“Hey, I Can Do This!” The Benefits of Conducting Undergraduate Psychology Research for Young Adult Development

Many undergraduate programs require students to complete an independent research project in their major field prior to graduation. These projects are typically described as opportunities for integration of coursework and a direct application of the methods of inquiry specific to a particular discipline. Evaluations of curricular projects have usually found that they positively impact students’…

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The Growth of Higher Educators for Social Justice: Collaborative Professional Development in Higher Education

In this article, we investigate what happened when, contrary to the typical isolation of faculty in higher education, a group of higher educators from various disciplines in a graduate school of education met regularly to discuss issues related to our teaching and social justice. More specifically, we explored the following research question: How does collaboration…

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Student Reported Growth: Success Story of a Master of Science in Education Learning Community Program

Quantitative and qualitative data collected from students who have completed a Master of Science in Education Learning Community Program support the effectiveness of the learning community model in facilitating professional growth and transformation. Instructors model constructivist theory. Peer review, collaboration, and reflective analysis of theory and practice are essential components of the model. The program…

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Teaching & Learning for International Students in a ‘Learning Community’: Creating, Sharing and Building Knowledge

This article considers the culture of learning communities for effective teaching. A learning community is defined here as an environment where learners are brought together to share information, to learn from each other, and to create new knowledge. The individual student develops her/his own learning by building on learning from others. In a learning community…

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Traceable Recursion with Graphical Illustration for Novice Programmers

Recursion is a concept that can be used to describe the phenomena and natural occurrences in many different fields. As many applications utilize computer software to model recursion, recursion is a particularly important concept in the computing discipline. However, it is a difficult concept for many undergraduate students to master. A Recursion Graph (RGraph) is…

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Literacy and Art: Collage for Pre-Service Teachers

Art educators have a unique opportunity to develop and strengthen a cross-curricular foundation in literacy through art education. Enrolled in a content area reading course, pre-service teachers in art education at one, large southeastern university discovered that using language skills as a lens sharpened their observations of student performance in art classes at the elementary…

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Serve, Teach, and Lead: It’s All About Relationships

Once a person assumes the mantle of teacher, one becomes a leader, first, in the classroom and then in the school (Crippen, 2005). With this position comes a delicate power and responsibility to the moral imperative. As such, this issue is critical as a component of teacher preparation programs. Goodlad (2004) sounds the alarm that…

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A Course Exploration: Guiding Instruction to Prepare Students as Change Agents in Educational Reform

This article explores the premise of teacher identity development through course experiences directed at inquiry and social awareness. The course exploration examines the use of various strategies used to help promote educators as change agents. Pre-service students enrolled in a one-year master’s program with teaching credential participated in a yearlong course designed to engage them…

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