Articles

Each month, EDC posts several new feature articles. This page provides an archive of past articles, including reports of emerging research and profiles of new EDC publications and Web sites.

From Tic-Tac-Toe to the Geometry of the Universe

Last June, NASA sent up a probe to gather information on the shape of the universe. Last week, Jeff Weeks showed a group of Massachusetts secondary math teachers how tic-tac-toe and other familiar games can help students explore similar questions.
EDC Helps Restructure Teacher Training in Romania

What does it take to change the education system of an entire country? If you ask EDC’s Jody Spiro, she’ll tell you to start with the teachers. That’s what EDC did in April 1998, when its Global Learning Group joined with the Ministry of Education in Romania to restructure the training that educators receive in that country. Four years later, staff members of the Romania Education Reform Project have provided specialized training to an estimated 240,000 of the nation’s 300,000 teachers.
SmART Schools Use the Arts to Engage Students

Imagine you’ve been asked to improvise dialogue for a person in this photograph from the Civil War. Which character would you choose? How would you portray him or her? What can you infer from his or her posture and facial expression?
Service-Learning Satisfies Young People's Desire For Public Service

When young people so readily joined the nation’s massive outpouring of generosity following September 11, their public spiritedness came as no surprise to one group of people—the K-12 teachers who use service-learning in their classrooms. Service-learning is a teaching strategy that combines classroom curriculum with community service, to enrich learning, teach civic responsibility, and strengthen communities.
"The Game of Commerce" Teaches Hands-on History

“The Game of Commerce” makes the realities of 19th century trade concrete for middle school students. Developed by senior EDC research associate Anne Shure of the Center for Educational Resources and Outreach, it continues an EDC tradition of using educational games to teach concepts in history and social studies.
YouthLearn Guide Offers Blueprint for Technology-Enriched Learning

After seven years of fieldwork, the Morino Institute has joined with EDC to release a guide designed to help after-school programs create and implement high-quality, technology-enriched learning activities. The guide provides user-friendly tools and resources that have proven effective at inspiring young people’s curiosity and creativity in a range of community-based settings.
Preparing Medical Students for End-of-Life Care

Every medical student receives training in the scientific causes of death, but few are prepared for the emotional challenge of caring for dying patients. Ready or Not, a new video and EDC Study Guide, gives medical schools a powerful tool to introduce students to high-quality end-of-life care.
Nubia Calling

digNubia introduces young people to archaeology through an exciting find: the remains of the ancient African civilization of Nubia that emerged over six thousand years ago in northern Sudan and southern Egypt. The project includes a documentary film, website, and traveling exhibit.
YES2002 Planning Meeting Draws Youth from Around the Globe

Modeled on earlier summits such as the Earth Summit in Rio and the Beijing Women’s Summit, YES2002 is intended to focus international attention on the issue of youth employment and to launch a campaign to create sustainable livelihoods for half a billion young people within the next decade.
Moving Ahead Program Gives Homeless Addicts New Options, Renewed Lives

EDC partners with St. Francis House in Boston on a number of programs addressing issues of homelessness and addiction.
EDC Releases Cancer Screening Curriculum

While mammography and pap smears have demonstrated great success in identifying cancer in earlier, more treatable stages, these effective screening tools remain underused today. Too many women still die from breast and cervical cancer that could have been treated early as a result of timely detection.
Bridging Schools and Communities

The prevention work of EDC’s Health and Human Development Programs (EDC/HHD) spans the spectrum, addressing public health challenges related to alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use; HIV infection; injuries; and violence. We work with communities; schools; and state, local, and national agencies in both the United States and many other countries.
Fighting the spread of AIDS in Southern Africa

Education and social marketing initiatives have proven to be effective prevention strategies in several African nations. Building on successful school-based prevention efforts in the United States, EDC/HHD is collaborating with other international organizations to enlist African teachers in the fight against AIDS.
The Science of Healthy Behavior

“I began my career here in the early ’70s working on a burn prevention research project,” recalls EDC Senior Vice President Cheryl Vince Whitman. “At that time, people believed that burns were not preventable—they just happened, and there was nothing you could do about them. Through public health research and epidemiological data showing the patterns of morbidity and mortality, we developed an understanding of effective prevention. We can prevent burns.
Injury Prevention

