In "Effective Literacy Coaching: Building Expertise and a Culture of Literacy," literacy experts Shari Frost, Roberta Buhle, and Camille Blachowicz provide more than 50 practical activities designed to help K-12 literacy professionals: (1) Assess the current literacy program; (2) Plan changes that will foster a culture of literacy; (3) Collaborate…

The purpose of the case study was to explore the effects of a mentor-coach initiative among second, third, fourth, and fifth grade teachers in an urban junior-secondary school in Antigua and Barbuda. The case study design was appropriate, mainly qualitative, but supported by quantitative data collection methods. Twelve participants shared in two…

Professional development should be a career-long process in which teachers tweak their teaching methodology, practices, and style to meet student needs. Is there a better place to offer professional development opportunities than at "ground zero"? This paper outlines one school's attempt to bring quality professional development to the…

The implementation of high-quality evidence-based practices cannot occur without facilitative administration, systems-level partnerships, and decision-support data systems. The authors believe that understanding "what works" in program "implementation" is just as important as understanding "what works" in a program "model." Recently, researchers…

Implementing the Pyramid Model with fidelity and achieving positive outcomes for children and their families requires that administrators understand their roles in the implementation process. Every administrative decision impacts program quality and sustainability. This Policy Brief underscores the importance of facilitative administrative…

The intent of this action research study was to determine the effect peer coaching had on transfer of skills and content in the secondary arts classroom. Incorporating both qualitative and quantitative methods, the study took place in two public high schools, one a suburban high school and the other a first ring suburban high school (close to an…

A semester-long ethnography study was carried out to investigate project-based learning in a graduate software engineering course through the implementation of an Open-Source Software Development (OSSD) learning environment, which featured authentic projects, learning community, cognitive apprenticeship, and technology affordances. The study…

The PD program evaluated in this study is designed to address the problem of low student achievement in topics in rational numbers. The study focuses on seventh grade, the culminating year for teaching those topics. The study randomly assigned 77 mid- and high-poverty schools from 12 districts to treatment and control conditions and collected…

A parent training program pilot designed and implemented to develop early literacy skills of bilingual Hispanic pre-kindergarten students is described and analyzed through a case study approach. The program incorporated parent collaboration, bilingual literacy training and accessible literary themes to improve literacy prior to kindergarten.…

A growing number of states and communities are implementing the Pyramid Model in early care and education settings, and in many of these places there are also early childhood mental health consultation (ECMHC) programs operating. This policy brief provides an overview of ECMHC, how it can support the implementation of the Pyramid Model and the…

What role must principals play in order to effectively support literacy coaching efforts? This is a question that many educators have begun to ask (Burkins, 2007; Casey, 2006; Kral, 2007; Shanklin, 2007; Steiner & Kowal, 2007; Toll, 2008). Some suggest that principals can establish close relationships with literacy coaches by offering a number…

Assessment, particularly formative assessment, is critical to knowing how a student is performing academically and how best to support that student. Teachers, especially new teachers, need ongoing support in developing and using both summative and formative assessments as an integral part of their instructional practice. Written collaboratively by…

In this article we describe an approach to the design of learning objects (LOs) suitable to support learning in complex domains. We briefly discuss, from an educational point of view, the methodological choices underlying the design of LOs to be used as didactical materials in a distributed Web-based environment, presently under development,…

Researchers have argued that "job-embedded" professional learning is the most valuable model for teachers (Joyce & Showers, 2002). But there is little or no corresponding literature regarding job-embedded professional learning for literacy coaches. In this paper, the authors offer an example of one such model, the Coach-to-Coach…

Written by a team of creative and highly qualified music therapists, this publication provides content training for the use of group percussion strategies with mature adults. In fact, the book promotes senior peers as group facilitators and/or coleaders. The grace of this approach is that no previous musical training is necessary in order to…