This case presents how the leadership team and faculty of a small, independent school used design thinking to respond to a competitive marketplace and desire for enrollment growth in the middle grades. The new middle school head came in with a mandate for substantial change and sought to engage all stakeholders in a process of redesign and program…

There is a growing interest in the value of teachers guiding students to generate their own representations to support conceptual learning in science and across complementary subjects such as mathematics. However, this approach to an interdisciplinary focus poses challenges for programme design and learning assessment. In this paper, we report on…

The decline of academic achievement during summer is well documented and can result in a one-month loss of skills acquired during the school year. Summer slide can further contribute to a widening gap between low and high achieving readers. This instrumental case study explored a summer class for adolescent readers labeled as struggling.…

The shift in education reform to a goal of college and career readiness for all students is a change that has been embraced widely across the country. The challenge of designing new policies and programs that could accomplish the goal that all students should graduate from high school with the skills and knowledge necessary to succeed in college…

When school personnel are confronted with initiatives that require changes in scholastic curricula, processes, programs, or structures, there is often a naturally occurring defensiveness against, instead of an open embrace of, new educational innovations (Hall & Hord, 2006). This article examines a whole-school reform initiative, specifically…