Active Learning in Maths and Science (ALMS) was a six-month face-to-face professional development program for middle school maths and science teachers carried out between June and November, 2010 in two Indian states. ALMS's theory of action is grounded in the belief that collaborative learning serves as a "gateway" to learner-centered…

At the college level, the effectiveness of active-learning interventions is typically measured at the broadest scales: the achievement or retention of all students in a course. Coarse-grained measures like these cannot inform instructors about an intervention's relative effectiveness for the different student populations in their classrooms or…

Retention and graduation rates for engineering disciplines are significantly lower than desired, and research literature offers many possible causes. Engineering learning communities provide the opportunity to study relationships among specific causes and to develop and evaluate activities designed to lessen their impact. This paper details an…

As one of only six states receiving a federal Striving Readers Comprehensive Literacy grant, Pennsylvania has designed and implemented an innovative program that focuses on improved instruction and interventions to ensure every student is literate and graduates from high school ready for college and a career. This report describes Pennsylvania's…

California has embarked on a major new wave of curriculum reform with the adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), the new English Language Development (ELD) standards, and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The adoption of the CCSS builds a legacy of standards-based education reform in California that began with the…

The increasing internationalization of today's classrooms calls for learning institutions to prepare students for success in an interdependent and technologically-advanced world. Faculty who are competent in multiple 21st century skills are best equipped to engage students in curricula that are relevant, transformative, and engaging across content…

This paper explores a variety of practices and classroom activities that engage the whole student. Grounded in a somatic perspective (from "soma" meaning the body in its wholeness--the integration of thinking, feeling, and acting), the discussion shows how students can be brought fully into learning through movement, music, and…

In response to the declining number of students in the United States entering into the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) disciplines, there has been an attempt to retain student interest in the sciences through the implementation of more active learning in the classroom. Active learning is defined as any instructional method that…

The study examines kindergarten students' explanations during science learning. The data on children's explanations are drawn from videotaped and transcribed discourse collected from four public kindergarten science classrooms engaged in a life science inquiry unit on the life cycle of the monarch butterfly. The inquiry unit was implemented as…

The purpose of this study was to investigate how mastery-oriented inquiry-based education influences the help-seeking attitudes, perceptions, and behaviors of middle-school students after participating in a 5-week intervention program. Four eighth-grade science classes consisting of 123 students in one middle-school in the San Francisco Bay…

In recent years, higher education has undergone many changes. The advent of assessment, accountability, and a newfound focus on teaching have required faculty to examine how they are teaching. Administrators and faculty are beginning to recognize that learning is not a "one size fits all" enterprise. To this end, Chickering and Gamson developed an…

Why do some students go above and beyond what is asked of them while others do just enough to get by? This "Focus On" debunks common underachievement myths (such as "some students aren't capable of learning" or "underachievers are lazy") and looks at ways to create a motivating classroom by providing teachers with effective strategies for engaging…

This quantitative study examined the perceptions of Alabama community college students and faculty toward Web-enhanced courses and the impact of these courses on the educational experience as defined by Chickering and Gamson's "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education," an empirically based model. Secondarily, the…

The author has undergone a major shift in the way of teaching his undergraduate computer programming courses. In the classroom, the teacher's computer is connected to a splitter and a video projector that display the computer's screen to the entire class. Using this technology, the programming language itself is used live in class to help the…

Students everywhere love chemistry demonstrations, especially if they involve explosions. But have you ever wanted to move beyond the "wow" factor and find a way to incorporate active student learning into your demos? What if you could get them to think more deeply about what they're observing, and then find out if they really understand what…