Background: Learning to program and success in computer science requires persistence in the face of challenges. This study contributes to research on the social context of learning by describing how children's peer interactions can support or hinder the pair's problem solving on the computer. Methods: Video recordings from eight pairs of middle…

The practice of persisting and learning from design failures is essential to engineering design and offers unique ways of knowing and learning for K-12 students. To understand how students engage in the practice of persisting and learning from design failures, we must first understand how, if at all, they recognize that a design failure has…

With the aim of providing holistic approaches to education, social and emotional learning (SEL) has gained significant attention within school systems across the world. SEL has been defined as the process through which individuals understand and regulate emotions, set and achieve positive goals, feel and show empathy towards others, establish and…

Students are expected to learn mathematics such that when they encounter challenging problems they will persist. Creating opportunities for students to persist in problem solving is therefore argued as essential to effective teaching and to children developing positive dispositions in mathematical learning. This analysis takes a novel approach to…

The increase in teacher attrition rates within the state of California since 2000 is of concern to the California Department of Education and districts throughout the state because of a myriad of issues created by the loss of qualified teachers. The cost of replacing qualified teachers and recruiting and training new teachers to replace those who…

Every community has individuals or groups who manage to find better solutions to problems than their peers, although everyone has access to the same resources and challenges. Those are the positive deviants.

We observe that recruitment efforts aimed at alleviating the shortage of skilled workforce in computer engineering must be augmented with strategies for retaining and motivating the students after they have enrolled in our educational programmes. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, we have taken a first step in this direction by…

In this important resource, Dr. Fleming (a noted expert in the field of minority retention) draws on educational evaluations she has developed in the course of her distinguished career. This book analyzes the common factors and the role institutional characteristics play in minority student retention to show what really works in increasing…