Objective: This study investigated the efficacy of a two-component professional development approach to improving school wellness in Pennsylvania secondary schools. Design: Circle of Wellness (CoW), a year-long, two-phase programme, involved providing Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) workshops to Pennsylvania school staff and…

Participants in this research study found themselves suddenly forced into remote instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic, unfamiliar with online teaching and with little guidance from the field of education. Survey data was used to capture the voices of 18 K-12 educators to share their lessons learned, the challenges they encountered, and the…

Over the past several years, a growing consensus has emerged across a range of disciplines--including brain science, developmental psychology, and education research--about how learning happens. The latest science now aligns with what educators, youth-supporting adults, parents, and caregivers have known for a long time: successful learning…

The convergent mixed methods study highlighted the career demographics, barriers, and strategies for public high school athletic directors affiliated with the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association. The purpose of the study was threefold: 1) Understand the career profile of athletic directors; 2) Explore the barriers women encounter in…

Over the past twenty years, a shifting demographic in schools has created the need to view and lead them through a culturally proficient and equitable lens. School leaders, however, remain short-changed on the preparation time needed to address important issues that surpass the narrow lens of content and instruction. This study used a qualitative…

Trauma informed research related to school initiatives focuses on the framework and implementation of initiatives instead of intensive evaluations and measures of effectiveness (Christian-Brandt et al., 2020). To address the gap in research, this study focused on the central question, "what is the experience of participants that have…

The purpose of this quantitative, correlational study is to determine if there is a relationship between technology readiness and grades, the number of attempts taken, or the time it took to complete an online professional development. Because of the pandemic, much educator professional development has shifted online. When this occurred, many…

Pennsylvania has a fragmented, underfunded high school career-related education system. This undercuts success in college and careers for hundreds of thousands of students annually, while exacerbating skill shortages for businesses and throttling Pennsylvania's economy. Pennsylvania also has a legislature that supports career-related education on…

This playbook provides ways in which Governors and teams can blur the lines between high school, postsecondary education, and the workforce. Governors play a significant role to Raise the Bar for student success by developing an "education-to-workforce system" that focuses on Unlocking Career Success.

Twenty-first century skills such as critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration, communication, and creativity, prepare students for college and careers. When high school teachers fail to adopt and integrate technology in the core content area, students are at risk of not obtaining these necessary skills. This objective of this study was…

The abrupt closure of schools globally in mid-2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted education for 1.5 billion learners, compelling an emergency shift to online teaching (UNESCO, n.d.). While personalized learning initiatives had been gaining traction, the pandemic challenged their continuity, transforming them into crisis management…

Purpose: Many K-12 teachers teach difficult topics as part of their curricula, and discussions of difficult topics are common across grade levels and content areas. As teachers increasingly engage with difficult topics in their classrooms, the need for high-quality professional learning experiences has also grown. In response, the purpose of this…

Careful implementation of Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs is necessary in order for programs to achieve the policy goal of college and career readiness, which involves expanding student opportunities for career-relevant learning without limiting their academic preparation for postsecondary degrees. As programs become more widespread,…

Adolescent behavior now occurs offline and online. Frequently studied and treated independently, the relationship between offline problem behaviors and online risk taking is not well understood. This study asked whether there are any problematic behaviors predictive of online risk taking by high school students. Using a 2009 dataset of 2,077 high…

COVID-19 changed the educational landscape all overnight. After the initial shock and corresponding shut down, school districts and teachers were left scrambling to try and provide a remote educational environment for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year. As summer came, the realization that COVID-19 was still going to have an impact on the…