Young children gain emergent literacy skills during the preschool years. Oral language development is enhanced as students engage in dialogue with teachers and peers. The use of topical vocabulary is linked to greater gains in students' vocabulary development. Students acquire emergent writing skills as they participate in spontaneous and guided…

The present study explored the origins of word learning in early infancy. Using event-related potentials (ERP) we monitored the brain activity of 3-month-old infants when they were repeatedly exposed to several initially novel words paired consistently with each the same initially novel objects or inconsistently with different objects. Our results…

Collaborative problem solving is a complex skill set that draws on social and cognitive factors. The construct remains in its infancy due to lack of empirical evidence that can be drawn upon for validation. The differences and similarities between two large-scale initiatives that reflect this state of the art, in terms of underlying assumptions…

With the push toward personalized learning, many districts are finding that teachers are unprepared for a completely new method of teaching. In this article, the authors describe a professional development program from Ottawa Area Intermediate School District in western Michigan called FuturePREP'd. In the program, teachers experience personalized…

This chapter provides an overview of community colleges in mainland China, addressing briefly the recent history of community college development, defining these institutions, detailing various models with examples, and discussing challenges faced by these institutions and recommendations for future development.

In this paper, we investigate the effect of neighbourhood density (ND) on vocabulary size in a computational model of vocabulary development. A word has a high ND if there are many words phonologically similar to it. High ND words are more easily learned by infants of all abilities (e.g. Storkel, 2009; Stokes, 2014). We present a neural network…

The author discusses how Museus' (2014) Culturally Engaging Campus Environment Model (CECE) can be used to re-envision campus multicultural centers, and programs and services that traditionally employ single-axis identity interventions when striving to support student growth and success.

Adult education has a significant role to play in creating a just and sustainable world. This chapter explores a continuum of perspectives related to the environment and education and highlights sustainability and ecojustice education theory and practices in this volume.

Flipped classroom teaching has become a significant trend in education in recent years, but there remain significant challenges in persuading some teachers to adopt this novel method. Through the lens of Ertmer's first- and second-order barriers to change, this paper presents a study began with the need to understand barriers to the adoption of…

Malaysian mangrove resources are exploited for woods, fisheries, wildlife, agriculture, and in recent decades for aquaculture and ecotourism. Such exploitations are often unsustainable, particularly when there is permanent change in land usage. In the last four decades, it is estimated that the overall loss in mangrove areas is over 16 percent…

In this article I provide an overview of the methodological issues involved in measuring constructs relevant to character development and education. I begin with a nontechnical overview of the 3 fundamental psychometric properties of measurement: reliability, validity, and equivalence. Developing and evaluating measures to ensure evidence of all 3…

Mathematics curriculum documentation currently presents important information and messages for New Zealand teachers. Mathematical processes are not explicitly set out but embedded in different locations and there are multiple sources of proxy official curriculum information for the primary school. This article identifies and discusses examples of…

This chapter reviews the complex relationship between technology and leadership, focusing on how technology affects the development and demonstration of skills in communication, teamwork, and collaboration. The chapter also proposes a framework for identifying and assessing key leadership competencies in the digital space.

This paper examines the impact of creating music in an improvisational jazz style on an amateur adult musician's mind, body, and spirit. Learning jazz improvisation skills can help build more empathetic human beings, when the focus of improvisation is on reacting to what you hear in a clear and concise manner. Life skills are developed by focusing…

Using an assessment cycle as an organizing framework, this article illustrates how educational development and assessment mutually complement each other. It describes an assessment study conducted to determine if two colleges at a small university met their strategic goals to increase the adoption of learning-centered teaching. This study served…