Amidst increasing globalized pressures to raise student achievement, nations are heavily investing in various forms of teacher professional development. In the United States, teachers are increasingly electing to pursue National Board Certification, yet few studies have analyzed the experience within the greater complex system of teaching and…

This brief draws on a study of teacher working conditions and their relationship to teacher retention and school performance in North Carolina. It is part of a series of studies conducted by the Learning Policy Institute (LPI)--in collaboration with WestEd and the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at North Carolina State University--as…

Generally speaking, whenever teachers are mentioned, so too are teachers' unions. However, that is not the case in "right-to-work" states. Teachers in North Carolina, for example, do not have a collective voice to represent them in local or state political arenas, where politicians are usually not well versed in educational practices. As…

Research suggests that academically gifted students are often underserved when it comes to the school setting. Academically gifted students require specialized instruction to challenge them. Several successful strategies exist for creating an educational environment that appropriately challenges and helps these students achieve academic growth;…

For most students with intellectual disability (ID), education in the least restrictive environment has been determined to be separate special education classrooms. One means to promote greater participation in general education classrooms is for educators to identify and arrange individualized supports that students need to be successful. We…

Over the past few decades, instructional policy supports -- encompassing standards, curricula, and assessments -- have featured centrally in the education reform movement. So, too, have efforts to align them. In this article, we conduct interviews with local educators with responsibility for early education about the alignment of instructional…

When Okema Owens Simpson, the sixth-grade Multi-Classroom Leader (MCL) for English language arts (ELA) at Ranson IB Middle School in Charlotte, North Carolina, plans her schedule for the coming week, she provides what her teachers need most: daily, on-the-job coaching; lesson planning; practice in delivering lessons; co-teaching or modeling a…

Massive open online course "for educators" (MOOC-Ed) provide opportunities for using research-based learning and teaching practices, along with new technological tools and facilitation approaches for delivering quality online professional development. The "Teaching Statistics Through Data Investigations" MOOC-Ed course was…

This article provides a vignette which demonstrates some of the outcomes that occur when teachers collaborate across school district lines. The project began as an idea from Ben Owens, a 2014 Hope Street Group National Teacher Fellow. The basic notion was that good teaching doesn't happen in isolation. As someone who came into teaching after a…

Team teaching can be a valuable means of enabling cross-disciplinary collaboration, interdisciplinary study, and pedagogical innovation, but the logistical and intellectual challenges can seem too daunting to overcome. Here, we share the story of how four faculty members from professional writing, communications, and computing sciences developed a…

Research demonstrates that student-centered teaching strategies (tutoring, small-group learning, mastery-based learning, and individualized instruction) can help students excel. Many schools have turned to blended learning--integrating online learning into brick-and-mortar schools--to help implement these strategies sustainably and effectively.…

Faculty mentoring in higher education aims to scaffold mentee to adjust to the new work setting, build social relations with others, and improve instructional skills in the same physical environment. However, this process could be problematic in institutions serving in satellite campuses with geographically spread faculty body. The purpose of the…

We report here the type of problems and solutions that 38 school teams reported during a randomized wait-list controlled trial of one problem-solving approach (Team Initiated Problem Solving [TIPS]). The experimental results from that analysis are reported elsewhere. The purpose of this article is to summarize companion descriptive data from this…

English 3820: Scientific Writing, a writing-intensive (WI) course offered by the Department of English at East Carolina University (ECU), serves primarily science majors. According to the course catalog, it provides students with "practice in assimilation and written presentation of scientific information." The course asks students to…

This publication outlines the fundamental principles and process of Strategic School Design. Through years of research and practice around school resource use, we have found that high-performing, high-growth schools are responding to the changing context in education by using people, time, technology, and money in ways that look significantly…