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Collaboration and critical thinking are 21st century skills employers value. Campus programming offers a space where, through intentional design, post-secondary students may develop critical thinking and collaboration skills. This study investigates survey data collected after a campus program that engaged participants in an escape room experience. Descriptive statistics were utilized to investigate students' perceptions of collaboration and critical thinking skills use and improvement during the experience. Comparison analysis was employed to explore if the structure of the escape room produced any difference in results. Findings indicate the majority of participants reported being able to practice and improve collaboration and critical thinking skills in the escape room experience. Patterns suggest that the escape room structure may impact participants' perceptions of collaboration and critical thinking skills. Limitations and recommendations for areas of future research are discussed.

In response to a growing need for STEM professionals, this study reports the results of the initial validation of a refined survey instrument that purports to measure the five constructs of the social cognitive career theory framework within the subjects of mathematics, science, engineering and technology. To investigate the instrument's reliability and psychometric properties, we administered this 45-item survey to students in grades 4-12. Reliability and validity (content and construct) were assessed using Cronbach's coefficient alphas and structural equation modeling. Path coefficients for the five constructs indicated weak to moderate influences on the subscales, and the goodness-of-fit indices demonstrated that the model is acceptable. Initial results indicate the survey has the potential to collect reliable and valid data and suggest the instrument may be helpful in measuring students' interests and choices in STEM careers for research, partnerships, and curricular development. Additionally, results highlight two areas for further investigation, which include the impact conscientious or random responders have on the survey's psychometric properties and what constitutes satisfactory Cronbach's alpha for results to be interpreted in a significant way.

Teachers and mathematics teacher education scholars have identified field experiences and quality mentoring as influential components of math teacher preparation and development. Yet, quality mentoring is a complex and demanding practice. Providing educative feedback to novices, particularly that which encourages reflection versus evaluation, can be challenging work for mentors. To study the potential of an intervention for providing professional development for mentors, I worked with pairs of mentors and prospective teachers (PSTs) offering Smith's (2009) noticing and wondering language as a way of structuring mentoring conversations that maintain both descriptive and interpretive analytic stances. Analysis of before and after conversations provided evidence of how mentor-PST pairs adopted noticing and wondering language, and in particular illuminated the ways in which the language structure might support interpretive mentoring conversations for studying teaching. The results suggest that mathematics teacher educators may want to consider what makes wondering challenging work and how to best support wondering in educative mentoring conversations.

This case focuses on the potential problems associated with sharing personally identifiable information (PII) when students are required to use third-party software. Specifically, third-grade students were required to complete "LearningPad" activities as a component of their homework grade in math, spelling, and language arts. As students completed activities, their class rank, total number of correct responses, and total time on task were displayed for all students in the class to see. The administration had to make a decision as to whether the use of "LearningPad" software and the displaying of student data were violations of student privacy laws.

Most teacher preparation programs have embraced the use of video as an effective methodology for developing teachers' noticing skills. This study focused on learning about what secondary mathematics prospective teachers (PSTs) were able to notice when viewing video of their own co-teaching, particularly in a microteaching setting that consisted of peers. PSTs documented their observations on an observation tool while re-watching their video and then identified and ranked their top three observations. The ranked noticing statements were analyzed based on a grounded theory approach. Overall, PSTs' ranked observations were more likely to attend to students and had a strong focus on mathematics and student learning. Ranked observations equally demonstrated both broad and specific understanding of video moments and often made suggestions that something they noticed could be improved in the implementation stage, versus improvements in planning or changes in themselves. Results support PSTs' use of video for developing noticing skills in teacher education programs.

In recent years, various revelations about government malfeasances have highlighted the vulnerability of civil society actors who work on surveillance by intelligence agencies. Simultaneously, new technologies and overburdened state oversight bodies clarify how relevant citizen scrutiny of intelligence is. Both of these factors have led to the emergence of scrutiny by civil society actors as a research subject. This paper contributes to such scholarship by presenting data collected through surveys addressed at journalists and professionals from civil society organisations (CSOs) in France, Germany, and the UK to comparatively characterize the forms, scope, and constraints of the scrutiny they perform. Indicated differences across countries highlight variances in the practices of civic intelligence oversight. These variances indicate that there is room to manoeuvre for civic forms of holding intelligence agencies to account, counteracting the primacy of security and the secrecy of intelligence. Yet, similarities of civic oversight practitioners’ perspectives across all three countries are also distinct and informative; in particular, across all three countries, journalists and CSO professionals who work on surveillance by intelligence agencies worry they are under surveillance themselves and express dissatisfaction with safeguards at work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]