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This chapter illuminates the impact of providing informal learning experiences for students pursuing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) teaching careers at a time when there is a considerable shortage of qualified teachers in America's urban centers. Preservice STEM teachers were provided with the opportunity to participate in a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant funded Noyce Internship Program prior to serving as counselors and teaching assistants in a STEM camp for underrepresented middle school students. Through the Noyce Internship Institute, participants were introduced to interactive sessions that model promising teaching practices including inquiry-based and project-based learning. This narrative inquiry examines the impact of these experiences on preservice STEM teachers' self-efficacy and highlights outcomes in three areas: increase of preservice teachers' confidence, classroom management, and strengthening their desire to teach STEM.

Learning through formal and informal experiences is critical for building content knowledge, pedagogical skills, and self-efficacy/confidence for preservice teachers. teachHOUSTON offers numerous teacher enhancement opportunities outside the teacher education courses which allows preservice teachers to connect to the real world which includes being able to relate to a diverse population of students and to understand how the course content can be related to them, their families, and communities in their everyday experiences. Through formal and informal experiences such as professional development workshops, discipline specific courses, research experiences, and internships, preservice teachers have the opportunity to engage in hands-on science activities they can use with their students, develop lessons, and gain knowledge on how to deliver this content while managing their classroom. This chapter will give an overview of the formal and informal experiences offered through teachHOUSTON with a highlight on the structure and content of the six week Noyce Internship Program which engaged interns as counselors and teaching assistants in a summer STEM camp for underserved middle school students and introduces the interns to interactive sessions that model promising practices for teaching.

A recent President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology report predicts a shortfall of 1 million college graduates in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields in the United States over the next several years (2012). Recommendations to address this include diversifying the STEM workforce, which is plagued by a lack of gender diversity (Hill, Corbett, & St. Rose, 2010). University–School partnerships are crucial in developing a pipeline that moves interested primary and secondary students (aged 5-18) into majoring and eventually working in STEM fields. The lower involvement of women in STEM fields is multi-factorial and affects all communities, including Abilene, Texas. Abilene Independent School District’s STEM high school, the Academy for Technology, Engineering, and Science (ATEMS) consistently has a female student population at or below 35%. A local university, Abilene Christian University (ACU), has struggled to increase female undergraduate students in STEM fields. Creating a University–School partnership between ACU and ATEMS aided in building a STEM pipeline for girls in the Abilene community. In this chapter, we describe this collaboration between ACU and ATEMS and highlight the key features that led to success of the collaboration.

This chapter traces how non-positional faculty led an inter-institutional STEM initiative. Starting with one faculty member’s seed idea, the chapter traces how that idea grew into a vision and that vision into an agenda and that agenda into a joint, sustainable STEM concentration. The initiative was organized around Bolman and Deal’s (2008) framework for making sense of an institution and for leading organizational change through an awareness of multiple lenses. The faculty member who initiated the vision analyzed the institution and her place in that institution. Building from her strengths, she sought to enhance her intellectual, emotional and communication skills. Understanding organizational complexities, Dr. C became involved across campus to build relationships and trust, which then led to the formation of a committed STEM team. The STEM team set a clear agenda and pursued cross-campus ownership and collaboration, all the while maintaining respect for diverse opinions, political interests and concerns. Challenges, pitfalls and setbacks, though initially painful, confusing, and disheartening, led to reflection, and most often, became opportunities for realignment and clarity. Though non-positional faculty led the effort, it was cross-campus collaboration that made it possible, and the final approval of the administration made it a reality.

Collaborations between faculty from the teachHOUSTON program and physics department have led to an increase in the number of highly qualified physics teachers produced by the University of Houston. Faculty were able to systematically build the physics teacher preparation program through the following endeavors: streamlined degree plans, a physics inquiry course, an internship program, a scholarship program, and induction activities for the first three years of their teaching degrees. This has resulted in preparing approximately three physics teachers annually. Prior to this collaboration, the University had not produced any physics teacher graduates in the previous decade.

