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Two factors that positively influence success in school and in post-school settings are self-determination and social programs such as expeditions for students with and without disabilities. This mixed methods study examined the benefits of a two-week international expedition to Nepal for adolescents (ages 14-18) with and without disabilities from the United States. The researchers measured self-determination in student participants utilizing the Self-Determination Inventory: Student Report (Shogren et al., 2020) as a pre/post-program measure and the No Barriers USA Program Evaluation (Duerden et al., 2016) as post-program measure. Twelve adolescents and four adult leaders who participated in the international expedition were interviewed to determine their perceptions of the benefits for students. The self-determination scores of student participants significantly increased (p = 0.007) after participation in the two-week expedition. Four major themes emerged from the data: disability and identity, self-determination growth, accessing supports, and sense of purpose. Using a mixed methods approach, we compared and integrated findings that support previous studies indicating that social programs increase self-determination skills. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.

This article shares two research projects in the United States and Australia where children and teachers lead their local communities towards living well in precarious times. Rooted in the image of 'children as citizens of the now', the research projects offer innovative pedagogies as a way for children to generate meaningful relationships with community and local places. Specifically, children, families, teachers and researchers bring questions and curiosities from their everyday lives that activate teaching and learning with and from the world through the concepts of slowing down, noticing and engaging with multiple perspectives.

Learners with disabilities are often denied field-based learning experiences in naturalistic disciplines. Geology can present substantial barriers due to rugged terrain in difficult-to-reach locations. In 2014, a field trip was executed with the dual purpose of 1) designing inclusion in field learning and 2) demonstrating to college faculty an accessible field experience. Direct observations of participants on the trip, as well as pre- and post-trip focus groups, illuminate the student and faculty field learning experience. Geoscience faculty have little guidance or support in understanding what disability is, how to reconcile accommodation with field-geology learning goals, and they cited instances where disability service providers acted as gatekeepers. The net effect of these ontologies is to reduce faculty empathy with, and thus their ability to be inclusive of, students with disabilities in field settings. Recommendations for instructors include taking campus disability-services administrators on field trips, opening and maintaining communications with disability service providers, and designing pedagogically sound field trips that align as much as possible to principles of universal design. An advocacy approach is described, which focuses on the students and the educational process, instead of on institutional compliance. Finally, geoscience faculty should conceptualize disability service providers as accessibility service providers. Keywords: field trips, Earth science, accessibility, inclusive, disabilities.

Interdisciplinary approaches do not merely satisfy an abstract longing; in post-educational life--especially in a secular, Western, post-modern culture--young people must confront complex issues that transcend any one discipline. Educational systems accordingly have a duty to offer frameworks for understanding this complexity that go beyond any single discipline. In this sense, interdisciplinarity promises a very practical tool kit. Washington State University Honors College has developed a productive interdisciplinary model geographically centered on Iceland and incorporating four academic angles, or disciplines. Kim Andersen and Gary Thorgaard have taught this upper-division honors course, Interdisciplinary Iceland, three times (in the fall of 2010, 2011, 2012) with an average of twenty-five students. In addition, a faculty-led trip to Iceland during the summer of 2012 (also involving Norway) provided valuable experience. In hopes that their course might serve as a practical model for others honors programs, they describe how the course came about, the content areas of the course, the student accomplishments and reactions, and the benefits and complexities of their particular model.

This article documents a first project undertaken by kindergarten children and their teacher in a public school in the southeastern United States. Images, work samples, records of children's comments, and the teacher's description tell the story of the project as it unfolds. The authors provide interpretation of the project events documented in terms of situating the Project Approach in a standards-based school context. (Contains 67 figures.)

A U.S. and Chinese university developed a short-term student exchange program in public/community health. The program--which consisted of lectures, seminars, field trips, cross-cultural experiences, and a synthesis excursion--resulted in high levels of program satisfaction, increased intrapersonal awareness, and skill acquisition. Program content and student evaluations indicate that short-term study-abroad programs in the United States may be attractive alternatives or enhancements to long-term academic study for foreign nationals.

