This longitudinal study examines elementary teachers' self-efficacy for science teaching in the years after professional development (PD) ended and during a subsequent 3-year period of follow-up support. Self-efficacy is important because teachers make decisions about classroom activities based, in part, on how confident they are in their…

The problem that was addressed in this study was that the teacher evaluation system in a small rural public school in Northern California needed to be examined for teacher effectiveness. This was important to identify perceptions of administration and teachers who stated concern about the effectiveness of the district's teacher evaluation system.…

The topic for this research was co-teaching and collaboration between those working in education. The problem addressed was obstacles to co-teaching and how it hindered co-teaching practices in an isolated small school district in rural California. The conceptual framework included social constructivism, collaboration, co-teaching, teacher…

The mission of community colleges is to create affordable pathways for students to enter the workforce or transfer into 4-year universities. However, community colleges have not been successful in efforts to assist Students of Color in completing an associate degree or transferring. Therefore, efforts have been made to increase the number of…

Rural students often face challenges in receiving high-quality education in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). Yet without meaningful STEM educational opportunities, rural students might not develop the knowledge and skills needed to compete in a technology-driven workforce. The Learning by Making program (LbyM), an innovative…

Providing science instruction is an ongoing priority and challenge in elementary grades, especially in high-need rural schools. Nonetheless, few studies have investigated the factors that facilitate or limit teachers' science instruction in these settings, particularly since the introduction of the Next Generation Science Standards. In this study…

The COVID-19 pandemic began in the late months of 2019, and by the spring of 2020, to limit transmission of the virus, schools across the globe closed and transitioned to emergency online teaching. While the move to online teaching and learning was inevitable, many learners, especially in rural and remote areas, found that online schooling had…

Purpose: The purpose of this quantitative study was to determine what correlation exists between a student's poverty coefficient and the daily number of minutes provided for independent reading and third grade reading achievement level as measured by California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) in small, rural school…

This technical appendix provides additional information about the sample, data, and estimation strategy used for a series of American Educator Panels (AEP) Data Notes published by the RAND Corporation in 2019. The Data Note series is intended to provide brief but incisive analyses of teacher and school leader survey results that may be of…

For over 25 years, researchers have identified "best practices" used by high-achieving school districts. However, little research exists regarding rural school systems, making it difficult to determine whether the best practices identified are relevant within this context. This study filled a void in research by focusing on the…

Rural school districts across the nation, with their limited resources, face daunting challenges posed by the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. This article presents a recent study of 13 rural school districts in the Central Valley of California and how these districts are responding to those challenges. A total of 352 teachers…

This study examined teacher and administrator perspectives in regards to the adoption and implementation of an elementary mathematics teaching approach called Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI), at three elementary school sites of a rural elementary school district, located in the Central Valley of California. A holistic exploratory case study…

Little is known about the implementation of assistive technology (AT) services for students in rural areas. This study investigated the AT service delivery in 10 rural districts across six states. The results indicated that students use AT across functional areas, but considerably fewer number of devices than do those not living in rural areas. AT…

Some have described the academic underperformance of Latino children, on the one hand, and their relatively strong socioemotional competencies on the other, as a "Latino Paradox." We unpack the affective climate of early elementary classrooms to explore how this paradox is addressed in a rural school district where children from…

For children to be successful, schools must provide a safe and secure environment in which teachers can teach and students can learn (Skiba & Sprague, 2008). In California, state regulations require that schools maintain an appropriate school climate on campus, in classrooms, and at school sponsored events (California Education Code 35294).…