This chapter outlines the contents of Preparing Secondary STEM Teachers to Teach in America's Urban Schools. The volume begins with an overview of the teachHOUSTON STEM teacher education program in Chapter 2 and is followed by an account of the collaboration that took place between a Physics professor and a teachHOUSTON Physics teacher educator and its impact on STEM teacher preparation in Chapters 3-4. Chapters 5 and 6 include discussions about formal and informal learning opportunities and include a narrative of a student's experience on how the Noyce Internship Institute contributed to their STEM teacher learning. In Chapters 7–9, readers learn about the influence of parents, teachers, and professors on students' entry into and decision to work in the STEM and/or STEM education field, with an emphasis on those in STEM teacher education. Chapter 10 highlights the value of scholarship grants; Chapter 11 addresses the growth and development of teachHOUSTON, the impact of the scholarships awarded to many of its students and traces where its graduates currently are teaching in order to demonstrate that teachHOUSTON has fulfilled its mission. The final chapter of the book reflects on teachHOUSTON as a secondary urban teacher education program and summarizes significant points that have led to its success.

teachHOUSTON is a university-based secondary STEM teacher preparation program that addresses the critical need for highly qualified STEM teachers in Texas and across the country. STEM teachers are prepared through early and ongoing field-based teaching experiences and rigorous research-based instruction that integrates content and pedagogy provided by faculty members who have extensive teaching experience in public schools. teachHOUSTON serves the fourth largest city in the United States, along with its satellite communities and has many noteworthy features which are mapped in this chapter. Particular attention is paid to inquiry-based learning, student-centered instruction, and culturally responsive pedagogy as well as the improvements in the program based on the collaboration between physics and teachHOUSTON faculty.

Despite the apparent philanthropic concerns of the new imperialism and the rhetoric of the civilising mission, the Second Boer War (1899–1902) revealed British irrational ambition, military reverses, scandals and evidence of inadequate administration. In this context, the South African concentration camps where the Boers, mostly women and children whose houses and farms had been destroyed by the British forces, were concentrated, stand out as examples of a seemingly arbitrary power. The controversies over such camps, and over the War itself, were heightened after Emily Hobhouse's Report was made public. Emily Hobhouse, an active humanitarian, obtained permission to visit the camps in order to write a report on the living conditions there. Upon returning to England, she had a meeting with Campbell-Bannerman, the leader of the Liberal Party, who eventually denounced the methods of barbarism carried out in such places. The Report appeared soon after the meeting and waves of protest ensued. Both Emily Hobhouse and Campbell-Bannerman were under crossfire.

My intention in this paper is, firstly, to briefly address the social, political and economic context underlying British imperial expansion and struggle for space at the turn of the nineteenth century, as far as controversies over the Boer War are concerned; secondly, to study the characteristics and living conditions in South African ‘concentration camps’ relying, to a great extent, on Emily Hobhouse's account; and thirdly, to analyse the social and political impact of the denunciation of such camps as places of wholesale cruelty in Hobhouse's (in) famous Report.

Entrepreneurship education is being taught to undergraduates in tertiary institutions and fresh graduates in youth programmes to encourage start-ups and create employment as a strategy to stem youth unemployment. As such, entrepreneurship education programmes are expected to include rigorous processes of programme design, implementation and evaluation so as to achieve changes in behaviour, attitude and action of participants measureable in terms of start-up and jobs created. Two entrepreneurship education programmes implemented in Nigeria are evaluated to ascertain the level of effectiveness in design, implementation and evaluation and the outcomes in terms of start-ups and employment created. Research methods adopted in the two programmes combine observation techniques with content analyses, action research in case study and focus group interviews. In addition, test-retest techniques in a quasi-experimental design, with a structured questionnaire is adopted in programme number two only. The findings are that while it is suspected that the design stage is jumped in programme number one, in programme two, the design is poorly done. Implementation is ineffective in the two programmes because objectives did not arise from programme design as they ought to and evaluation methods are inappropriate and so ineffective. The recommendations include review of the design of the two programmes to generate appropriate and measurable objectives; adopting implementation strategies that will achieve the measurable objectives generated from revised programme designs and adopting appropriate evaluation techniques that has capacity to measure outcomes and impact in addition to outputs.