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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.

Purpose – The chapter provides the reader with an overview of the UCF Enrichment Programs in Literacy that includes a year-round reading clinic with undergraduate and graduate students serving as clinicians and a summer Digital Storytelling Camp. The focus of the chapter is on the development and evolution of these programs, with an emphasis on the role of coaching in the clinic process.

Methodology/approach – The authors describe how they used Bean's Levels of Coaching Complexity (2004), adapting it to their clinical setting, to meet the current high demand for reading coaches in schools, and to strengthen their reading program courses and practicum experiences.

Practical implications – In addition to providing a comprehensive overview of the UCF Enrichment Programs in Literacy, this chapter includes the nuts and bolts of how the authors “coach for success” in the reading clinic. This involves coaching for success during data collection, in the analysis and decision-making process, in the delivery of tutoring, and beyond the clinic setting. Along with the tutoring process, specific teaching tools (including student samples) and photographs are shared in order to allow for replication by educators who read this chapter.

Social implications – This chapter suggests how reading programs in colleges of education can reexamine their existing field experiences to develop a more deliberate model intended to (1) extend clinician skills in reading assessment, diagnosis, and instructional delivery; (2) promote self-reflection and collaborative professional learning; and (3) provide mentoring experiences that can be replicated in school and district settings by graduate student clinicians as they acquire new leadership roles and responsibilities. This chapter proposes programs that offer consistent, affordable instructional support in literacy for children and families in the surrounding community.

Developmental science and school research identify children’s transition to kindergarten as a sensitive period with significant implications for formal school success. In this chapter, we present evidence that a successful transition to kindergarten requires more than ensuring that children have requisite competencies. Instead, we present an ecological model that conceptualizes smooth transitions from pre-kindergarten to kindergarten as a function of linkages between systems, such as connections between schools and families and between pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers and classrooms, especially those made prior to kindergarten entry. This chapter provides an overview of research on and best practices for effective pre-kindergarten to kindergarten transitions that support children’s development and school readiness. Evidence for the ecological framework supporting this critical transition is provided, including how transition and alignment practices are associated with optimal outcomes for children. Promising practices from the field that promote alignment between pre-kindergarten and kindergarten experiences are also addressed. Additionally, we present several case studies detailing the ways in which different localities have used empirically supported transition practices to support children’s early school success. Finally, we conclude with thoughts regarding future directions for transition and alignment work in early childhood.

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.

The chapter focuses on rural-urban food links in the context of governance. We seek to understand a rural-urban innovator mechanism is emerging through the food system and the renewed question of proximity and relative autonomy in the alimentary supply of this type of space and local society. We present case studies from Paris and Budapest metropolitan rural areas exploring institutional and private actors of governance, their power networks, food and related cultural components of rural-urban relations, the function of food links and the way in which they are governed. We have found several differences in governance methods between the Paris and Budapest metropolitan ruralities. The areas surrounding Paris are characterised by multi-level governance methods. However, an isolated form of rural governance of the rural-urban local food link can be identified in Budapest’s rural areas. Understanding the complex and dynamic interaction of food links and related activities within metropolitan areas offers the possibility of a far greater understanding of the complex and multiple links between sustainability, renewal of social interaction and cohesion.

This study examined the impact of an early childhood community-outreach summer camp on teaching single adolescent mothers early communication tools and strategies to support interaction with their infants and toddlers who were language delayed or at risk for language delay. Twenty-two mothers and their children were taught communication strategies through the use of baby signs and Hanen techniques for parents. Pre-post knowledge and skills were assessed. Mothers also completed a post-camp satisfaction questionnaire. Overall, mothers learned the information on baby signs and communication strategies. They were positive about the impact of the camp program activities on the social-emotional and communicative relationship between themselves and their child.

Purpose – To examine how youth appropriate and resist elements of the developmental discourse as they construct and enforce dating norms.

Methodology – In 2007, we conducted participant observation at a middle school summer camp for youth in sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. Youth ranged in age from 11 to 17 years old.

Findings – Youth borrowed the idea of a normative sequence of behaviors arranged by age from the developmental discourse to establish a set of age-appropriate dating norms for all campers, regardless of chronological age. Youth enforced these norms by treating other dating actions as too young or too old. By tying this linear trajectory to social age instead of chronological age, youth creatively altered the apparently rigid developmental discourse and established dating norms which addressed their own values and concerns. Youth established dating norms and maximized opportunities for pleasurable, collective discussions about dating and romantic relationships. Although the developmental discourse influenced the norms in this peer culture, we argue that the small, heterogeneous composition of the camp facilitated youths' ability to appropriate, refashion, and resist the developmental discourse.

Although there has been considerable growth in the higher education systems of Turkey and China in about the last two decades, there is still a room for development in enabling equity in all regions, increasing opportunities and resources regardless of socio-economic status or gender differences. Students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds do not have enough tools to change their fate for the better due to the accumulated barriers they face. Given this background, the chapter discusses how the barriers to equitable HE admissions relate to each other and which one has a greater negative impact over the Accumulated Conversion Barriers Modal we propose defined by personal, discriminatory, institutional, and geographical barriers. The perspectives of Turkish and Chinese HE stakeholders were examined through 21 in-depth interviews that were subjected to content analysis and interpreted in a comparative style using the lens of Capabilities Approach of Sen. We also offer policy suggestions to increase students’ conversion capacities for better outcomes to serve both the national and the international educational contexts owing to the adaptable nature of our modal to other countries experiencing similar issues in their higher education systems.