Pre-service teachers' views of science and scientists have been widely studied. The purpose of this study is to identify whether there is problem of image of scientists and determine where they receive about scientist image. Three hundred thirty five (105 from Turkey, 162 from Europe, 68 from US) elementary pre-service teachers participated in this study. This study showed that pre-service teachers perceived about stereotypic scientist indicators which are "Caucasians", have "facial hair", and indicator of "symbols of research" and "symbols of knowledge", "technology" were almost same percentage. Moreover, there often is a lack of perspective in "Indications of Danger", "Indications of Secrecy", and "Mythic Stereotypes". The ethnic minority representation was the minimum rate. All pre-service teachers think that highest sources of image of scientist are orderly teacher, parents, friends, and media, but parents friends and media are not very crucial source for Turks as much as Europeans and the Americans. Both groups were influenced to a considerable degree by teachers, the content of science textbooks and books, this study illustrated the possible impact of the curriculum. The impact of science teachers and textbooks has shaped what a scientist is and what a scientist does. However, field trip and assessment, and projects related scientist are not common in science lessons. The view of Turkish pre-service teachers is less focused on them than Europeans' and the Americans. Eventually, stereotypical images of the scientist are a slightly lesser than revealed in previous studies but stereotypes of scientists are widely persistent even among elementary pre-service teachers. Pre-service elementary teachers' images of scientists and attitudes toward science may be affected by the way science is taught in their teacher education programs. The most recent primary level of science curriculum programs includes activities to engage students in the manner of constructivist approach for the US, European countries and Turkey. Results showed that if how effective using this educational perspective elementary pre-service teacher' minds will be touched and they will complete understanding of what science and a scientist is in their minds.

The relationship that exists between students and science and technology (S&T) is a complex and important one. If it is positive, then social, economic and environmental consequences are to be expected. Yet, many problems of interest/motivation/attitude (I/M/A) towards S&T have been recorded. A lot of research has been conducted on this topic and a certain number of syntheses have been proposed, but very few of them have followed sufficiently systematic procedures. In this article, we offer a synthetic and systematic description of 228 research articles that were published between 2000 and 2012 and indexed in the ERIC database under I/M/A for S&T at K-12 levels. We focus on the origin of these articles, on the constructs they use and define, on the instruments, and finally on the results they provide, whether correlative or causal. Conclusions and recommendations for future research and interventions are formulated.

Developmental immigrant students are a growing phenomenon in the United States, a growing population in higher education, and a growing presence in undergraduate classes, and like their mainstream developmental counterparts, many are academically underprepared for the rigors of college (Goldschmidt & Ousey, 2011), sometimes prolonging, or even preventing their pursuit of higher education. For this cohort of developmental students, learning outside of the classroom is as important as learning inside of the classroom: Learning beyond the classroom walls not only enriches what these students have learned in class by bringing the "American experience" to life, but it also enhances the students' role as global diplomats, both on and off campus. [For Part 1 see, EJ960412.]

The purpose of this article is to present the results of a multi-site case study designed to investigate students' experiences as participants in four week-long immersion programs (New York City, Peru, the Czech Republic, Chicago). Results highlight the significance of the context of the trips and specific characteristics of the trip (e.g., getting out of the bubble, boundary crossing, and personalizing), which served as the springboard for learning and meaning making. In particular, meaning making focused on developing new understandings of social issues, privilege, and stereotypes, reframing experiences upon participants' return, and shifting sense of purpose and career planning.

Using virtual worlds as media for learning and teaching gives rise to the potential for many unique ethical problems. Some of these arise due to the nature of the engagement with these virtual worlds, in which the students create a virtual representation, called an avatar, which may enable a sense of embodiment, and hence exposure, within the world. Many of these environments are also not dedicated to learning and teaching but are social worlds inhabited by communities of users; learning and teaching activities may therefore more resemble those of a field trip than a classroom experience and consequently the potential for conflict and anxiety between students and this wider community. This article explores the various ethical issues of learning and teaching in virtual worlds, and draws on the examples of two case studies to illustrate these issues with students' comments. The authors then offer their own personal responses to the ethical issues raised; rather than offering solutions the paper acknowledges that these issues are ones that need further reflection and consensus-building for the educational community. (Contains 5 notes.)

