This research investigates how eight undergraduate African American women in science, math, and engineering (SME) majors accessed cultural capital and informal science learning opportunities from preschool to college. It uses the multiple case study methodological approach and cultural capital as frameworks to better understand the participants'…

California has embarked on a major new wave of curriculum reform with the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the new English Language Development (ELD) standards, and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The adoption of the CCSS builds a legacy of standards-based education reform in California that began with the…

The learner-centered paradigm of instruction differs in such fundamental ways from the teacher-centered paradigm that it requires technology to serve very different functions. In 2006, a research team at Indiana University began to work on identifying those functions and published their results in 2008. Subsequently, the team elaborated and…

When the children at Western Illinois University Preschool Center embarked on a study of human bodies, they decided to build a life-size model of a body, organ by organ from the inside out, to represent some of the things they were learning. This article describes the building of "Bob," the human body model, highlighting the children's…

The essential components to building a successful Web site are many times overlooked. There is a misconception that if an individual knows HTML or is a Web developer, an effective Web site can easily be created. In reality, a variety of other factors are needed before technical skills ever come into play. When instructing students in the art of…

Research literature suggests that the utilization of web-based resources can enhance the classroom learning experience for students. There are a variety of approaches that can be taken, but research also indicates that adhering to a predetermined course of action or model is a significant component towards meeting pedagogical objectives. The…

A class of 3- to 5-year-old children in a child care center in the midwestern United States chose to study a car wash as a group project. This article discusses how the project evolved, describes the three phases of the project, and provides the teachers' reflections on the project. Photos taken during the project and children's sketches are…

A field-based, soil methods, and instrumentation course was developed to expose graduate students to numerous strategies for measuring soil parameters. Given the northern latitude of North Dakota State University and the rapid onset of winter, this course met once per week for the first 8 weeks of the fall semester and centered on the field as a…

An art room should be a garden of visual stimulation, born of creativity, inquiry, critical thinking and intellectual conversation--and a little collaboration is not a bad thing either! When the author unpacked the new stools for her art room at the high school, she envisioned something more beautiful than the brown masonite circles that…

A new physical chemistry laboratory experience has been designed for upper-level undergraduate chemistry majors. Students customize the first 10 weeks of their laboratory experience by choosing their own set of experiments (from a manual of choices) and setting their own laboratory schedule. There are several topics presented in the accompanying…

We detail a student project that incorporates the story of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, which, between the summer of 1918 and the spring of 1919, infected one-fifth to one-half of the world's population and killed more U.S. soldiers fighting in World War I than the war itself. The project uses Susceptible, Infected, Recovered, and Dead (SIRD)…

This report summarizes GENERATE, a pilot research project conducted by 12 artists and their children 3-14. Simply put, these artist/art educator/parents allowed their own children unlimited access to their studios, materials, equipment and workspaces for two years. During that time the children were able to work alongside their parents on making…

In this article, the author describes the use of active and collaborative learning strategies in an undergraduate sociological theory course. A semester-long ethnographic project is the foundation for the course; both individual and group participation contribute to the learning process. Assessment findings indicate that students are able, through…

This article features Advanced Competitive Science (ACS), a two-year course introduced by a science teacher, Joe Pouliot, in 2004 at Trinity High School in Manchester, New Hampshire. More than a traditional STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) course, ACS harnesses the excitement of robotics competitions to promote student…

Because quantitative biology requires skills and concepts from a disparate collection of different disciplines, the scientists of the near future will increasingly need to rely on collaborations to produce results. Correspondingly, students in disciplines impacted by quantitative biology will need to be taught how to create and engage in such…