This article describes an unexpected playground experience that occurred between the author, a reading educator and former middle grades teacher, and his six-year-old granddaughter. The experience became the inspiration and impetus to provide an introduction to, and a rationale for, the concept of text clusters to middle grades teachers. The…

In recent years, employers have expressed concerns that Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) graduates, though proficient in their academic disciplines, lack the critical skills necessary for success in the workplace (Karimi & Pina, 2021). Additionally, many non-STEM majors do not develop the basic STEM competencies that…

Over the last decade, a wealth of empirical evidence has accumulated describing the merits of team-based, collaborative, and interdisciplinary research, including: increased productivity among researchers, greater citation impact, increased multi-sector engagement, and the generation of novel solutions to grand challenges. Funding agencies have…

The use of method of imitational modeling to study forming the empirical knowledge in pupil's consciousness is discussed. The offered model is based on division of the physical facts into three categories: 1) the facts established in everyday life; 2) the facts, which the pupil can experimentally establish at a physics lesson; 3) the facts which…

The article is devoted to the problem of the development of skills connected with the acquisition of foreign lexis (Lexis = all possible words or phrases in a language) on the basis of semantic fields (Semantic field = a lexical set of related items, e.g., colour, red, green, blue). This becomes possible due to grouping well-known and unknown to…

With the increasing refinement of language processing models and the new discoveries about which variables can modulate these processes, stimuli selection for experiments with a factorial design is becoming a tough task. Selecting sets of words that differ in one variable, while matching these same words into dozens of other confounding variables…

Discipline-based education researchers have a natural laboratory--classrooms, programs, colleges, and universities. Studies that administer treatments to multiple sections, in multiple years, or at multiple institutions are particularly compelling for two reasons: first, the sample sizes increase, and second, the implementation of the treatments…

The lack of diversity among higher-education faculty in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines represents a grave structural inequality with serious consequences for students. Fixing it means rethinking the pathway to the professoriate for women and people of color, and avoiding the problems with hiring in STEM fields…

Given the wide range of ability (academic, linguistic and cultural) in classrooms differentiated instruction is often difficult to manage. District and building level leadership can play an important role by providing the vision and support needed to implement Whole School Cluster Grouping (WSCG), the innovative scheduling approach described in…

Recently the US have seen a movement of African American students demonstrating dissatisfaction with their treatment and presence at predominantly white institutions. Some of the common discrepancies from the students' perspectives have included the lack of student and faculty representation of color on these campuses. The model of cohort…

The technique of "group-averaging" produces colorings of a sphere that have the symmetries of various polyhedra. The concepts are accessible at the undergraduate level, without being well-known in typical courses on algebra or geometry. The material makes an excellent discovery project, especially for students with some background in…

This paper describes several innovations to an early field experience emerging from a community, school, and university partnership focused on a middle school serving diverse students from low-income neighborhoods. With the primary goal of utilizing teaching candidates to provide direct academic, social, and instructional support to the middle…

The Centre for Applied Language Studies (CALS), founded in 1997, brings together researchers and postgraduate students from several disciplines in language studies, and is structured in three research clusters: New learning environments; Discourse, society and identity; and Plurilingualism and language policy. There is a certain amount of…

The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public Carnegie Foundation Research institution with 14 schools and colleges that enrolls more than 18,000 undergraduate students at the main campus in Storrs, CT. Beginning in 1999, First-Year Experience (FYE) seminars were offered to entering freshman students. Since that time, the size of the program…

The Massachusetts community college system is entering a second year with funding for each of its 15 schools determined using a new performance-based formula. Under the new model, 50% of each college's allocation is based on performance on metrics related to enrollment and student success, with added incentives for "at-risk" students…