The training of teachers for a meaningful use of all that contemporary technology offers to developing curriculum requires constant vigilance, experimentation, innovation, revision and updating. The lifestyle of today's gifted students includes a range of ever-unfolding technologies, such as text messaging, blogging, social networking, personal webpages, video pods, streamed television, online textbooks, online knowledge base, web searching, presentation tools, desktop publishing, graphics infused in word processing, simulations and complex gaming. At the same time, the technology literacy of most teachers is in "catch-up mode" with constant retraining about how to provide curricula that includes webquests, virtual field trips, virtual passports, interactive maps (Google Earth) and webliography (TrackStar), presented in diverse formats. The following questions will be examined in this paper: (1) How do you cross regional boundaries and local educational administration to provide a comprehensive state-wide teacher training system in gifted education?; (2) How do you differentiate teacher training in gifted education that uses appropriate methods, strategies and best practices in teaching gifted students?; (3) How do you incorporate the daily technology needs and uses of gifted students into training their teachers?; (4) How can you provide teacher training that is independent of time and space to reach teachers beyond their classroom yet make it directly applicable?; and (5) How do you structure a system of accountability that meets state and national standards for gifted education? In the state of Florida, USA, a three-tiered comprehensive approach provides online training and certification to teachers at the state level, through the WOGI (Working on Gifted Issues) project, at the district level that builds on Florida State Training Modules for local relevance, and at the university level that can be incorporated into a graduate Master's degree with a specialization in gifted education. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

They sat in the Cubberley Education Lecture Hall to hear visiting experts. More often they could be found meeting in reduced-size classes, or working on small-group activities. They usually took notes; sometimes they took field trips. They memorized lists and sat for exams, but they also watched films and acted out scenarios. Rather than take regular courses in the disciplines, they studied an integrated curriculum referred to as "Area Relationships." Some faculty collaborated, team taught, and drew on students' prior knowledge. Even some administrators joined in the role-playing for the big culminating activity. This situation could well describe the kind of education espoused by the Stanford Teacher Education Program. Minus the references to Stanford, these pedagogical behaviors could describe a "progressive" classroom anywhere in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. Yet this was not the product of a maverick social studies teacher, a school of education, a public or private high school, or any institution within the American educational establishment. This article discusses the program, called the Civil Affairs Training School (CATS), which was designed by and operated by contract for the U.S. Department of War. The students were officers recruited for their exceptional experiences in civilian life--lawyers, engineers, journalists, businessmen, teachers, and police. The military sent them to Stanford (and a handful of elite universities like it) to learn how to run the governments of Europe and the Far East after an eventual Allied victory over Japan and Germany. They were studying to save the world. With war raging across the globe, and all aspects of American society mobilizing at home, the American military found the need to instill in officers many of the same attributes that progressive educators had been advocating for decades--the ability to apply knowledge (and not simply retain it for a test), to think creatively, to work in teams, and to make connections across a variety of disciplines. The architects of the CATS program drew on examples from home and abroad, from civilian education and Army tradition. (Contains 116 footnotes.)

This study examined the mental models of the desert environment held by fourth- and seventh-grade students in the USA and whether those mental models could be affected by: (1) classroom field trips to a desert riparian preserve, and (2) interaction with family members at the same preserve. Results generally indicated that students in this study were resolute in their models and that field trips did not impact the types of models students adhered to. Twenty-three seventh-grade students who self-selected to participate in a Family Science Club with their parents did demonstrate a shift in their mental models and developed significantly more sophisticated models over time. A critical implication of the study is that unless transformation of mental models of the environment is an explicit goal of instruction, simple exposure to the environment (even within the context of life science instruction) will not transform understandings of how organisms within an environment act and interact interdependently. (Contains 5 tables and 3 figures.)

