Gamification is a teaching strategy often praised for its effectiveness in the classroom. The problem was the lack of information regarding teachers' perceptions regarding gamification in high school Advanced Placement (AP) computer science courses. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the perceptions of computer science teachers…

Accompanying a senior methods course, 19 teacher candidates at Southeastern Louisiana University participated in a semester-long social studies fifth grade mentorship at an International Baccalaureate World School. Teacher candidates identified factors they perceived to affect the success of the experiential learning experience through…

It is evident that more qualitative research on Advanced Placement [AP] classrooms for students from marginalized backgrounds is needed to uncover how AP practices and pedagogies might better serve students who had been historically excluded from the AP Program. I asked my former calculus students (32 total - 22 participated) from my last three…

This article presents the results of five open-ended surveys administered to two Advanced Placement classes in a primarily White high school in upstate New York. Surveys sought to explore how students make sense of the course diversity selection, Chinua Achebe's "Things Fall Apart," which was inserted into a primarily White textual…

The purpose of this study was to study the impact of conformity to statistical reasoning learning environment (SRLE) principles on students' statistical reasoning in advanced placement statistics courses. A quasi-experimental design was used to compare teachers' levels of conformity to SRLE principles through a matching process used to mitigate…

This study explores one teacher's forays into multiliteracies practices and multimodal pedagogies in teaching a language other than English in an international school in Hong Kong. Using the Action Learning Circle as a guiding framework, this study analysed a Chinese language teacher's one-year self-initiated exploration of multiliteracies and…

Many high school classrooms in the United States have physics teachers who are teaching the subject outside their certified content areas because of a severe shortage of physics teachers. There is a critical need to improve the knowledge base of these out-of-field teachers. This comparative case study examined the instructional practice of…

We harnessed a large-scale randomized controlled trial to investigate if and how experienced Advanced Placement (AP) Environmental Science and U.S. Government treatment teachers would shift their practice towards the Knowledge in Action project-based learning (PBL) approach. In any instructional context, shifting to project-based learning can be…

This article shares the first-time geographic information system (GIS) experiences of two advanced placement human geography classes. The teacher had participated in a summer GIS workshop and then brought those skills into her classroom for the students' benefit. Eighteen students shared their experiences researching their family history, working…

Many education professionals are looking to Environmental and Sustainability Education as a guide to incorporate curricular lessons and activities into school classrooms and other learning environments. Building upon the framework of Jickling and Wals (2008) of identifying how to teach about environmental education in transformative ways, this…

Spatial skills have been shown in various longitudinal studies to be related to multiple science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) achievement and retention. The specific nature of this relation has been probed in only a few domains, and has rarely been investigated for calculus, a critical topic in preparing students for and in STEM…

Climate change is complex, requiring critical thinking on both local and global scales. Its effects vary dramatically around the world and require new strategies to help students grasp its complexity, scale, and interrelatedness. This article describes a project to help biology students think critically about climate change from a global…

There is considerable debate both in Australia and internationally about the best way for schools to deliver the thinking skills required for university study and professional work life -- skills that are often referred to by the term "critical thinking". This article reviews the literature on the effective teaching of critical thinking…

The question of how to best design an online course that promotes student-centred learning is an area of ongoing research. This mixed-methods study focused on a section of advanced high school students, in college-level mathematics courses, that used a synchronous online environment mediated over web-conferencing software, and whether the…

This study uses interview and survey methods to describe the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme's (DP) development of students' "academic civic mindedness" and "model citizenship" at four public schools in California. Results indicate that the DP pedagogy enables students to develop many of the skills that are…