This report shows how insights gained from system dynamics modeling and the U.S. STEM Undergraduate Model® can help inform the Navy's strategy to grow a robust civilian workforce that is strongly invested with Navy-relevant STEM skills and ready to contribute to the next generation of Naval innovation. This work positions the Navy to serve a…

A trend in high end-of-year academic attrition creates a negative impact on an institution's mission and in the community. In the community, attrition reduces the number of potential nurses during a looming nursing shortage predicted by the American Nurses' Association (2001). The mission of one two-year college is to produce successful nursing…

A qualitative model of a system is an abstraction that captures ordinal knowledge and predicts the set of qualitatively possible behaviours of the system, given a qualitative description of its structure and initial state. This paper examines an innovative approach to science education using an interactive learning environment that supports…

Over the past three years, more than 20 US states have passed legislation establishing new teacher evaluation requirements and systems, and even more have committed to do so in Race to the Top or Elementary and Secondary Education Act Flexibility Waiver applications. These new evaluation systems have real potential to foster a more…

Kentucky is no stranger to education reform, having worked for the better part of 20 years on raising standards to improve student achievement. In 2009, the Kentucky General Assembly called for more rigorous standards to address high school graduates' college and career readiness. So when the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief…

In this qualitative study, the authors examined the experience of discrimination and its relationship to the career development trajectory of 9 female-to-male transgender persons. Participants were between 21 and 48 years old and had a variety of vocational experiences. Individual semistructured interviews were conducted via telephone and analyzed…

In this invited autobiography, the author describes the impact that educational gaming and simulation has had on his professional career. He begins by reviewing his early life and education in Aberdeen and his subsequent work as a research scientist, schoolteacher, and physics lecturer. He then shows how he changed disciplines from physics to…

A system is a group of interacting, interrelated, and interdependent components that form a complex and unified whole. Systems thinking is a way of understanding reality that emphasizes the relationships among systems parts, rather than the parts themselves. Based on a field of study known as "system dynamics", systems thinking has a practical…

This paper begins by connecting cosmopolitanism to notions of universal and particular knowledge in contemporary conditions. Drawing on the work of Immanuel Wallerstein, we then outline a world-systems approach to knowledge. This approach focuses on the capacity of epistemological structures to either reinforce existing inequalities or produce…

Increasing knowledge integration has gained wide-spread support as an important goal in engineering education. The Chemical Engineering Pillars curriculum at the University of Pittsburgh, unique for its use of block scheduling, is one of the first four-year, integrated curricula in engineering, and is specifically designed to facilitate knowledge…

In today's school reform discussions, the teaching profession is often mistakenly viewed as a singular activity. Evaluating teachers for their performance in the classroom assumes that the focus should be on each individual teacher. Merit pay and performance pay both assume that student achievement is the result of only the individual teacher. But…

Electronic mentoring through asynchronous methods using technologies such as e-mail or the Internet is used in the education industry whereby undergraduate and graduate students can be matched with either university professors or career professionals. However, corporate organizations with mentoring initiatives predominantly use traditional…

This brief underscores the need to rethink the proliferation of school teams, work groups, and committees. While such mechanisms are essential to enhancing school improvement, they must be designed in a delimited way to carry out fundamental functions and must be fully integrated with each other. From a functional perspective, because of current…

In Australia, school canteens are an integral part of the school environment and an ideal site to encourage healthy eating. However, when the canteen is not supported within the school system, healthy menus may be difficult to implement. The aim of this study was to investigate school canteens and their place within the school system in primary…

Goals of cultural competence are commonly described as creation of a health care system and workforce capable of delivering high-quality care to all patients regardless of race, ethnicity, culture, or language. While this "system" is made up of individuals, it also has a life of its own, as with all institutions. In this chapter, the…