The purpose of the present study was to investigate the factors that contribute to the cultural competence of social studies teachers in a South Carolina suburban public high school. With increasing numbers of racially, ethnically and culturally diverse student populations in public schools, and decreasing numbers of racially, ethnically and…

The Individuals with Disabilities Improvement Act mandates that every student with an Individualized Education Program be considered for assistive technology (AT). As a result, future special educators need to have the knowledge and skills regarding AT. In this article, the authors report findings from a national study of special education teacher…

Scaling Effective Programs is a category of giving that is quite unique. Philanthropists have many different interests that guide their giving, but Scaling Effective Programs offers an approach that can produce lasting transformation. This guide speaks to funders who: (1) view their giving as venture capital that stimulates other giving; (2) want…

In this article, we provide a description of a unique model of teaching and learning, developed at an urban professional development school. We focus on an intensive collaboration between members of a high school mathematics department and one university faculty member, who collaborated to raise student test scores and build solidarity as a team.…

The importance of teachers' content knowledge for effective teaching of mathematics has long been recognised. Recent national testing regimes in Australia (National Assessment Program-Literacy and Numeracy [NAPLAN]) have raised questions of the adequacy of teachers' content knowledge. This, in turn has focused attention upon the quality of teacher…

This paper presents the annual report of the National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) for 2010. Four years ago, NMSI was just an idea. NMSI not only hit the ground running in 2007, it picked up the best ideas in the country and rolled them out in schools and universities from coast to coast. Within a year of its creation, NMSI had awarded…

This study uses a unique, longitudinal statewide database to track students through the new teacher supply pipeline from high school through college and initial teacher certification. The report examines how each stage influences the characteristics of those who enter the teaching profession, with particular attention to academic skills and…

The pathways of individuals into teaching exhibit several moments of choice that impact crucially on the final composition of the teaching workforce. Though the transition from training into teaching has frequently been studied, the self-selection into the institutions of teacher education has received little attention until now. Sorting into…

This article describes a project that positions high school students as teacher educators within an undergraduate secondary certification program. A brief review of researchers' arguments for listening to students and a description of the project contextualize the perspectives of graduates of the program who teach or have taught in city schools.…

Using a theoretical framework of critical pedagogy and the lens of social justice to focus on engagement and student voice, this research includes both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, in respect to the perceptions of continuation high school students regarding factors affecting their engagement in high school. The purpose of this study…

Over the last decade, policy and business leaders have come to know what parents have always known: teachers make the greatest difference to student achievement. With new statistical and analytical methods used by a wide range of researchers, evidence has been mounting that teacher quality can account for a large share of variance in student test…

The imperative for prospective teachers, school districts, Illinois policy makers and the public as a whole to know more about teacher preparation is the motivation behind this report. At the request of Advance Illinois, the authors evaluated 111 undergraduate and graduate programs in 53 education schools as well as three "independent…

Teacher education programs are designed to provide candidates opportunities to explore effective ways to teach K-12 students mathematics. Although many of these experiences engage candidates in investigations of pedagogies using technology, manipulatives, media, etc., they often only involve and emphasize more formal experiences such as…

This dissertation is based on a case study of 8 beginning English teachers who participated in a collaborative inquiry group at an urban, comprehensive, high school in the San Francisco Bay Area. Qualitative data (including audio-transcribed meeting data, individual interview data, and classroom observations) were collected over two school years,…

This four-year longitudinal study examines the transitions of an early-career teacher from her completion of a graduate program with English certification (grades 7-12) into teaching literature in an urban high school. Our central question was how Beth's pedagogical knowledge was shaped over time by her consistent efforts to enact two key…