Planning and implementing major innovations in large urban districts can be a daunting and overwhelming idea--particularly when it comes to technology--due to real and perceived obstacles. Added to this challenge is the reality of the worst budget crisis in California history. When students are empowered by full access to technology, learning…

This article presents evidence designed to expand scholarly knowledge of how high school co-curricular activities generate the positive effects previous scholarship has found. Studies of empowerment across various fields identify a sense of autonomy, self-belief, self-expression, the ability to work together with diverse others, and a critical…

Thirteen members of ISTE's Special Interest Group for Teacher Educators (SIGTE) traveled to Auckland, Rotorua, and Christchurch to visit seven schools and present and attend the Learning@School 2010 conference as part of a travel tour last February. This second installment about their trip features ways they saw technology used in New Zealand to…

Harnessing insights from Brophy's (1999, 2008, 2010) notion of scaffolding students' appreciation of learning, this article tackles challenges to student engagement, especially among reluctant students, by exploring two classroom settings in which students' valuing of school content and activities supported their engagement and achievement. The…

This article demonstrates how a well-designed and collaboratively supported program engages school faculty in improving at-risk student retention and transition to college. Using the "power of the site" principle, the program designers envisioned a very different high school culture that focuses on a collaborative and supportive relationship…

This paper adopts a sociocultural perspective to provide a critical consideration of participatory approaches to research with young children. The particular focus is on the use of pedagogical documentation and learning stories as "participatory" tools to elicit children's perspectives for research. The paper will argue that, despite the…

College and university educators seek to increase student engagement in learning content, skills, and applications. To achieve this goal, we used transformative teaching techniques in the design of a World Challenge: a two-week, group-based, reflective course for sophomores leading their own learning in developing creative solutions to the problem…

The purpose of my study was to explore how, and to what extent, the UCSB faculty-in-residence program provided multicultural awareness education opportunities to student residents outside of the classroom. This research explored Housing and Residential Services, which housed the faculty-in-residence program whose mission is, in part, to provide…

Rural schools do not usually make people think of innovation or experimentation. In fact, many people view rural areas as being too traditional or complacent to blaze educational trails. But this author is fortunate to be principal of one rural school, Federal Hocking Middle and High School, that is not afraid to innovate. Federal Hocking is also…

This study sought to provide new insights to the following questions: When discussing their literacy practices, how do adolescent girls talk about their bodies? What is the role of the body in some young women's literacy? What are the different forms that (dis)embodied learning can take, and what is its role in girls' literacy education? These…

Storytelling is an integral part of life for Indigenous Australians. Before the arrival of Europeans and continuing after; gathered around the campfire in the evening stories were and are still shared; passed from one generation to the next. In modern times, in addition to a continuing oral traditions, another method of storytelling has risen from…

Authentic service learning in city schools helps students work toward important change in their own communities. Students are able to face and address issues that have an immediate impact on their neighbors and themselves. Two examples from Chicago neighborhoods illustrate how powerful the concept is: Students worked with a community organization…

Group work can be an effective outlet for facilitating client empowerment at individual and systemic levels. This article outlines strategies for increasing attention to social justice issues in group work over the next decade within education, training, supervision, practice, and research. Drawing from historical perspectives, current literature,…

Teachers' narratives, when viewed as a form of critical inquiry, can allow teachers to tell and retell stories from their evolving points of view and contextual positions, with the goal of better understanding the complexity and depth of the experiences that have informed their teaching. This narrative, which weaves the voices of the author and…

This article discusses the findings of a qualitative case study that examined the experiences of teacher candidates in a master's degree exit assessment pilot at a university in the southwestern region of the United States. Data (gathered from classroom observations, written documents, and interviews of eight teacher candidates and nine faculty…