Integrating humanities and arts into STEM has been suggested to better prepare students for the workforce. Studies have shown that improvisation (abbreviated as improv), an educational program from humanities and arts, can potentially improve engineering pedagogy and learning. However, little is known about improv's impact on developing…

Client-Focused Research (CFR) offers an approach to teaching research methods that brings classes into a professional environment by working directly with nonprofit or public sector clients. Students work with clients to define the scope of the research project, design the research methodology, create data collection instruments, gather and…

Undergraduate research experiences (UREs) have been identified as High-Impact Practices that increase understanding of complex concepts, foster independent inquiry, and improve educational outcomes, such as student retention and graduation rates. This article argues that in order to make the URE truly "high-impact," the laboratory model…

With support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Merced Anomaterials Center for Energy and Sensing (MACES) was launched in the summer of 2015 at the University of California Merced (UC Merced). MACES is a research and education center, focused on creating innovative materials-enabled solutions for energy and…

A mixed methods research approach was used to investigate the impact of a geosciences research institute upon 62 science teachers' knowledge, beliefs, and teaching practices related to teaching the geosciences. Pre- and postinstitute quantitative and qualitative assessments revealed mixed results. Results of a quantitative measure found a…

Within the UK, traditional subject-specific areas are increasingly being complemented by the provision of opportunities to foster students' personal development planning as an aide to support their future employment and lifelong learning. This paper describes an action research project which examined employability skills within a psychology…

Understanding the research process is a vital part of the undergraduate experience. Conducting research helps students see the value of the scientific process and various research methods, and encourages inquisitiveness about family and consumer sciences (FCS) issues. Research experiences augment students' professional development, increase their…

In this ethnographic study of summer undergraduate research (UR) experiences at four liberal arts colleges, where faculty and students work collaboratively on a project of mutual interest in an apprenticeship of authentic science research work, analysis of the accounts of faculty and student participants yields comparative insights into the…

In this article, I reflect on the events and experiences that occurred during (and after) my studies for a Diploma in Teacher Education. The elements required for the award of Diploma included a professional development journal, a number of peer teaching observations and an action research project. At an early stage, I selected vaguely "peer…

Adult participation at the Early Childhood Research Center (ECRC) of the State University of New York at Buffalo is described in this paper. Five different programs serving families with infants, toddlers, and children 3 and 4 years old are briefly described to illustrate the complexity of program coordination at ECRC. The roles of staff teaching,…