Roberta V. Nata 
Progress in Education. Volume 59 

The purpose of the opening chapter is to highlight the significance of ensuring effective classroom management and learner discipline practices by teachers in schools. Lack of classroom management and learner discipline practices presents a global challenge. The authors in the following chapter reflect on their experiences of using action learning in academic development initiatives, and draw on various others’ accounts in order to explore the potential and the challenges of this particular approach to continuing professional learning in the higher education context. The authors go on to discuss how poverty experienced in childhood is not without consequences for both the current and future educational, professional and social functioning of the young generation, generating an extremely difficult transition of a young person into adult life. Following this, an attempt is made to provide useful insights and contribute to sketching a student’s profile within multicultural contexts, based on the teachers’ views. It is aimed at identifying teachers’ views on intercultural attitudes and intercultural communicative and cooperative skills that a student has to develop, in order to cooperate and interact effectively in a multilingual context. In the next chapter, the authors present an analysis of the transformation process which the system of education in Slovakia has undergone during the period of the last three decades, and present the results of research aimed at a school leader’s competence profile. One study analyzes official documents and interviews of authorities and former teachers in the Italian Immigration Region in Southern Brazil, focusing on the period of the Nationalization Campaign of the Vargas Government (1937-1945), when teaching in Portuguese became mandatory. The main objectives of the penultimate chapter are twofold: (1) to discuss the design, implementation, and outcomes of an NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (x REU) summer program in a four-year private university located in the northeast of US; and (2) to provide practical recommendations for educators and researchers for designing experiential learning opportunities in STEM areas. The closing chapter evaluates recent research that has explored the nature of the theoretical concept of optimal functioning, which emphasizes the importance of personal resolute, inner strength, and the maximization of a person’s development, whether it is mental, cognitive, social, or physical. In the context of academia, the study of optimal functioning places emphasis on a student’s effort expenditure, positive outlook, and determination to strive for educational success.