The Center for Education at the National Academies was established on the premise that educators urgently need to harness science to improve the education that they provide to all Americans. This includes not only emphasizing an inquiry approach to science education from kindergarten through college, but also promoting an energetic attempt to use…

Many mainstream content teachers are encountering, for the first time, K-12 students who are in the process of learning English as a second language (English language learners or ELLs), and this new population presents a significant challenge. Teachers are already familiar with many of the techniques available to help their ELLs comprehend…

The first challenge in designing and teaching any course is to decide what to teach. At most colleges and universities, the process of selecting course content is an extremely local enterprise. Sometimes the decisions are made by a small group of faculty members, but most often they are made by a single professor with the responsibility of…