Dr. DeLeon L. Gray, an Assistant Professor of Educational Psychology at NC State, serves Director of The SMART Collaborative.
THREADS focuses on factors that promote positive academic and social growth for young males. The THREADS program achieves these goals through matching undergraduates with middle school boys in a weekly activities-based format. The program aims to cultivate an environment where middle school boys and their undergraduate mentors can talk about and strategize around issues that affect the boys’ behavior, development, future goals, and identity with school.
How do you create more meaningful, impactful and sustainable partnerships between researchers and teachers that result in effective motivation strategies that make schools places where students want to learn and where they want to be? The iScholar Project serves as a model. DeLeon Gray and Briana Green explain in a presentation they delivered during the NC State College of Education Spring 2017 All College Meeting.
Scientists spend considerable time engaging in critical analysis of ideas prior to publishing works or proclaiming findings. Students of science need some guided practice in this skill, especially when the principles under study are complex. Lombardi, Brandt, Bickel, and Burg’s 2016 article highlighted why this is important; students need to evaluate claims in controversial socio-scientific texts because it is there that the gap in knowledge between layperson and expert seems to be quite wide and multiple, often opposite, perspectives compete for recognition.
Are lecture-style classes dead? Here are a few considerations from a constructivist perspective.
Should moral education be a part of a school's curriculum? Four pre-service teachers addressed this question in a video blog.
The SMART Collaborative has created a public forum for discussing connections between students' social experiences and their motivation in achievement contexts. Please visit our website (http://thesmartlab.org, "Like" us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/theSMARTcollabo) or Follow Us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/@theSMARTcollabo).
