How do some teachers manage to expertly engage students in deep learning, harmonize mandated standards with individual student needs, and create trusting relationships in the classroom? What typically sets these "Star Teachers" apart from other teachers? In "What Makes a Star Teacher: 7 Dispositions That Support Student…

The continuing fascination of young people with celestial bodies leads them to pose challenging questions to their science teachers, such as how was the universe born? How were the stars formed? In this paper we present an extremely inexpensive but highly engaging activity to teach the basics of spectroscopy. Guided by the question "how do…

This article uses the concept of "boundary object", first developed within science studies by Star and Griesemer, to analyse curriculum policy implementation. It employs as a vehicle a significant but contested reform of the science curriculum in schools in England from 2006 onwards, drawing empirically on an extended study of the…

Space exploration is intrinsically interesting to young learners. Children gaze at the stars and marvel at what it might be like to live "out there!" With the July 2020 launch of the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover mission, and its landing in 2021, there is no better time to capitalize on engineering and science in the news. This mission is…

With roots going back to 1986, the Student Team on Alumni Relations or STAR was one of the first student-alumni groups in Canada and routinely attracted capable and enthusiastic volunteers. It offered to appreciative, albeit small, student audiences a suite of popular programs, including job shadowing and goodie boxes parents could send to their…

In this article, Vance Stevens describes how access to what he calls "star performer educators" as either up-­and­-coming in their field, or experienced and polished practitioners, have changed with access to the internet. They are clearly passionate about what they do, and what they do has become second nature. They touch hearts and…

Investigating stars can be difficult. The five-day unit presented in this article is designed for fifth graders to work toward Next Generation Science Standard (NGSS) performance expectation 5-ESS1-1, with each lesson lasting about 30 minutes. Students investigate the relationship between the brightness of light and distance, apply their…

A classic TV commercial once asked, "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop?" The narrator claims, "The world may never know" (Tootsie Roll 2012), but an Internet search returns a multitude of answers, some of which include rigorous systematic approaches by academics to address the…

Soccer, or football as it is called in the rest of the world, is the most popular and fastest-growing global sport, with an estimated 240 million people regularly playing what Brazilian star Pele called "the beautiful game." Millions, worldwide, watch it on television. In 2006, the average viewership for each match of the month-long World Cup was…

This paper reflects on the classroom use of the "Star Trek" American science fiction television franchise to teach critical and emotional geographies to undergraduates specializing in science, technology, education, and mathematics (STEM). Both science fiction and STEM education are ambivalent and contradictory scenes of social…

We describe the use of student-generated video content to assess students' engagement with, and understanding of, problem-solving skills. In this framework, students are tasked with using technology to create videos that show them working through, and explaining solutions to, challenging calculus exercises. The videos are then posted online,…

"Excelencia in Education" brings to a national audience evidence-based practices situated at higher education institutions and community-based organizations across the country that are intentionally serving Latino students. The 2023 "Examples of Excelencia: What Works for Latino Students in Higher Education" selection committee…

This essay explores what surfaces when we lead a reflection on the 2018 REA meeting with questions about teaching and learning. What pedagogical models appeared to be operative during the meeting? What voices were missing and which ones were privileged? Who benefitted from the pedagogies at work in the meeting? Who was marginalized? What…

"The Stars and Stripes: The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919" collection at the Library of Congress provides access to the newspaper distributed to military personnel during World War I. The news articles reveal what members of the American Expeditionary Force actually read about military battles and campaigns in…

Cell size is an important variable in the study of cellular growth, metabolism, and the cell cycle. The large size of "Amoeba proteus" and the ease with which it can be collected and cultured have made it a star in biology education--and it was a model for research on cell biology before the introduction of molecular genetic methods.…