Improving the use of evidence in teacher preparation is one of the greatest challenges and opportunities for our field. The chapters in this volume explore how data availability, quality, and use within and across preparation programs shed light on the structures, policies, and practices associated with high quality teacher preparation. Chapter…

Free college has been gaining traction as a public policy option in recent years and has been adopted in some form by at least 15 states. Enthusiasm for the idea has gained momentum with the growing realization that a healthy economy requires a well-educated workforce and that workers benefit immensely from education beyond high school. Indeed,…

This is the executive summary for the report, "The Dollars and Sense of Free College." Policymakers have debated the specifics of free-college programs--including whether free-college eligibility should extend to students at four-year public colleges as well as community colleges, and whether it should be universal or targeted to…

Recent studies have identified that engaging middle school students (grades 6-8) in STEM activities increases their chances of choosing STEM-related disciplines when entering college; however, very few university-sponsored opportunities are available for these students. This paper describes an outreach day for middle school students consisting of…

Like many institutions around the world, the COVID-19 pandemic prompted us to shift our summer 2020 in-person undergraduate experiential learning program to a remote, virtual format. Here, we present our observations, summarized in 10 best practices, for moving a STEM-focused research experience for undergraduates, experiential learning program or…

Due to COVID-19, almost all educational institutions were temporarily closed across the globe. As a result, many educators have focused on delivering courses through emergency remote teaching. Preparation for remote teaching was itself a great challenge. In this reflective paper, I have presented my own experience of preparation for emergency…

Over the last four years, initial teacher education in Wales has been fundamentally reformed. The stimulus for those reforms were concerns about the quality of current provision, but more importantly a recognition by the Welsh Government that if their wider reforms of curriculum and assessment were to succeed, then teachers themselves had a key…

Purpose: Colleges and Universities have been established to provide educational services to the people. Like any other organization, the school has processes and procedures similar to business or industry that involve admissions, processing of data, and generation of reports. Those processes are made possible through a centralized system in…

The purpose of this study was to understand a school-based mentoring model that uses school staff as adult mentors. This study presents existing literature on school-based mentoring models along with a case study of one teen parent high school. The report also includes step-by-step guidance for implementation. At the case study school, all school…

This qualitative case study explored how course context, such as course design, facilitation, and community, supports students' basic psychological needs and thus shapes their situational motivation to participate in asynchronous online discussions in different course contexts. Three upper-level undergraduate courses in different disciplines were…

This study examines the commitments of an alternative teacher education program in linking theory and practice, one of the most prominent problems of the field. This qualitative phenomenological study drew from semi-structured interviews with seven faculty members and associate instructors, electronic surveys with seven program students,…

The researchers explored educational leadership program coordinator (PC) roles in developing university-K-12 school district partnerships. Little is known in regards to the PC's role in educational leadership preparation programs, and there is even less evidence of the PC's role in K-12 school district partnership development. This burden appears…

This study addresses a gap in the study-abroad literature, examining both student and host family experiences of two-way cultural transmission. Interviews, participant observation and reflective journals revealed both parties sought authentic cultural experiences, but implicit forms of cultural transmission in homestay rendered preconceived…

Millions of students leave college every year before earning a degree. At community colleges, only a third of full-time students graduate within three years. How can school administrators help students stay in school and eventually graduate? Higher education institutions commonly offer students advising services to help them develop the academic…

This brief, the third in a series produced by the California College Promise Project (CCPP) at WestEd, describes research conducted by the CCPP on the relationship between the 2017 legislation "Community Colleges: California College Promise" (AB19) and the structure of local College Promise programs. The analysis examines College Promise…