The purpose of this study was to explore a new framework for understanding group dynamics during a challenge course experience. Traditional views of group dynamics emphasize sequential stages of development, but these frameworks tend to neglect the emotional aspect of group dynamics. The group process usually includes an emotional experience, and…

Data from written correspondence and conversations gathered from the authors' study on knowledge construction was used to examine the process of interpretation, or how researchers construct 'knowledge about knowledge construction.' The notion of 'working in the interpretive zone' was used to conceptualize interpretation among researchers as a…

Teachers want and need students to excel in the classroom. Cooperative learning is one method recognized to address this. Numerous researchers have shown that cooperative learning leads to improved skills in teamwork and communication in other fields (Johnson and Johnson, 2007; Slavin, 1995). Cooperative learning used in this study showed that the…

Over the course of the last several decades, K-12 educational systems have begun to adopt digital technologies to support teaching and learning. These tools have enabled the rise of online schools as well as fundamentally changing practices of school leadership. However little attention has been given to how instructional leadership is changed…

Ten African American men, who began their college career in Basic Skills courses at an urban community college in California and successfully transferred to a four-year college or university, share their life stories through that process in this case study. Their experiences differed from the literature in peer group interaction and definition, in…

Many companies have pursued innovation to obtain a competitive edge. Thus, educational reform focuses mainly on training creative students. This study adopted the concept of an affiliated network of projects to investigate how project embeddedness influences project team creativity. This work surveys 60 projects in a Management Information Systems…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to assess the association between Adult Day Health Center (ADHC) participation and health-related quality of life. Design and Methods: Case-controlled prospective study utilizing the Medical Outcomes Survey Form 36 (SF-36) to compare newly enrolled participants from 16 ADHC programs with comparable…

Much has been published in the health care literature describing partnerships between academic institutions and community or health care agencies that are designed to improve health outcomes in medically underserved populations. However, little has been published regarding partnerships between minority- and majority-serving academic institutions…

Explicit training in teaming skills (both preservice and inservice) has been identified as a key means of facilitating the effective functioning of teaching teams (Main, 2007). This case study explored how groupwork tasks within university coursework can prepare preservice education students to work effectively in teaching teams. Three students in…

Inter-organizational collaboration is often seen as a means of increasing the potential for bringing about outcomes that none of the organizations could achieve alone. For example, funding agencies that provide grants for teacher professional development often encourage or require collaboration between institutions of higher education and schools.…

Small-group learning in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines has been widely studied, and it is clear that this method offers many benefits to students. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which small learning groups differ from one another, and how these differences may affect student learning and…

Collaborative learning is being used extensively by educators at all levels. Peer-led team learning in a version of collaborative learning that has shown consistent success in science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. Using a multi-phase research study we describe the development of an observation instrument that can be used to…

In this article, the author describes her experiences teaching a large-scale, book-club wiki project she designed for her students. She conducted the wiki project in order to try out this new technology. The wiki format allows teachers to provide ongoing response to assess student performance in conjunction with peer-to-peer evaluations,…

Targeted school violence continues to pose a threat to school safety. The challenge for schools is to provide a safe environment while continuing to meet higher academic standards. Reported here are results of a study of 15 cases of targeted school shooters from 1996 to 2005. Environmental variables are examined in three areas: school culture,…

The study is situated within a national youth organisation called the Australian Air League Inc (Air League). We examine the recent progress of the Air League in South Australia, starting as a loose network of volunteers engaged in a sporadic array of activities, to become a learning community that worked collaboratively and then developed further…