My dissertation study seeks to understand how artist-teacher renewal may be nurtured through aesthetic experiential play in a Masters of Art Education degree program, and beyond, as my former students/participants and myself experience finding ourselves in its afterglow. "Aesthetic experiential play" could be described as a playful,…

There is a notable lack of manualized comprehensive school-based interventions (CSBIs) for children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASDs). This pilot study examined the feasibility and initial efficacy of a CSBI for 12 children with HFASDs, aged 6 to 9 years. Treatment included a 3-week summer preparation program followed by a…

Problem: Almost 60% of college students consume less than two servings of fruits and vegetables a day while 40-50% either exercise irregularly or do not exercise. When surveyed in another study, half of the students responded that they had not received any information about healthy eating and behaviors from their colleges while nearly 60% said…

An important factor for success in project-based learning (PBL) is that the involved project groups establish an atmosphere of social interaction in their working environment. In PBL-scenarios situated in distributed environments, most of a group's work-processes are mediated through the use of production-focused tools that are unconcerned with…

This chapter tells a story of course reform, describing in a fresh and candid way the steps taken toward change and the results achieved. The authors emphasize that instructors need considerable support in order to teach differently, as well as underscore the need to consider scalability of reform even at the pilot stage.

The purpose of this pilot study was to compare the effects of 2 professional development approaches on teachers' implementation of the "Pyramid" model, a classroom-wide approach for fostering social-emotional development and addressing challenging behavior. The study had 2 goals: (a) to examine the differential effects of workshop…

The use of mentoring has nowadays become a predominant practice for the professional placement component of pre-service teacher education programs. Research however has identified that being an effective teacher does not make you an effective mentor. The present research investigated the role of professional development in the preparation of…

This paper describes the design and impact of an inquiry-oriented online curriculum that takes advantage of dynamic molecular visualizations to improve students' understanding of chemical reactions. The visualization-enhanced unit uses research-based guidelines following the knowledge integration framework to help students develop coherent…

Social Empowerment Art Therapy (SEAT) aims to address the stigma of mental illness through the artistic empowerment of participants. The model was developed within an inpatient psychiatric setting from observations of a shared governance structure that empowered residents. Incorporating an open art studio approach and social action art therapy,…

Faculty members are critical assets to universities, and large losses to institutions occur if they are not successful. Although institutions value publications and grants in the tenure process, newer professors receive little guidance in writing for these endeavors. Faculty writing retreats help apprentice professors in the craft of writing;…

This paper outlines a peer-assisted teaching scheme (PATS) which was piloted in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University, Australia to address the low student satisfaction with the quality of information and communication technology units. Positive results from the pilot scheme led to a trial of the scheme in other disciplines.…

This dissertation examines the acquisition of object clitic placement in Standard Italian by heritage speakers (HSs) of non-standard Italian dialects. It compares two different groups of Standard Italian learners--Northern Italian dialect HSs and Southern Italian dialect HSs--whose heritage dialects contrast with each other in clitic word order.…

During the summer of 2014, Austin ISD's Department of English Language Learners provided guided language acquisition design (Project GLAD) training to 33 district teachers. Teachers from two AISD campuses were selected to participate in the district's pilot of the Project GLAD program. This report summarizes Fall 2014 survey responses from the 33…

The authors describe a training program designed to improve the knowledge and skills of early childhood interventionists. Within the context of using the Routines-Based Early Intervention approach, this training focused on improving the quality of goals and objectives on individualized plans, through the Routines-Based Interview. We structured the…

This paper reports on a pilot study that investigated the effect of implementing a context-based problem solving instruction (CBPSI) to enhance the problem solving performance of high school mathematics learners. Primarily, the pilot study aimed: (1) to evaluate the efficiency of data collection instruments; and, (2) to test the efficacy of CBPSI…