpretively analyzed the interview transcripts and…

This study provides a template for and impact from an Asset, Capacity-Based (Altschuld, 2015) needs assessment focused on undergraduate student success. The purpose of this study is: (1) to provide a template and foundation for institutions to follow in gaining a depth of understanding of student needs and assets, as well as institutional…

There are increasing calls to introduce computational thinking in schools; the arguments in favor call upon research suggesting that even kindergarten children can successfully engage in coding. This contribution presents a cross-sectional study examining the coding practices and computational thinking of fifty-one primary school children using…

From 2017-2021, Mississippi State University's Department of Chemistry has hosted a 10-week summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program, focused on research related to food, energy, and water security topics. The goals of this program were to train students by providing an intensive research experience, recruit minority and…

Guided by Dynamic Systems Theory (DST) and multidimensional perspectives on individual differences (IDs) in instructed second language (L2) learning (e.g., Larsen-Freeman, 2014; Sun & Zhang, 2020), this longitudinal mixed-methods study focuses on three conceptually different categories of L2 learners' IDs: working memory (WM), motivation, and…

School closures because of natural phenomena, such as COVID-19, underscore long-standing gaps in access to science education in the United States of America, particularly for young students. When educators have to pivot to deliver virtual instruction, it is important to identify feasible remote learning strategies for science content across formal…

SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) has proliferated across the United States, and in the process, it has disrupted all sense of normalcy. Because adolescents are in a critical period for growth and development, youth are particularly susceptible to negative impacts of disruption from COVID-19. Therefore, sustaining youth development programs is essential to…

Many adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) experience challenges in social competence. Evidence suggests that specialized summer camps with social skills training may have positive outcomes on social competence development in adolescents with ADHD. This article reports on a pilot study of a therapeutic summer camp…

Although research related to the Science of Reading has documented the positive effects of explicit, systematic reading instruction for all students, students from historically marginalized groups often experience differential opportunities to learn and are likely to perform lower than their peers on large scale measures of reading achievement.…

College students with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and/or learning disabilities are frequently allowed to complete examinations in a separate, distraction-reduced setting. Although separate room test accommodations are believed to provide students with equal access to testing and thereby improve performance, little experimental…

Teacher professional development (PD) is seen as a promising intervention to improve teacher knowledge, instructional practice, and ultimately student learning. While research finds instances of significant program effects on teacher knowledge, little is known about how long these effects last. If teachers forget what is learned, the contribution…