We introduce the "Whitehead complex", a one-complex associated to a finite regular cover of the rose and show that it is connected if and only if the fundamental group of the associated cover is generated by its intersection with the set of elements in proper free factors of the fundamental group of the rose. The Whitehead complex admits…

STEM literate citizens are needed to fill the STEM jobs within the United States and to be active members of society economically, personally, and democratically. One way to develop STEM literate citizens is by implementing a STEM Learning Ecosystem (SLE). SLEs are an initiative founded in 2015 that bring together cross-sector partners to…

Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) is an enterprise which impacts the social and economic standing of communities globally. ECEC quality, accessibility, innovation and sustainability have been considered in a wide body of research. However, there was a gap in research when considering non-traditional (specifically, nature immersion) ECEC,…

Institutional assessment in higher education often restricts measurement of learning to outcomes that elide the complexity of learning processes and contexts in favor of data that is tidy and manageable. Moreover, such outcomes are frequently written to express an economic value for the learning to justify the purpose of education as a personal…

Environmental stewardship and leave no trace educational programming promote a message of "nature/wilderness/outdoors" for all while also urging recreationists towards specific, responsible (i.e. permitted), and voluntary behaviors in outdoor public spaces. Yet notions of nature and wilderness, as well as the strategies employed to…

The threat of climate change makes it increasingly important for biologists and the public to understand how organisms respond to temperature. The Metabolic Theory of Ecology (MTE) predicts that temperature should affect organism performance, with implications for species interactions and ecosystems that span disciplines including mathematics,…

Human-driven threats are changing biodiversity and impacting ecosystem services (i.e., nature's contributions to society, henceforth 'services'). The consequences of biodiversity change for ecosystems and people are hard to predict because the loss of one species can trigger secondary extinctions of additional species when species interact (e.g.,…

This naturalistic, non-experimental inquiry explored relationships among life, human life, and place in school communities along with their expressions in school curriculum. I used educational criticism and connoisseurship to richly describe, interpret meaning, evaluate significance, and discern thematics surrounding relationships and how those…

Current literature reveals the importance of expanding the educational toolchest to include teaching through games. Game-based learning has been extensively studied, underscoring a human need to have fun while learning. This research project focused on the development of "Paved Paradise: A Tiny House Ecovillage Board Game," that could…

Environmental health literacy (EHL) is a relatively new discipline and is gaining importance as the environmental justice movement is embraced in the United States through state and federal government programs. With the expansion of EHL programs throughout the country, and with more states incorporating EHL education into the K-12 curriculum,…

A recent phenomenon within the Deaf Indonesian communities brings up the debate of capitalization to the forefront; here the issue is of capitalizing "Tuli", which appears to reflect Western Deaf tradition's influence, instead of using "tuli". This issue led to this study on Tuli Indonesian identity. The data is based on the…

Two articles explore how education leaders influence the education system to empower and enhance the wellbeing of students experiencing poverty. Recognizing that poverty is a wicked problem (Head, 2008) that requires complexification (Joosse & Teisman, 2021), I use the capability approach (Sen, 1990, 1999,2009) extended empowerment dimensions…

The current study involved the development, scaling, and validation of a new, brief, strength-based measure of children's ecological support, as rated by their parents. The scaling and validation of the Child and Youth Ecological Assets Scale--Parent Form (C-YEAS-P) took place through two studies. The first study involved 500 parents who were…

We are becoming more and more aware of the marks our human existence is leaving on our global environment: the Anthropocene as discourse of that awareness is turning into a living and lived-in reality. I argue that such discourse cannot remain the purview of the natural and social sciences alone: culture must be recognized in its pivotal role of…

Scholars have advocated for more environmental education (EE) within elementary preservice teacher education through science methods courses as elementary preservice teachers have consistently demonstrated limited environmental literacy. This is critical as environmental issues continue to threaten our world, preservice teachers must demonstrate…