Once controversial or cutting-edge, freewriting has recently become "part of every writing teacher's repertoire" (Bizzell and Herzberg in Elbow 393). On par with outlining or webbing, freewriting seems to be a go-to practice in a writing teacher's tool kit. This downshift into uncritical acceptance presents an apt moment to reconsider how we…

The purpose of this qualitative study is to explore students' self-reported growth of mathematical understanding resulting from writing about the historical development of a mathematical concept. Using excerpts from undergraduate students' written reflections about their experiences with the task of writing about mathematics, this study describes…

This article explores the need to locate individuals' personal life stories in their life histories when the narrative approach to studying different aspects of teachers is used. This is partly done by revealing the limitations of the narrow focus on personal stories in research on teachers when it is restricted to researching teachers' personal…

Teacher preparation is a hot topic in the world of education today. Performance assessments mark one way that colleges may prove the readiness of their pre-service teaching candidates for a career in the classroom. This study used methods to evaluate one college's effort to implement such an assessment, to integrate assessment tasks into its…

PISA is a large international educational assessment activity coordinated by the "Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development" (OECD). PISA's "Functional Literacy" emphasizes the theoretical concept of mathematics as a human activity. From this pedagogical point of view, PISA's "mathematization cycle"…

Counseling families in poverty can be a daunting process if one only focuses on what is lacking. Taking such a deficit approach is limiting not only to the counselor but also can serve to disempower the clients. This paper presents a strengths-based approach for counseling families living in poverty that emphasizes relational processes and the…

The use of autoethnography in social science research is becoming increasingly popular. The potential this research approach might offer to the theory and practice of outdoor education has yet to be fully examined. In this paper, autoethnography is used to explore some personal accounts of my own outdoor experiences from which I derive distinctive…

This article presents the findings of a linguistic ethnographic pilot study, conducted as part of an ongoing research study, to examine how students utilise their knowledge and experience in understanding literary texts being studied from different cultural and temporal spaces. The analysis of this development in the students' comprehension of new…

The paper explores the opportunities and challenges of combining media literacy and social-emotional literacy to promote mental health and well-being in school curricula. It describes the implementation of an experimental module within the program "Crescere insieme What's Up" (Growing up together What's Up). This upstream prevention and…

The recent emphasis on engineering practices provides an opportunity for K-12 science and mathematics teachers to apply STEM concepts to real-world engineering design challenges (EDCs) for students (Next Generation Science Standards, 2013). We argue that engineering practices are more equitable when they are relatable to students and rooted in…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to propose a framework for the types of practices and ideologies that the most successful clinical-based, early childhood teacher education programs use to prepare their preservice teachers for the profession. Grounded theory methods guided the collection and analysis of data. Participants included…

Cultivating spiritual development is central to the mission of Catholic higher education institutions. Studies demonstrate that service learning is a pedagogical method through which spiritual development can be fostered among undergraduates. This study builds upon prior research to analyze whether spiritual growth occurred and which dimensions of…

Many studies have pointed out the significant contrast between the creative nature of Web 2.0 learning activities and the structured learning in school. This study proposes an approach to leveraging Web 2.0 learning activities and classroom teaching to help students develop both specific knowledge and creativity based on Csikzentmihalyi's system…

St. Olaf College recently added a Mathematical Biology concentration to its curriculum. The core course, Mathematics of Biology, was redesigned to include a wet laboratory. The lab classes required students to collect data and implement the essential modeling techniques of formulation, implementation, validation, and analysis. The four labs…

The National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education (1996) chaired by Lord Dearing envisioned a university sector central to the UK's knowledge-based economy. With successive government support the university-business partnership ideology has been put into practice. Widening participation has increased in emphasis over recent years, providing…