After-school programs offer a superb venue to teach twenty-first century skills. The programs enable students to explore new fields, use new technology, meet real-world challenges, and develop mastery. They create a new civic space in which young people can forge positive relationships with adults, learn the joys of productive work, and be…

A single-semester elective combines Mendelian and molecular genetics in a problem-solving format. Students encounter a genetic disease scenario, construct a family pedigree, and try to confirm their medical diagnoses through laboratory experiences. Encouraged to generate ideas as they test their hypotheses, students realize the importance of data…

This paper describes an active learning game that addresses different motivational styles including intrinsic, social, achievement, and instrumental. The game is loosely based on the CBS television series Survivor and involves breaking the class into student teams (tribes) and allowing them to compete at solving chemical engineering problems. In…

The Eisenhower Leadership Development Program at Texas A&M University was created to provide students with an academic perspective on the issues facing leaders, particularly in the areas of health policy, economic development, education, and technology and innovation. Based on the work provided by leadership researchers and educators, the…

Site-based management is a concept whose time has come. This book was designed to introduce the concept of teaming, elaborate the decision-making process, and describe the skills and processes needed for a variety of decision-making situations. Chapter 1 introduces the concept of teaming and discusses the decision-making process in depth. Chapters…

Based on the most comprehensive and current research in the areas of cooperative learning and cognitive instruction, this guide presents practical ideas and model lessons for encouraging cooperative learning in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms. Beginning with the basics for forming cooperative learning groups, the guide outlines the…

This book discusses collaboration as it occurs in all of its varying contexts in schools, such as consultation between special education and general classroom teachers, collaboration among classroom teachers, collaboration between university faculty in special and general education, and collaboration between institutions of higher education and…

The Collaborative Education Project's goal was to assess the effectiveness of collaborative problem solving (CPS) by peer advocates for enhancing the integration of students with severe disabilities into regular early education contexts. The CPS strategy gives some responsibility to nondisabled students for the planning and design of activities…

Strategic leadership is perhaps the area where undergraduate students have the least experience. Therefore, a focus on developing these skills is critical for college-level leadership educators. Teaching strategic leadership requires that educators design programs that make explicit, direct, and formal links between theory and practical…

This pamphlet discusses group problem solving in schools. Its point of departure is that teachers go at problems from a number of different directions and that principals need to capitalize on those differences and bring a whole range of skills and perceptions to the problem-solving process. Rather than trying to get everyone to think alike,…

The reflections of two social scientists regarding an inservice education program for elementary school teachers were the basis of their approach to inservice programs: Teachers need to have analytical and inquiry skills that will allow them to read research reports and listen to inservice presentations, digest the information, and then apply what…

In collaboration, The Conference Board, Corporate Voices for Working Families, the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, and the Society for Human Resource Management conducted an in-depth study of the corporate perspective on the readiness of new entrants into the U.S. workforce by level of educational attainment. The study includes results…

The Internet-Based Shared Environment for Expeditions (iExpeditions) is both a development effort of the Center for Technology Innovations in Education, University of Missouri, Columbia, and a research project conducted in partnership with Motorola, Inc. and a researcher at Brigham Young University (Utah). The project seeks to develop and…

Alternative graduate education is explored from the perspective of one student who has participated in two nontraditional programs. Issues highlighted include: changing roles and responsibilities for faculty and students, problems with shared decision making, need for team building and problem solving, and importance of open communication.…

The nation's educational system mirrors the dynamics of our marketplace democracy, recasting parents as self-interested consumers. Jane Addams' philosophy of education (enhancing people's productive capacities to benefit the commonweal) has been revived in Public Achievement, a work-centered, civic-earning program in St.Paul, Minnesota, that helps…