While high-profile school shootings dominate national headlines, a much greater threat to adolescent health is going less reported: Teen suicide rates have tripled over the last 35 years, outpacing homicide rates among 15-19 year olds by as much as four to one. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among teens, following automobile crashes.
Youth Substance Abuse Prevention

The Gloucester Prevention Network (GPN) helps teens develop a citywide petition effort to outlaw cigarette vending machines.
Community Service as a Prevention Strategy

Community service programs—when combined with curriculum—not only promote community values and good citizenship, they may also protect students from risky health behaviors during adolescence. When New York City middle school students’ community service work (three hours per week) was combined with health instruction, both their violent behavior and their high-risk sexual activity dropped significantly.
An Environmental Approach to Campus Drinking

HEC is working to move colleges away from a primarily educational approach to high-risk drinking and toward a broader, public health approach. HEC collaborates with college students, administrators, and faculty to help them re-examine and expand their responses to student drinking. In addition to serving as a clearinghouse and publisher of prevention resources, HEC provides training and technical assistance to individual campuses.
School Violence Prevention

As school officials around the country strive to become more savvy about handling violence, they are zeroing in on the critical role of “bystanders”: the confidantes of violent youth or those who are present when violence occurs.
School Districts And Historically Black Colleges Meet To Discuss Ways To Improve Science Teaching

Eugene Collins, Director of Natural Sciences and Math at Fisk University, credits a high school teacher with encouraging him to study science. So does Arthur Washington, who today serves as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Florida A&M University. Both share a concern, however, about where the high school science teachers for the next generation of African American students will come from.
EDC Launches National Initiative for Children with Life Threatening Conditions

EDC has received $1.5 million in start-up funding to improve care for children with life-threatening conditions and their families. The initiative, Enhancing Family-Centered Care for Children Living with Life Threatening Conditions, coincides with the recent release of an Institute of Medicine (IOM) report on end-of-life cancer care, which calls for a stronger focus on relieving children’s pain and suffering, as well as physician education and family support. Seven hospitals are participating in the initiative as pilot sites.
Voices of Change

Over the past decade, thousands of school districts around the country have implemented mathematics curricula based on the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics. These Standards, first published in 1989 and revised in 2000, laid out a new vision for the teaching and learning of mathematics, and prompted the development of new curricula at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.
Multichannel Learning Maximizes Scarce Resources in Developing Countries

"Schools without teachers, orphans without school fees, communities without functioning schools." That’s how EDC’s Michael Laflin describes the current state of education in many African countries, where the HIV/AIDS epidemic is decimating families and social systems. In Zambia, teachers are dying faster than teachers’ colleges can produce them.
Schoolyard Learning Takes Students Outside

The sun bears down on the rooftop garden Lai Lai Sheung and her students have planted on the rooftop of the Quincy Elementary School in downtown Boston. The trees—an apple and two pears—are not tall enough yet to throw shade, but now, in their third year of growth, they are bearing their first fruits.
EDC Releases Three-Year Study of IBM'S Reinventing Education Program

EDC today released an independent evaluation of IBM’s Reinventing Education Program which indicates that investments in educational technology are yielding gains in student performance, teaching quality, and school management. The three-year study was conducted by EDC’s Center for Children and Technology (CCT) based in New York City.
Tech-Savvy Students Tackle the Wireless Web

Many parents complain that they don’t know much about their children’s schools—including whom to contact when they have questions or concerns. What if parents could pick up a cell phone and gain instant access to the website of their children’s school? What information would be helpful to them?
The Power of Visual Mathematics

According to researchers in EDC’s Center for Mathematics Education, traditional mathematics curricula have neglected visual mathematics in favor of verbal and logical approaches that may not work as well for many students.
End-violence Virtual Working Group

The End-violence Virtual Working Group is an Internet discussion list sponsored by the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the World Bank, and the Global Knowledge Partnership, and developed and moderated by EDC’s International Development Division (IDD).
From Subject to Citizen

One spring day in 1975, as the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington approached, Carol Pixton’s eighth grade history class decided to write a play about the battle. For inspiration, they turned to their innovative history curriculum, From Subject to Citizen, an EDC series that emphasized primary historical materials and experiential learning.
"Problems with a Point"

The Internet is full of math problems, but many of them are pointless, says EDC’s Paul Goldenberg. They exist solely to practice what a student already knows, without leading to or developing larger concepts or questions. In such cases, he says, “the individual problems don’t matter, and neither do the answers.”