Examining mindfulness in a non-clinical and non-therapeutic setting such as a summer camp is an area of growing interest. Our study tested three mindfulness scales with staff in a summer camp setting, and we conducted preliminary reliability and validity analyses for any modifications needed in the scales. Results indicated two major findings: (a)…

To live and work in today's global community, adults need to develop an intercultural responsiveness and flexibility in order to interact sensitively in situations involving international cultural contexts, practices, beliefs, understandings, and communications. One way to support this development in adult and higher education is to offer…

In the summers of 2007 and 2008 St. John's University's faculty arrived in Rome and spent two weeks working together at the university's campus in the Prati section of Rome as participants in a program that was half faculty writing retreat and half writing across the curriculum faculty development workshop. The focus of the St. John's University…

Most students attend summer school not because it's their idea of a good time, but because they need to in order to advance to the next grade. To many students--and even some teachers--summer school feels more like punishment than an opportunity to learn and explore. In July 2010, working with a nonprofit organization called Big Thought, officials…

This report is based on several evaluations of NSF-funded geoscience projects at Stony Brook University on Long Island, NY. The report reviews the status of K-12 geoscience education, identifying challenges posed by the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), the experiences of university faculty engaged in teacher preparation, state…

In order to increase the number of health care providers in underserved communities, numerous efforts are being made to increase the number of Black students in the health professions. Research supports the idea that individuals from minority populations seek doctors of the same race or culture. In an effort to provide increased health care to…

The V-SPACE project equipped English teachers with iPads as tools to create and maintain virtual spaces for their students. Teachers learned effective ways to integrate technology with English content while strengthening technological knowledge and pedagogical skills. In a summer institute, 29 high school teachers were trained, using their iPads,…

Despite increases in postsecondary enrollment at American universities and colleges, there are still significant gaps in who matriculates to college and persists through graduation. Low-income students and students of color continue to be underrepresented in institutions of higher education; for many of these students, a lack of awareness of…

Many families rely on U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)-funded school lunch and breakfast programs to make the family's food budget stretch, improving their food security throughout the school year. These programs feed about 31 million students annually. During the summer where schools are not in session, food security decreases. The USDA…

For readers outside North America, the concept of "honors education" may be confusing (since the word honours features in British and Commonwealth degree titles) or obscure (bringing to mind associations with aristocratic privilege or elitist competition). But in the United States the development of honors programs in colleges, and later honors…

The authors examined the relation of school-year teaching practices to SES and race/ethnic score gaps in mathematics by fitting an individual growth model with a representative sample drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten Cohort data. There were mixed findings. Teaching practices had uniform effects for all students,…

This study explores questioning practices adopted by elementary teachers while facilitating science inquiry discussions prior and subsequent to their participation in a summer institute in which they were provided with scholarly descriptions of inquiry-based teacher questioning (i.e., typologies of questions used by discourse analysts to…

Informal science opportunities provide authentic experiences to stimulate students' interests in science and engineering and foster their curiosity through problem-based investigations. STEMulate Engineering Academy was designed to provide children (Grades 3-5) engineering opportunities and offer teachers a unique professional development…

Given that summer abroad programs are becoming more and more popular, the aim of the present study is to find out whether foreign language proficiency can be significantly improved during a summer stay of 3-4 weeks. The present study examines learners' linguistic gains through oral fluency and accuracy measures as well as a listening comprehension…

For most students, summer means "break." It's a chance to put down the books, rest and recharge, attend camp as a participant or a counselor, earn some extra spending money with a summer job, perhaps travel with the family--in general, get away from all things academic. For teachers, the summer can stand for the same thing: vacation, in one form…