Although school trips to informal science institutions can result in conceptual and affective gains, the processes by which they do so are not yet clearly understood. Taking a sociocultural perspective that highlights the importance of discourse for learning, this work focuses on the talk that occurred in teacher-pupil interactions, both during a museum visit and during pre- and post-visit lessons in the classroom. The museum setting affords many experiences not available in a classroom--does it also afford different types of discourse? Transcripts from one secondary and three primary school classes provide evidence of the extent to which teachers' talk conformed to a triadic pattern, with discourse during the pre- and post-visit lessons more closely adhering to this pattern than that during the visit. However, a closer look at teacher-student discourse revealed further complexities, including greater use of open-ended questions during triadic than during non-triadic discourse. Overall, the findings from this research indicate that museum visits may enable pupils to assert more authority temporarily and provide insight into processes by which such experiences may contribute to learning. (Contains 7 tables and 4 notes.)

This article addresses the development of a conceptual model of fieldwork practice and the creation of an associated set of skills for the geosciences. The set of eight generic and seventeen specific skills is applied in two international field courses to demonstrate the utility of such a skills-centered model across a broad range of venues, curricula, and students. Both concept and practice from U.K. and U.S. universities have been welded as a means of internationalizing curriculum development. Further, it is suggested that there is merit in faculty viewing their field teaching within the framework of the whole subject curriculum such that field courses and sites are viewed as much for their contribution to the overall skill set as their support for the classroom topic. (Contains 5 figures and 2 tables.)

Last February, in search of expanded thinking, the author led a group of 20 early childhood professionals on a study tour to Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ). The group included two Canadians and two Aussies, with everyone else from the United States. While they knew they had much to learn from the overall system of early childhood education in NZ, the author tried to keep their focus on three particular aspects that seem to hold promise for infusing new ideas into their teacher education and professional development efforts in the United States: (1) Strengthening relationships to strengthen culture and community; (2) Seeing the environment as a reflection of values; and (3) Understanding documentation as a pedagogical tool. The trip was intensely engaging, both emotionally and intellectually, and had a profound impact on each of the delegates. In this article, the author shares her ruminations on the study tour. The author stresses that the study tour to Aotearoa New Zealand has fueled the determination of each of the delegates to resist any excuses to settle for the "dumbing-down" policies and practices that are besieging children and teachers in their early childhood centers.

School fundraising is a topic likely to elicit a variety of responses from principals. Some shrug it off as a responsibility of their school's PTA or PTO. Others may chuckle at the memory of kissing a pig or shaving their head. Of course, some principals will probably grumble at the thought of activities that are perceived as annoying "fundraising noise" by parents, teachers, and the community. Though principals have conflicting feelings about fundraising, the vast majority agrees that the results are worth the effort. "The Value of Fundraising," a nationwide survey of more than 1,000 principals conducted last spring by the National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP), revealed that almost all schools (94 percent) in the United States raise funds to pay for classroom equipment and supplies, along with important "extras" such as new playground equipment and field trips. While most principals report they would rather not have to raise funds, 87 percent believe fundraising provides valuable returns. Furthermore, the author states that principal involvement and focusing on fewer and more profitable projects would be the keys to successful school fundraising. (Contains 2 online resources.)

Confronted with a world that is strikingly different from what it was just a decade ago, the United States faces rapidly shifting economic, political, and national security realities and challenges. To respond to these changes it is essential that our institutions of higher education graduate globally competent students. This article addresses several major challenges confronting international educators within the United States including redesigning the curriculum, achieving faculty buy-in, financing study abroad, integrating our international students in the efforts to internationalize our campus, and rethinking how we teach foreign languages on our campuses. (Contains 1 note.)

