This article presents findings from a study examining the impact of a virtual community of practice (VCoP) on professional development (PD) providers learning how to coach teachers using a virtual coaching model called VECTOR. The study was conducted during a time of widespread school closures amidst a global pandemic, but findings can inform the…

Closing the achievement gap among culturally and linguistically diverse students has been challenging for educators, school leaders, and policymakers. With the growing diversity of the K-12 public school student body, schools must prepare to confront this divide systematically and vigorously. Policies that promote culturally responsive teaching…

The Common Core State Standards recommend that all educators equip students with the literacy skills needed for college and careers. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine middle-level content-area teachers' perspectives on a district-led literacy professional development program and their implementation of the literacy…

A qualitative case study design was used to explore the use of the think-aloud reading comprehension strategy in the implementation of math journals. The goal of the study was to determine if a teacher's direct instruction in the implementation of think-alouds improved "at risk" eighth-graders' abilities to answer word problems more…

Using a mixed methodology approach, this study examined the impact of the implementation of the science PSSA on the curriculum and instructional practice of eighth-grade teachers. It was hypothesized that despite the specter of PSSA influence on the academic climate, teachers are not necessarily influenced to change instructional practices, even…

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of alternative approaches to administering and scoring curriculum-based measurement for written expression. Specifically, three response durations (3, 5, and 7 minutes) and six score types (total words written, words spelled correctly, percent of words spelled correctly,…

Why do girls perform so well academically yet lose ground as professional women? This diminishing number of women up the leadership hierarchy is often referred to as the "leaky pipeline," and attributed to many factors: external ones such as work environments not conducive to work/life balance, and internal ones such as women's own…

The purpose of this research was to understand the development of teachers' perception of self-efficacy as a result of reflective conversations conducted between a principal/school administrator and a teacher. Self-efficacy, based on social cognitive theory, is dependent upon the perceived level of competency or mastery of the individual and their…