The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine the relationship between participation in career-based learning opportunities and students' level of engagement in school. In this study, a survey measured the level of engagement reported by students. Students indicated if they were involved in a career-based learning opportunity and their…

Promoting Adolescents' Comprehension of Text (PACT) is a text- and discourse-based set of instructional practices that engage students with disciplinary texts as a means of building content knowledge and improving reading comprehension. PACT)s "efficacy" has been the subject of extensive previous trials. The purpose of this study was to…

Math achievement is frequently measured by various assessments. These assessments are then used to determine student and school success, often leading to high stakes decision making. Therefore, it is important to understand ways in which educators can improve student math achievement. Students with a growth mindset, as defined by Dweck (2006),…

Teachers are the essential element in improving student learning in education. The State of Wisconsin requires public school teachers to participate in the Wisconsin Educator Effectiveness System. There is limited research on the links between required participation with the State of Wisconsin's Educator Effectiveness System and on the experience…

This study explores social studies teachers' self-reported instruction about teaching the 2020 election in U.S. secondary schools. We analyzed survey responses from 1,723 secondary social studies teachers from 12 states (3 left-leaning, 3 right-leaning, 6 battleground) collected in the weeks after the election, examining self-reported pedagogies,…

Background: STEM achievement gaps affect marginalized students nation-wide. Environmental education (EE) does not currently nor historically represent a wide range of demographic backgrounds, and increasing concerns demonstrate the effects this can have on pedagogy of the field and the success of its students. Purpose: This research focuses on…

While there has been a recent focus on developing programs to support educational research by community college anatomy and physiology instructors, there is not yet an established long-term community of practice (CoPs) in this particular area. Studies of long-term CoPs, particularly in STEM education, are few and far between. This study examines…

Today three-fourths of those enrolled in undergraduate programs are nontraditional students, defined by the National Center for Education Statistics as adults with one or more of these characteristics: delayed enrollment into postsecondary education, attended part time, financially independent, worked full time while enrolled, had dependents other…

Because of COVID-19 precautions, instructors worldwide were required to introduce a variety of virtual instruction modes to complete the Spring 2020 semester. Herein we describe parallel efforts in contextualized chemistry courses at two institutions--Carthage College and Central Michigan University. These courses are primarily designed for…

The Decoding the Disciplines methodology aims to teach students to think like experts in discipline-specific tasks. The central aspect of the methodology is to identify a bottleneck in the course content: a particular topic that a substantial number of students struggle to master. The current study compared the efficacy of standard lecture and…

Practice problems and worked examples are both well-established teaching techniques. Research in math and physics suggests that having students study worked examples during their first contact with new material, instead of solving practice problems, can be beneficial to their subsequent performance, possibly due to the reduced cognitive load…

Increasingly, students training in the biological sciences depend on a proper grounding in biological statistics, data science and experimental design. As biological datasets increase in size and complexity, transparent data management and analytical methods are essential skills for undergraduate biologists. We propose that using the software R…

Forbidden Sounds: The Music of the Holocaust considers the historical events of the Holocaust in the context of music. The honors course explores diverse roles that music played during the years 1933-1945, including the Nazi use of music as a means for censorship and discrimination; music performance and creation in various Jewish ghettos and…

This exploratory study examined the changing role of music education and the availability of musical experiences for students attending Montessori schools in the Midwestern United States. On a survey instrument designed by the researcher, Montessori school directors (N = 36) from eight states shared descriptions of the current role of music at…

Students in The Honors College at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh are required to take a team-taught first-year seminar in their first semester. The seminar is theme-based and taught by two professors from two different disciplines. The theme of the seminar is food, one teacher is a professor of geography and the other a professor of…