"Amistad," the story of a group of Mende people illegally brought to the United States from West Africa in 1839, was taught to a group of 90 eighth grade students. To learn about the "Amistad," these eighth graders visited a replica of the ship, read a nonfiction account of the Amistad story, and viewed the Steven Spielberg film "Amistad." Two aspects of this project were found to be of special interest: (1) the teachers wondered whom the eighth grade students would choose as the heroes of the "Amistad;" and (2) how the multimodal approach to this unit -- discussion, hands-on experience, reading, and film viewing --would influence students' learning and perceptions, particularly with respect to the heroes of the incident. Three teacher education faculty members, the authors of this article, helped to plan these various learning activities and involved several of their teacher education students in discussing the Amistad story with the eighth graders immediately before and after viewing the film. Visualization of the story and the characters was the overriding theme in student reports of what influenced their learning and their insights. However, each medium provided students with a vehicle with which to confront or conjure images of the Africans' experiences, and these visualizations engaged them in learning. The multiple learning experiences appealed to varied learning styles and helped students to go beyond the facts of the Amistad story to develop a much more immediate and intense appreciation of the evils of slavery and the kinds of heroism needed to confront and defeat such evil. The teachers got a clear sense of the students' development of ethical standards, their moral offense in the face of injustice, their interests, and their learning preferences. The teacher education students came to appreciate the abilities and engaging qualities of middle school students and learned several useful lessons about teaching and learning in the middle school. Critics argue that school curricula often do too little with too much; however the students in this project acquired a greater understanding of many important themes in American history and enabled them to make crucial intertextual links. The project demonstrated the many possibilities for making learning and teaching engaging, exciting, and powerful.

International experiential learning projects have increased in popularity over recent years, and many of these projects focus on environmental topics in the developing world. An experimental course in International Groundwater Studies was developed to bridge the gap between extracurricular service type programs and academically-based study abroad programs. The course included online instruction in order to accommodate varying student schedules, and an eight-day field trip to Guatemala was included in the curriculum. These challenging situational factors led to the decision to apply formal design theory to the course, and qualitative self-reported data were collected to evaluate the effectiveness of the formally-designed course to address both the course learning objectives as well as concerns regarding collaborative functionality between students who had had little in-person interaction prior to traveling. (Contains 4 tables.)

This paper examines school liability for school violence-related student injury in South Korea and the US. The study found that the US courts considered only violence-related behaviors of the perpetrator when judging whether violence can be foreseen; thus drug abuse or verbal abuse by the perpetrator were not considered as a part of his/her violent history. On the other hand, the Korean courts considered perpetrators' nonviolent behavior, such as low academic achievement or negative attitudes toward academic work, as indicators of violent history. Regarding the extent of school liability, while in Korea, schools were not held responsible for injuries to non-school-related persons caused by their students' violent acts in public, in the US, the court required schools to take legal responsibility for such cases happening during field trips. These findings help to reconsider school liability for school violence and generate suggestions for more reasonable and universal legal standards. (Contains 6 notes.)

Internationalization of a business school curriculum has long been an important objective of AACSB-accredited schools in the United States. During the past 4 years, the authors of this article have developed, taught, and guided an undergraduate finance field study course that has incorporated trips to London, Dublin, and Paris. In this article, they provide guidelines for the design of an international finance field study course and the application of digital technologies to assist in content delivery. The hybrid course combines conventional classroom lectures, innovative applications of streaming media, and a field study component. The authors contend that other institutions can readily adopt this design if they have the necessary technological infrastructure. (Contains 2 tables, 3 figures, and 10 notes.)

Summarizes a variety of classroom activities that have worked successfully in the teaching of Canadian-U.S. relations. Activities include lesson openers, cartoon analysis, student worksheets, board diagrams, and tips on field trips to the United States. (BSR)

National security demands that "illegals" must be kept out of the country. Terrorists may be entering alongside Mexicans jumping immigration queues. So explain members of the self-appointed Minuteman Civil Defense Corps as they and 25 Vassar College students trudge a migrant trail across a parched, cactus-punctuated desert near Douglas, Arizona. The author has joined the students, visiting points just north and south of the United States-Mexico boundary, for part of their 12-day study trip about border and migration history and politics. In this article, the author discusses what the students discovered in this exploration.

