This Semiannual Report presents the activities and accomplishments of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Inspector General (OIG) from April 1, 2023, through September 30, 2023. The report highlights audits, investigations, and related work issued during this time frame and includes summary tables containing statistical and other data as…

Professional development is an ongoing process in which teachers review their teaching practices and learn how to respond to their students' needs. To make the professional development process more effective, we need to define the identity of a teacher correctly and clarify the perspective about teachers' professional development. The purpose of…

The aim of this paper is to investigate, from a student perspective, how English communication skills are taught in Oman's schools and higher education institutions. Previous research has documented the lack of communicative ability in English among school and higher education graduates in Oman (Al-Issa, 2007; Moody, 2009). However, the reasons…

Research design and methods in educational neuroscience involve using neuroscientific tools such as brain image technologies to investigate cognitive functions and inform educational practices. The ethical challenges raised by research in social neuroscience have become the focus of neuroethics, a sub-discipline of bioethics. More specifically…

This article presents exploratory research investigating the integration of music and a mathematics lesson as an intervention to promote preservice teachers' attitude and confidence and to extend their beliefs toward teaching mathematics integrated with music. Thirty students were randomly selected from 64 preservice teachers in a southern…

Historically, college teachers have received little to no training in teaching and course design (Weimer, 1990), as content mastery was, and still is, a primary credential for employment consideration. Moreover, traditional teacher training programs have been the focus of the K-12 domain, where pedagogy and content go hand in hand (National…

In this article, the author describes three reports conducted by the National Academies, a private, nonprofit organization whose charter is to assist the federal government and the American people in analyzing pressing science and technology policy issues. These reports are: (1) "Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing…

Despite the ubiquity of the term "inquiry" in science education literature, little is known about how teachers conceptualize inquiry, how these conceptions are formed and reinforced, how they relate to work done by scientists, and if these ideas about inquiry are translated into classroom practice. This is a multicase study in which 14 preservice…

The interpretation of data and construction and interpretation of graphs are central practices in science, which, according to recent reform documents, science and mathematics teachers are expected to foster in their classrooms. However, are (preservice) science teachers prepared to teach inquiry with the purpose of transforming and analyzing…

2004 was a special year in America's longstanding efforts to provide equal educational opportunity for all people. It marked the 50th Anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in "Brown v. Board of Education", which declared racially segregated schools to be unconstitutional. 2004 also marked the 40th Anniversary of the…