Owing to its recognition as a 21st-century skill, computational thinking (CT) is currently being introduced into school curricula around the world. However, in-service teachers are largely unprepared for this implementation, which, in turn, makes teacher educators (TEds) important stakeholders in preparing prospective teachers to integrate CT into…

Plate tectonics is the organizing paradigm of geosciences, but it is also conceptually complex, and students often struggle with developing a system level understanding of the earth. This article reports on research designed to create a characterization of the different levels of sophistication around plate tectonics in the form of a learning…

Providing authentic college experiences for students in the middle grades through a partnership with a local college can improve college readiness skills and leave students with a positive view of post-secondary possibilities and opportunities. This article describes a college immersion program--a weeklong college experience provided to all…

We examined how an inquiry group composed of a university professor, 3 doctoral students, and a grade-level team of 7th- and 8th-grade teachers negotiated their collaborative work. This effort resulted in the development of a 2-week unit that tapped into students' out-of-school knowledge. Our research question asked how learning occurs within a…

As the disparity between educational standards and reality outside educational institutions is increasing, alternative learning infrastructure such as mobile technologies are becoming more common, and are challenging long held, traditional modes of teaching. Educators' attitudes toward wireless devices are mixed. Wireless devices are perceived by…

This study examines the value of a professional collaborative partnership between college faculty and middle school teachers in improving students' literacy skills and teachers' instructional practice. Three college faculty and two middle school teachers engaged in a collaborative effort to design and implement evidence-based strategies to promote…

Three mid-level mathematics teachers (grades 7 and 8) and a university mathematics educator formed a year-long professional learning community. The objective was to collectively look at how they were promoting the Standards for Mathematical Practice (SMP) (CCSSI 2010) in their classes. The monthly discussions followed an iterative cycle in which…

For the thirty-seventh year, the Research and Theory Division and the Division of Instructional Design of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT) sponsored the publication of these Proceedings. Papers published in this volume were presented at the annual AECT Convention in Jacksonville, Florida. This year's Proceedings…

Richard Locke began his first full-time job teaching seventh grade social studies at Francis W. Parker School in Chicago a quarter of a century before writing this article. Here he writes that as a young inexperienced teacher just out of college he was filled with enthusiasm and convinced that education could play a progressive role in society.…

Ineffective approaches for teaching with print may prevent textbook reading from being a useful learning resource in middle school. University faculty mentored a middle school science teacher as he implemented a textbook study-reading approach, PLAN (Caverly, Mandeville & Nicholson, 1995), in 2 classes (n=33). PLAN orchestrates 4 strategies…

This book contains a compilation of papers presented at the International Conference on Education and New Developments (END 2017), organized by the World Institute for Advanced Research and Science (W.I.A.R.S.). Education, in our contemporary world, is a right since we are born. Every experience has a formative effect on the constitution of the…

These proceedings contain the papers of the IADIS International Conference on Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age (CELDA 2013), October 22-24, 2013, which has been organized by the International Association for Development of the Information Society (IADIS), co-organized by The University of North Texas (UNT), sponsored by the…

As a university instructor and a language arts middle school teacher, the authors have been working collaboratively for the last three years. This article describes their collaborative efforts, including what they have learned about their students and about the process of learning through the work they have done together. To introduce their…