In the United States, the two main political parties, Democrats and Republicans, have become increasingly polarized, including with regard to environmental issues. As part of a national study of environmentally focused single-day field trips for early adolescent youth in 2018, we conducted exploratory research to examine how outcomes differed for public school students from different sociopolitical contexts (i.e. predominantly Democratic, Republican, or mixed). Students from wealthier Democratic contexts exhibited less positive outcomes, measured as self-reported changes in environmental literacy, compared to others. The findings suggest that single-day EE field trips in the United States, in their current forms, may be particularly valuable in lower income and more politically conservative contexts, possibly due to the degree of novelty they may provide to these audiences. Meanwhile, EE field trips for students from wealthier Democratic contexts may provide reinforcement rather than meaningful shifts in environmental literacy, suggesting a need for more novel approaches for these audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Which approaches are associated with better student learning outcomes in environmental education (EE)? We observed a sample of 299 day-long EE field trip programs occurring across the U.S.A. for youth in grades 5–8 (ages 9 to 14). We tracked the extent of use and quality of implementation of 66 programmatic, educator, and setting characteristics and measured student outcomes immediately after the programs using a retrospective survey. A series of complementary tests identified 11 characteristics that were most powerfully and consistently associated with learning outcomes, accounting for 18% of variance in learning outcomes. These included group size, naturalness, novelty, place-based pedagogy, verbal engagement, quality questions, transitions, and staging, as well as the responsiveness, comfort and clarity, and emotional support provided by the educator. Some of the most commonly promoted practices in the EE field were rarely observed. Implications are discussed for both practice and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of individual environmental education (EE) field trip programs have found that pre-visit preparation and post-visit follow-up activities can enhance desired student outcomes. We examined these relationships across a broad sample of single-day EE field trip programs for adolescent youth (grades 5-8) across the United States. We measured student outcomes, reflecting environmental literacy, 21st century skills, positive youth development, and student learning, through end-of-visit retrospective student surveys and follow-up surveys with visiting teachers two weeks after the field trip. Pre-visit logistical preparation as well as both pre-visit preparation and post-visit follow-up related to the subject matter were each associated with more positive student outcomes. The study provides further evidence across a large sample of programs that pre-visit preparation and post-visit follow-up can have meaningful impacts on student outcomes for EE field trips. We discuss the implications of the findings and provide examples and guidance for future programming efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The state of Texas has an 'essential knowledge' component in some high school science courses indicating that students be able to describe connections between academic science content and future jobs or training through effective exposure to course content. The participants in this study were from a small rural high school in central Texas. Each was labeled as 'at-risk' and self-identified an inability to describe those types of connections after earning credit in more than one science course with that 'essential knowledge' component. A career-focused field trip to a local vocational/technology training center was designed to address that particular deficit. This study followed a narrative multiple-case case study design. Data included school records, surveys, individual and focus group interviews, and field notes from observations during the field trip. The effectiveness of the field trip was evident as each participant was able to describe connections immediately following the excursion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the concept of “novelty space” proposed by Orion and Hofstein (1994) and analyzes U.S. undergraduate students' photographs taken during a 9-week educational field trip. The original novelty space was composed of geographic, psychological, and cognitive domains. This study proposes to incorporate social novelty space as part of the field trip. The self-administered photo spreadsheets, interviews, and survey were completed by student participants. The findings suggest that photographs serve as a behavioral proxy for geographic and cognitive domains but were less evident for psychological and social novelty spaces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: American adults overwhelmingly agree that the Holocaust should be taught in schools, yet few studies investigate the potential benefits of Holocaust education., Objectives: We evaluate the impact of a Holocaust education conference on knowledge of the Holocaust and several civic outcomes, including "upstander" efficacy (willingness to intervene on behalf of others), likelihood of exercising civil disobedience, empathy for the suffering of others, and tolerance of others with different values and lifestyles., Research Design: We recruit two cohorts of students from three local high schools and randomize access to the Arkansas Holocaust Education Conference, where students have the chance to hear from a Holocaust survivor and to participate in breakout sessions led by Holocaust experts., Results: We find evidence that the conference increased participants' upstander efficacy, but fail to reject the null hypothesis that the conference would increase participants' knowledge or other civic attitudes.

This article ponders Tracy Rone's assertion that field trips offer an immediate and compelling methodology for understanding our pasts and our relationships to those histories. It examines the way taking students to historic sites in diverse learning communities can facilitate what Rone calls "an intensive, experiential history lesson "and can give students deeper understandings of history and lasting access to their own learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]