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Recent publications, including Vision and Change in Undergraduate Biology Education (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2009) and A New Biology for the 21st Century (National Research Council, 2009), highlight needed changes for undergraduate science education. These include a shift away from traditionally structured lab courses toward more authentic scientific inquiry experiences in undergraduate science laboratories. The aim of these reform initiatives is for students to develop not only conceptual understanding of the big ideas of science but also the skills required to conduct an investigation and an understanding of science as a human process of constructing scientific knowledge (National Research Council, 2011). The work that we describe here examines the challenges and successes of engaging nonscience majors in a large introductory university-level science course in conducting scientific inquiry. To understand the course structure and the nature of the laboratory experiences, we describe two different lab experiences. In both cases, students engaged in guided inquiry and then were asked to engage in a more open-ended inquiry experience. Our findings suggest that students need significant scaffolding to make the transition from more guided inquiry to more open-ended inquiry.

This chapter provides an introduction to how the inquiry-based learning (IBL) approach is being used by colleges and universities around the world to improve faculty and institutional development and to strengthen the interconnections between teaching, learning, and research. This chapter provides a synthesis and analysis of all the chapters in the volume, which present a range of perspectives, case studies, and empirical research on how IBL is being used across a range of courses across a range of institutions to enhance faculty and institutional development. This chapter argues that the IBL approach has great potential to enhance and transform teaching and learning. Given the growing demands placed on education to meet a diverse range of complex political, economic, and social problems and personal needs, this chapter argues that education should be a place where lifelong and lifewide learning is cultivated and where self-directed learning is nurtured. To that end, this chapter argues that IBL helps cultivate a learning environment that is more meaningful, responsive, integrated, and purposeful.

This chapter introduces a model for school libraries in Scotland, based on best practices as identified in the literature, and on five case studies undertaken in schools, two in the United States and three in Scotland. The research design was qualitative, and used grounded theory and multiple case study methods. The model represents an ideal set of circumstances for school libraries in Scotland, highlighting the interconnected web of influences that affect the success of a school library in meeting professional standards. These influences primarily fall in three areas: the school librarian, the school environment, and the professional support available to the librarian. The school librarian is the primary leader of the school library program, but factors in these other two areas can provide opportunities and barriers that can help or hinder the success of the library service. For instance, the findings suggest that school-based factors such as curriculum, scheduling, technology facilities, and staffing can have significant influence over the access the librarian has to teachers and students. Our model includes all three areas in describing a set of circumstances that would allow a school library program to thrive and meet the highest professional standards.

This article begins with a brief reading of the state of the practice of empirical social science research on measurement before proceeding to the discussion of an exemplary instance of this researcher's ethnographic effort to improve indicators of social capital formation. Given the central role measurement plays in social science research, it is appropriate, that a volume on methodological innovations in ethnography would contain a chapter about the relationship of ethnography to measure development. However, it is worth acknowledging that the line of argumentation advanced in this chapter is unconventional. The central tenant of this chapter – that ethnography has much to offer to the field of measurement and that ethnographers ought to take the contribution that they have the potential to make to the field of measurement seriously – at present might be thought to have little agreement either among those researchers whose primary focus is measurement or among ethnographers. This chapter contends that the features and strengths of ethnography specifically, and qualitative research more generally, makes it uniquely suited to contribute to the development of new indicators and the improvement of existing indicators. This chapter modestly hopes to encourage discussion of this contention and illustrate how this author sees his own ethnographic research into indicators of social capital formation as an attempt to address a pressing methodological dilemma within the field, more general of social scientific measure development.

While there are many articles in the popular press and practitioner journals concerning the Millennials (i.e., who they are and what we need to do about them), the academic literature on the subject is more limited. This chapter (1) extensively reviews this literature as published in practitioner, popular press, and academic journals across disciplines including psychology, sociology, management, human resources, and accounting education, and (2) surveys the generational study literature to determine what, if any, rigorous empirical studies exist to support (or refute) the existence of a distinct Millennial generational cohort. While the popular press is voluminous when it comes to avowed generational differences between Millennials and their predecessors, there is a paucity of peer-reviewed, academic, empirical work in the area and most of the latter suffers in some way from the overarching problem with generational research: the linear relationship between age, period, and generation that results in these variables being inherently entwined. However, even absent strong empirical evidence of a unique generational cohort, the literature offers extensive suggestions about what to do about the Millennials in our classrooms and work places. This chapter better informs accounting faculty about the traits of the current generation of accounting students that are supported by empirical research versus claims made in the popular press. It argues for a more reasoned “continuous improvement” approach to Millennials while offering some classroom suggestions for accounting faculty members.