Purpose: Principals are critical to school improvement and play a vital role in creating inclusive and high-performing schools. Yet, approximately one in five principals leave their school each year, and turnover is higher in schools that serve low-income students of color. Relatedly, high rates of teacher turnover exacerbate challenges associated…

This paper explores school leaders' and teachers' ideas about drivers of improvement at local level in the decentralised Swedish school system. An institutional perspective is applied to investigate how institutional logics at macro level are played out at micro level in improvement processes. The paper draws on a three-year collaborative research…

Historical policy stories that situate teachers as the root cause of problems in public schools have long accompanied educational reforms, including No Child Left Behind. This article portrays the history of teacher blame as a defining component of the grammar of American educational reform. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century reformers identified…

The study sought to qualitatively capture and examine the leadership experiences of six superintendents who led their school districts during the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of the Boin et al., (2017) Five Critical Tasks of Strategic Crisis Leadership framework centered on sensemaking, decision-making and coordinating, meaning making,…

Experimental studies have a considerable impact on the educational policies and practices of many countries. In Turkey, policymakers are planning to initiate a STEM education reform in K-12 schools based on experimental studies. However, the methodological flaws in these studies may lead to biased outcomes and may mislead the STEM education…

This research investigates the significance of creative freedom and self-expression through the visual analysis of artworks produced in a workshop under the theme 'Visual Literacy'. This multi-layered qualitative study presents the findings from a participatory arts-based research approach that elicits students' creative expression through their…

This brief is one in a series aimed at providing K-12 education decision-makers and advocates with an evidence base to ground discussions about how to best serve students during and following the novel coronavirus pandemic. It offers design principles to improve practice with instructional coaching based on a review of research. Links to research…

Research shows that desirable difficulties as achieved with spaced repetition, interleaving, and retrieval (SIR) have positive long-term impacts on student learning, because the learning sticks. This book guides you through these three techniques for a more brain-compatible classroom geared toward student success. Combing through research for…

Informal participation in sport is a universal practice across time, space, and culture. One such manifestation is "pick-up games." A pick-up game is an informal version of a team sport played by an arbitrary or selected group of people who play because they want to, not because they have to. The purpose of this article is to highlight…

This study evaluates aspects related to P12 principals' professional development needs in South Carolina regarding the three domains of school leadership: management, instructional leadership, and program administration. A survey to rate principals' current leadership knowledge, rank order their professional development needs, and provide a…

These are the supplemental tables for the report, "Crime, Violence, Discipline, and Safety in U.S. Public Schools: Findings from the School Survey on Crime and Safety: 2021-22. First Look. NCES 2024-043." The report presents findings both on crime and violence in U.S. public schools and on the practices and programs schools have used to…

Each year, SC TEACHER publishes different workforce profiles, sharing details and demographics around South Carolina educators for a better understanding of our public school workforce. Among these publications, this report is the first to examine the state's school "administrator" workforce. The analysis in this report uses statewide…

Debates about grade retention weigh the academic benefits of remediation against its social and psychological costs. Louisiana adopted a retention policy aimed at capturing these benefits while mitigating the harm. It used test score thresholds to distinguish between retention in grade 8, promotion to grade 9, and a grade "8.5" where…

Many K-16 educators agree that active learning is a key component for student success in life sciences. At the same time, some instructors are frustrated by inconsistent student participation in these activities and may revert to traditional teaching strategies. Horse caregivers face a similar frustration when they lead a horse to water and it…

The construct of moral injury is usually utilized to understand cases in which individuals perform or witness actions they consider morally wrong. In this paper, we suggest the construct of "moral trap", which entails circumstances in which teachers face pressure to act but are unable to simultaneously meet the demands of care, justice,…