This case explores Crabapple Middle, a struggling urban school in the midst of a transition that seeks new leadership that can overcome the challenges of two sub-cultures that divide the school and community. In an effort to address issues of low academic performance and negative community perception, an International Baccalaureate magnet program…

Chemical processing industry is progressively focusing their research activities and product placements in the areas of Grand Challenges (or Global Megatrends) such as mobility, energy, communication, or health care and food. Innovation in all these fields requires solving high complex problems, rapid product development as well as dealing with…

Legal reasoning is a type of problem solving, and is situated within thinking skills, one of the six threshold learning outcomes established under the auspices of the Australian Learning and Teaching Council's Bachelor of Laws Learning and Teaching Academic Standards Statement. The threshold learning outcomes define what law graduates are…

This paper is part two of the article entitled, "Dynamic Neuroscientific Systemology: Using Tri-Squared Meta-Analysis and Innovative Instructional Design to Develop a Novel Distance Education Model for the Systemic Creation of Engaging Online Learning Environments" published in the July-September 2015 issue of i-manager's "Journal…

In today's digital age, Languages graduates need more specific skills than fluency in the foreign language and intercultural competence. Employers expect from all applicants a high level of computer literacy and a set of soft skills such as creativity or the ability to solve problems and work on team projects. Modern Foreign Language (MFL)…

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015 offers a number of opportunities for states and districts to advance deeper learning and ensure that all students graduate from high school with the ability to think critically, solve complex problems, collaborate with peers, communicate effectively, and be self-directed. Deeper learning is the…

In this paper I describe classroom experiences with pre-service secondary mathematics teachers (PSMTs) investigating and extending patterns embedded in the Pythagorean configuration. This geometric figure is a fruitful source of mathematical tasks to help students, including PSMTs, further develop habits of mind such as visualization,…

Research has found that students, particularly those in middle school and high school, believe that their participation in mathematics classrooms includes listening to teachers explaining, working in textbooks, and solving exercise problems quickly (Franke, Kazemi, and Battey 2007). In this article, the authors describe a classroom vignette and…

Creative posters in the classroom can inspire students to become engaged and motivated in learning art. Within the classroom, there are many places to put posters so that students can read them (especially when they get bored in the classroom) - on the cabinets, near the chalkboard, on the teacher's desk and any spare space on the wall. There is…

Getting students to think deeply about mathematical concepts is not an easy job, which is why we often use problem-solving tasks to engage students in higher-level mathematical thinking. Mathematical modeling, one of the mathematical practices found in the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM), is a type of problem solving that can…

Sometimes the best mathematics problems come from the most unexpected situations. Last summer, a Corvette raced down a local quarter-mile drag strip. The driver, a family member, provided the spectators with time and distance-traveled data from his time slip and asked "Can you calculate how many seconds it took me to go from 0 to 60…

"Low threshold, high ceiling" tasks are accessible to diverse learners; invite a wide range of approaches; and hold the potential to further challenge, strengthen, and extend everyone's mathematical reasoning. In this article, the authors present a family of Brick Pyramid problems as examples of "low threshold, high ceiling"…

Many teachers of required secondary school mathematics classes are introducing statistics and probability topics traditionally relegated to college or AP Statistics courses. As a result, they need guidance in preparing lesson plans and orchestrating effective classroom discussions. In this article, the authors will describe the students' learning…

Reaction workup can be a complex problem for those facing novel synthesis of difficult compounds for the first time. Workup problem solving by systematic thinking should be inculcated as mid-graduate-level is reached. A structured approach is proposed, building decision tree flowcharts to analyze challenges, and an exemplar flowchart is presented…

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is a highly useful topic within an introductory Linear Algebra course, especially since it can be used to incorporate a number of applied projects. This method represents an essential application and extension of the Spectral Theorem and is commonly used within a variety of fields, including statistics,…