How writing is conceptualized has consequences, especially in educational settings. Yet, despite decades of research and scholarship on writing, writing instruction, and writing assessment, misperceptions about writing and its purpose in schools persist. This position statement is directed primarily toward an external audience of school…

Some bad ideas never seem to die, despite research showing they do not actually work. It can be hard to spot them at first. Those dispelled education theories that research shot down long ago. They creep up in studies, shuffling around mumbling in the reference lists, or moan loudly in blog posts. The author often stumbles across these…

High-quality professional learning can build principals' capacity to lead successful schools. This brief summarizes a study about principals' professional learning based on a national survey of elementary school principals. Many surveyed principals reported that they had access to professional development that has been identified as important for…

Displaced learners, uprooted because of conflict, poverty, or other major traumas, are often shut out of opportunities to learn engineering. At the same time, fragile contexts demand engineers' expertise, but experts and their engineered solutions are often called in from outside the community. In this article, we examine engineering learning as a…

The new Minnesota Standard Adult High School Diploma program has evolved into a viable secondary credential option within the Minnesota Department of Corrections (DOC). This competency-based credential broadened the scope of instruction to include digital literacy and work readiness, providing hope and opportunity for individuals struggling to…

The objective of our program is to foster and facilitate authentic research experiences in middle and high school science courses. We do so by providing students with a complete experience in scientific experimentation and communication. The centerpiece is a set of experiment modules in which students investigate the effects of toxic chemicals on…

Learner-centered education has the potential to meet the needs of individual students and better prepare them for a rapidly changing global world. However, it can be a challenging task to implement learner-centered education in the current education system which was designed for sorting rather than learning. Although an increasing number of…

Research can be a powerful tool in education, but it's an even more powerful tool when that research is created, implemented, and reflected upon by the education experts themselves--classroom teachers. This research mobilized a cadre of STEM teacher leaders to help unpack the overarching research question: How does the collective leadership of…

The revised Technology Curriculum for years 1-13 now includes two Digital Technologies areas: 'computational thinking for Digital Technologies' and 'designing and developing digital outcomes'. By 2020, all schools are expected to address these curriculum additions. This article outlines some of the background stated purposes for introducing this…