Productive hiring practices can increase the opportunity that every student will be taught by an effective teacher. Integrity of hiring practices is sacrificed when decision-making models, methods, and protocols fall short due to improper implementation. To compensate for the lack of information generated from poor hiring resources and protocols,…

The COVID-19 pandemic forced educators to rapidly adapt to remote learning during spring 2020, resulting in a scramble for teachers to ensure that students had remote access to instructional materials. Understanding how digital materials were used leading up to school closures can shed light on the extent to which teachers were prepared to pivot…

The paper details the findings of a study which focused on the analysis of the cultural representation of disability in school textbooks in Iran and England. The paper argues that whilst inclusive education could facilitate the incorporating of disabled pupils into mainstream schools, there needs to be deeper examination as to how this transition…

Assistive technology (AT) for students with visual impairments (VI) is an essential part of their educational program. AT allows students to develop skills, engage in the academic environment, and function independently. Despite the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) mandate for AT as part of a student's Individualized Education…

Instructional leadership is a primary task of school leaders, but this work may be complicated when leaders and teachers do not share content area or grade level expertise. Work around leadership content knowledge (LCK) acknowledges that school leaders cannot know everything about teaching in the content areas, but suggests leaders can work to…

This study sought to describe the prevalence of Standards-based grading (SBG) among practicing music teachers and report the rationale teachers provided for or against its use. Participants were music educators (N = 96) responsible for grading students. Most participants (52.08%, n = 50) indicated that they were not familiar with SBG. Many…

Rising opposition to the Common Core Standards (CCS) has undermined implementation throughout the country. Yet there has been no scholarly analysis of the predictors of CCS opposition in the populace. This analysis uses poll data from a statewide poll of California voters to explore the demographic and policy predictors of CCS opposition. We find…

Drawing on ethnographic data collected in Azerbaijan, this article examines the civics education program that existed in Azerbaijan in the 1990s and the early 2000s, prior to its incorporation into a newly created "life skills" ("h[schwa]yat bilgisi" in Azerbaijani) course. It is argued that a disconnect between curriculum…

Background: Increasingly, pupils on the autism spectrum are educated in inclusive mainstream classrooms. However, they often experience social isolation and bullying, and raising the awareness of autism in peers has been suggested as a remedy. Methods: In order to assess autism awareness in peers, autism-related questions were included in two…

Modeling is a core scientific practice. This study probed the meta-modeling knowledge (MMK) of high school students who study science but had not had any explicit prior exposure to modeling as part of their formal schooling. Our goals were to (A) evaluate the degree to which MMK is dependent on content knowledge and (B) assess whether the upper…

Species identification is essential to biology, conservation, and management. The ability to focus on specific diagnostic characteristics of a species helps improve the speed and accuracy of identification. Birds are excellent subjects for teaching species identification because, in combination with their different shapes and sizes, their plumages…

This study reports the findings from an exploration of K-12 administrators in a rural state about how they can more effectively engage and involve families of English language learners (ELLs). The guiding questions for this study are: (1) How does the role of administrators influence the engagement and involvement of ELL parents within K-12…

The two studies reported on in this paper examine the features of words that distinguish students' performances on vocabulary assessments as a means of understanding what contributes to the ease or difficulty of vocabulary knowledge. The two studies differ in the type of assessment, the types of words that were studied, and the grade levels and…

The purpose of the current literature review is to understand how East Asian American (EAA) parents of students with disabilities perceive disabilities and special education. These parental perspectives are compared to those of their East Asian (EA) parents to better understand whether EAA parents adjust their perceptions in the U.S. Findings from…

The transition from primary school to secondary school has long been recognised as one of the most challenging times in a young adolescent students' education, particularly in regard to their academic achievement. Research evidence from the last 30 years has identified a consistent pattern in students' academic achievement across transition,…