In this article I report the findings of an intrinsic case study involving seven ecologically minded teachers who participated in a Critical Friends Group (CFG) for five months. The topic of our discussions was EcoJustice education, which involves analyzing and reframing Westernized culture. Findings are focused on how the participants grappled…

Frequent absences in the primary grades are associated with school disengagement, academic failure, and eventual dropout. The Early Truancy Prevention Project (ETPP) was designed to improve attendance of primary grade children by facilitating communication between teachers and parents and giving the teachers the lead role in intervening with…

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study was to describe the lived experience of 11 special education teachers, who implemented iPads as an instructional tool for elementary students with intellectual disabilities. This study was conducted in a North Carolina school district. The theories, which guided this study were Vygotsky's…

This mixed methods study examines perspectives on failure in the classroom by elementary teachers new to teaching engineering. The study participants included 254 teachers in third, fourth, and fifth grade who responded to survey questions about failure, as well as a subset of 38 of those teachers who participated in interviews about failure. The…

This study is concerned with the experiences of beginning teachers working with a district-employed mentor. Based on Illeris's (2002) Three Dimensions of Learning, this study sought to understand the cognitive, emotional, and social processes involved in working with a mentor. This is a qualitative study using the research method of phenomenology…

With substantial demographic shifts in the U.S. student population, today's teachers educate growing numbers of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (Kena, Aud, & Johnson, 2010). While these students bring an abundance of different cultures and languages from their families and communities, these dynamic shifts add…

This study is concerned with the experiences of beginning teachers working with a district-employed mentor. Based on Illeris's (2002) Three Dimensions of Learning, the study sought to understand the cognitive, emotional, and social processes involved in working with a mentor through the use of one-on one, in-depth interviews. Nine beginning…

In a mixed-methods study, the authors investigate teacher typologies of elementary teachers (N = 132) in the United States based on their reformed science teaching beliefs. Additionally, the identified teacher typologies were compared with respect to their science content knowledge, self-efficacy and epistemic beliefs. Results revealed three…

An increased accountability in literacy performance for third grade students drew statewide attention in North Carolina upon the implementation of the Read to Achieve Law. Elementary educators have worked to implement this mandate by monitoring the state's reading curriculum, instruction, assessments, and approaches to educating students. This…

In this article, the authors report on the initial results of a mixed methods study that examined the beliefs that preservice teachers have about teaching real-world contexts, including those related to injustices, controversial issues, and children's home and cultural backgrounds. Data collection included a survey with 92 preservice Pre-K-8…

The purpose of this study was to engage practitioners in collaborative inquiry in order to examine the concept of flipped learning. At the core of this concept is the notion of flipping or reversing traditional instructional practice with traditional homework. Nine teachers across three grade spans, K-5, 6-8, and 9-12 and three non-instructional…

A mixed method, sequential explanatory approach provided insights' regarding critical issues relating to K-12 professional growth and development as well as understanding the effect upon their teaching practices and student achievement. The population of this study consisted of a convenience sample that contained a regional group of educators from…

The purpose of this comparative case study was to explore the ways educators at the school-level experience a federally directed curriculum policy change and examine the contextual factors that impacted the way it was initially implemented. Application of an organizational learning (OL) lens was incorporated to help illuminate the ways educators…

The purpose of this transcendental phenomenological study is to understand how in-service teachers with three to five years of experience perceive their pre-service and in-service training regarding the integration of twenty-first century technology into their instruction. Twenty participants from a rural public school system in southeast North…

This dissertation was designed to examine the degree to which the fidelity of implementation of the Renaissance Learning program impacts teacher instruction, as well as teacher perception of student reading motivation and achievement. The teachers at a western North Carolina elementary school used the Renaissance Learning program for over 15…