The Science Bound Model is an effective school-community partnership preparing precollege students of color to pursue college degrees and careers in STEM fields via a four-way partnership among school administrators and teachers, STEM corporations, students and families of color, and a land-grant university. For nearly 30 years, this partnership has been effective in bringing together the skill sets, resources, expertise, and opportunities necessary to support students' preparation for college and pursuit of technical degrees. The four-way partnership annually provides more than 400 students an average of 100 hours of out-of-school STEM learning experiences and mentorship by 50 teachers and 150 STEM professionals. Used in a rural community, a small city, and an urban community, the model establishes and maintains dynamic partnerships within and across partner groups. Five key factors that guide the four-way Science Bound partnership and a case example of how the model works are presented.

This critical race counter-story chronicles a Black woman professor's candidacy for an associate dean position at a predominantly White institution. It is uncommon to hear the voices of those who have been marginalized and disenfranchised in the hiring process at a university. This counter-narrative disrupts the silencing of voices at the margin and challenges the master narrative of the university hiring process by giving voice to a Black woman professor's experience. Using covert racism, the researcher deconstructs the university's actions to operationalize a deficit narrative of her associate dean candidacy, while simultaneously espousing a commitment to diversity by increasing funding to an outreach program for students of color. The chapter concludes with a discussion of self-care. Black feminist thought provides the framework to understand how acts of self-care influenced the self-definition of the Black woman professor.

The popularity of TV shows such as Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) has generated high school students’ interest in forensics. Yet, forensic science is not commonly accessible to students, and especially students of color who often attend under-resourced high schools. This article presents the design, development, and evaluation of an online forensics course created for high school students of color who were a part of an informal science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) educational development program. Two essential elements guided the course design: the target learners (high school students of color) and integrating online instruction and hands-on laboratory activities involving real-world forensic analyses. The design of the online course provided a STEM content-rich, self-directed, informal learning environment that effectively engaged high school students of color in meaningful forensics learning during the summer.

To improve academic outcomes for students of color, educators must find new ways to implement change. It is essential that innovative strategies include parental engagement in the arsenal to improve academic outcomes for youth of color. The authors share insights gleaned from an examination of parental engagement, the social capital in families of color, the conditions necessary for social capital exchange, and how to create a climate that encourages G-STEM (growing students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) parental capital exchange. Lessons learned from the work of the authors with the parents and parent components of the program and strategies implemented by G-STEM leading to success are shared.

Abstract:This study examines the educational structures of a pre-college science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education program that has been effective in preparing African American students for postsecondary education and to pursue degrees in technical disciplines. A critical race analysis of the educational structures of the program was conducted to contextualize the significance of student outcomes. The study illuminated the structural composition of the STEM after-school program that created the contexts in which the African American students successfully completed high school and pursued postsecondary STEM degrees. The findings indicate the educational structures of the pre-college STEM program created counter space.

Most teacher preparation programs offer one course in which preservice teachers are to develop their basic technology skills. If innovative pedagogy is the goal (of technology use in the classroom), the single instructional technology course may not effectively prepare preservice teachers to meet this goal. Knowledge of the format, content, and emphasis of the formal technology instruction that preservice teachers receive is imperative for establishing technology expectations for future teachers. Furthermore, such knowledge will provide insight into the status of instructional technology within schools of education. The preparation of preservice teachers to effectively use instructional technology is contingent, in part, on the basic attitudes and skills that preservice teachers develop with regards to instructional technology. In this article, the results of a survey of instructional technology courses at 88 teacher preparation institutions are presented. Descriptive statistics of the course format, content, and instructional emphasis are reported. Data analysis indicated that, in the introductory instructional technology courses, significantly more emphasis was placed on integrating instructional technologies into the curriculum than on using technologies for teacher productivity or personal use. The prescriptive and descriptive literature about instructional technology and teacher education depicts the transition occurring within U.S. schools of education. They increasingly acknowledge the need to prepare preservice teachers to use technology, and struggle with methods to provide that preparation effectively. One recurring theme is evident in this literature: integration (Abdel-Haqq, 1995; Gilmore, 1995; Office of Technology Assessment, 1995; Henry, 1993). University faculty, educational researchers, experienced K-12 teachers, and professional organizations call for the integration of technology into the educational curriculum of preservice teachers to foster the ability of future teachers to use technology to expand the learning of K-12 students. Such integration should be provided through improved syntonicity (i.e., more hands-on experiences for preservice teachers with realistic educational assignments) and increased modeling of technology by college faculty in both content and methods courses (P anel on Educational Technology, 1997; Office of Technology Assessment, 1995). Clearly articulated in the prescriptive literature is the premise that preservice teachers' ability to integrate technology into the curriculum will be the result of two factors: their basic technology skills, and the effective modeling of technology integration by teacher educators (Panel on Educational Technology, 1997; Willis & Mehlinger, 1996; Office of Technology Assessment, 1995; Sudzina, 1993; Oke, 1992; Wiburg, 1991). From the descriptive literature, it is reasonable to surmise that most preservice teachers complete one course in instructional technology or media (Milken Exchange on Educational Technology, 1999; Novak & Berger, 1991). Furthermore, it is in this single course that preservice teachers are to develop the basic technology skills that will serve as the foundation for their ability to integrate technology into the K-12 curriculum. If, at most teacher preparation institutions, preservice teachers' instructional technology skills are developed in a single course, then knowledge of the content and format of that course should: * Provide a basis to further identify and investigate factors that contribute to the development of technology-using educators. * Provide insight into the status of instructional technology within schools of education. * Offer a clear depiction of the technology attitudes and skills of the next generation of teachers. Given the dynamic nature of technology, teacher educators and instructional technologists need to know how colleges and universities are preparing preservice teachers to use technology in the classroom. …

Technology has been touted as an effective method to improve teaching and learning; yet, few researchers have examined the use of technology in traditional lecture-based instruction to improve student engagement or provide feedback about student learning to the instructor. The exploratory study described in this article examined the use of group response technology (GRT) to gather student responses during instruction in a preservice special education course. Classroom observation data indicated no differences in engagement between preservice teachers who used GRT and those who used hand-written journals; however, the use of GRT provided the instructor with real-time data about student learning. These data challenged the instructor's conceptions of lecture-based instruction, causing increased attention to and heightened knowledge of student learning, which, in turn, resulted in changes in instructional practices. The potential of GRT use for increasing the effectiveness of instruction in higher education and modeling effective instructional practices for teacher preparation are discussed.

Research on computer programming suggests that novice programmers possess inert knowledge when trying to solve programming problems. Moreover, research on teaching and learning computer programming indicates that offering appropriate conceptual models of computer programming concepts to novice programmers enhances their mental models and reduces their misconceptions in computer programming. The purpose of this study v/as to examine the effectiveness of a problem analysis learning model of computer programming to help novice programmers overcome their inert knowledge and learn a programming language. The problem analysis learning model combines a conceptual model and a holistic instructional approach for computer programming instruction. The conceptual component of the problem analysis model includes several computer simulations of database concepts. The purpose of the conceptual component of the problem analysis model is to offer students an opportunity to manipulate data in the computer simulations before formal instruction in order to help them construct their own knowledge of basic database concepts. The purpose of the holistic component of the problem analysis learning model is to help students integrate their programming knowledge to solve database problems. The holistic approach includes a fourstep process that consists of problem introduction, problem diagnosis, learning acti\dties, and database assignments. This study involved 100 inservice teachers enrolled in a basic computer programming workshop at The Institute for Secondary Schools Teachers in Taiwan (ISST). The teachers were randomly assigned to one of the two workshops conducted in this study (43 teachers in