One of the greatest challenges for schools is to identify effective and ineffective teachers in a classroom. Teacher evaluation is an expensive process in both time and resources. It is important that evaluations provide data to improve teaching and learning. Therefore, each evaluation needs to communicate opportunities for growth. This…

There is a defined need to provide accessible and effective professional development for 4-H educators. Lesson study is a Community of Practice-based approach to educator professional development. Prior research has shown lesson study to be effective with 4-H staff, adult volunteers, and teen volunteers. This inquiry, a multisite case study, was…

Many special education teachers experience low self-efficacy when it comes to supporting the problematic behavior of their students. Low self-efficacy not only results in emotional exhaustion, burnout, and decreased retention, but also directly impacts the success of students in the classroom. The problem this qualitative descriptive study sought…

Determining how to increase practicing elementary teacher science instruction self-efficacy through ongoing professional development has been a problem in one urban Texas school district. Existing literature indicated science instruction self-efficacy could be built using professional development. However, there is a gap in the literature…

With consistent pressure and an elevated sense of accountability for student achievement, campus principals need to maximize their resources and focus their leadership on academic areas that achieve the most success from students. Leading instructional coaches to engage teachers in the activities that teachers and principals view as most impactful…

The current study identified the relationship between instructional coach usage and elementary teacher perceptions on an instructional coach evaluation instrument for one North Texas school district. The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to evaluate the instructional coaching program in the participating district using instructional coach…

This phenomenological case study examined factors such as academic support, administrative support, resource support, and social-emotional support, influencing middle school mathematics and science teacher retention in middle schools with high retention rates in a South Texas public school district as perceived by educators working in the same…

Professional athletes spend hours honing their skills through video analysis; attorneys video themselves practicing opening arguments or coaching clients; plumbers, mechanics, and electricians video their craft to demonstrate their work. It could be argued that teachers' interactions have more long-term impact than any other professional skill,…

Teachers and school district administrators, particularly in the United States, are increasingly turning to teacher virtual professional development (VPD) to stay current and learn new pedagogical knowledge and skills. With more English learners (ELs) entering public school classrooms, it is essential to find effective ways to prepare educators to…

Research shows that teachers affect student learning more than any other factor. The Educator Effectiveness Research Alliance, a collaborative partnership of educators, policymakers, and researchers, seeks to improve educator quality through research and analytic technical support. Initially focused on Texas, the alliance has expanded to include…

Just as accountability policies have led to increased levels of teacher data use, teachers have begun to increase the extent to which students track and analyse data about their own learning. Although some might argue that such "student-involved data use" (SIDU) might empower or motivate students to take charge of their own learning…

This report offers state leaders key areas for action to continue progress in implementing evaluation systems, even as federal policies on teacher evaluation relax state requirements. The Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) offers its current best thinking for how state agencies can make the smartest use of funds, time and partners to refine…

Author Bob Meyer, head of the Fay School (Texas) compares professional development strategies in his school to programs in other schools, which he feels are mostly prescriptive in nature, and are based on a deficit model--focused on fixing, rather than developing--and, thus, are not always inspiring. Here Meyer describes the professional…

This article describes the Sue Rose Summer Institute for Teachers at the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, which, for 30 years, has treated teachers as intellectuals. To that end, the nonprofit educational organization offers teachers from all grade levels and all disciplines an experience that either reacquaints them with or introduces…

Federal initiatives and other research have led states across the nation to sharpen their focus on teacher evaluation in recent years. In 2009 a seminal report, "The Widget Effect," from The New Teacher Project revealed that in districts using a binary rating system to evaluate teachers, less than 1 percent of teachers received an…